I like to smoke 'til I can't breathe...

If you're going to savage Ryan Adams, it's important to lead off your story with a picture of your best friend's 11 year-old son kicking an 11 year-old girl right in the ribs at a Karate tournament. Apparently, she had been backing him into a corner with a barrage of punches, which he was defending fairly well, but still in reverse. He got a little mad, forced her back to the middle with a few punches of his own, then gave it to her, full foot.

I'm not sure who ordered The Cat in the Hat: The Movie, the health food tack in KFC commercials, or the disaffected, feedback-filled, white boy bounce pop, but I'd like my waiter to take it all back to the kitchen. There was a period not too many years ago, when those of us who follow the whole roots scene thought that Ryan Adams was the next Gram Parsons, or some reasonable facsimile thereof, transposed to this period in American music. His voice and songs were the unique sound that was the next logical step in the Alt Country/Americana spectrum.

I don't begrudge anybody their passions. I find it curious though, when someone ditches a gift to pile onto a derivative dump of American rock music that hopefully, is about to collapse under its own weight. Paul Westerberg must take it as a great compliment that first the Stills, then Adams, took the stage at the Mainroom of First Avenue and both did their best Don't Tell a Soul impersonations for the 2 hours or so of music that I could stomach. You don't have to go all the way to Grumpy's Nordeast at 22nd & 4th to have someone tell you that everyone in this town had given up on the Replacements by Don't Tell a Soul; but when you got there, if you described what happened at 7th & 1st last night, they would probably shake their heads in disgust and disbelief.

Maybe I should ditch all the comparisons and scenery and just say it. There are a lot of guys and gals in the music biz who were strange, exciting and vital voices for a new kind of twang in the late 80's and early 90's, and for some reason, many of them think they're rock stars now. They're all talented, so these are at the very least, passable rock shows; but, their twang talents were and could be so much more interesting and important than the garden variety stuff they're churning out now. Good luck Ryan Adams, we hardly knew ya.

The best country record of 2002 was CLOSED., by Drag the River from Fort Collins, Colorado. Recorded in more or less a week, the album leaks whiskey and regret from turned over plastic cups, clouds of anger rise from overflowing ashtrays that should have been dumped out many days ago, and the hangover of redemption greets bloodshot eyes as the sun rises the next morning. I was terribly excited that they were playing a Saturday night gig with my buddies from Anchorhead at the 7th Street Entry. There's something electric about this band and its music. You typically dont get encores if you're not the headliner in a club; but music that reaches people and whips them into a place they don't go very often demands such things. The principal songwriters are Chad Price and Jon Snodgrass; one a seemingly laid-back Colorado hippie type, all hair and torn jeans, the other some kind of happy-go-lucky bar room regular that belies a horn-rimmed, bug-eyed intensity. Together, they aren't afraid to draw each other out, and somehow their canvas of the Americana genre produces something that drills into the core of existence. Why booze? Why pain? Why rebirth?

I truly love going to clubs and dissecting this music for my blog and radio show audiences. Most of the music I see reinforces the idea that Country doesn't have to be some asshole in a black hat and designer clothes singing about a truck. But, I find renewal when I see bands like Drag the River. They're authentically dirty, authentically tired, authentically angry, authentically optimistic, and authentically country.