I had the pleasure of attending my first Ryan Adams concert this last Friday night in Tucson. I’m a huge Ryan Adams fan and have never had the chance to catch him live. He doesn’t tour out west all that often so when I saw he was playing a couple hours away I jumped on it. His latest album “Easy Tiger” is a great album and spotlights everything great about Ryan Adams. He has incredible flexibility and range in his songwriting, vocals and instrumentation. He can arrange pretty hard rocking tunes, to acoustic country and usually settles in some sort of rock-alt-country club, of which I’m a card carrying member.

His band, the Cardinals, are outstanding and I think he’s really found a groove with these guys. On stage Ryan seemed so comfortable and it’s evident in the music. There now seems to be 3 phases to his career. Whiskeytown days, solo period, and now the Cardinals. I love all 3 but am really excited about the current incarnation.

The concert started without any opening band which was cool. Their set was a very understated, just a white background with backlighting colors/patterns and a few cactus props in front of it. Their lighting was very interesting, they chose not to use the theatre’s lighting, instead went with what they brought. They just had some up lighting off the floor and some back/side lighting that hit the background as well. They were perfectly happy to be dark for extended periods of time. It created a very homey feel, there was rarely any motion lighting happening in the middle of songs. At least nothing very prominent. I’ve included a few shots from my iPhone, not the best quality but you get the idea.

Audio wise it was incredible sounding, the mix was fantastic. So much better than the Minus the Bear/Helio Sequence concert I blogged about in Nov. Vocally they were phenomenal. I love Ryan Adams voice, but thought he might fly off the handle a bit live. He definitely stretched himself but he was near flawless. The tone to his voice is just incredible live and he can do so much with it. Neal Casal was amazing on backing vocals, his harmonies were perfect. Everyone played with passion and some songs like “The Sun Also Sets” were incredibly powerful.

The overall vibe of the concert had a “come into our living room” type of feel. There was a lot of banter between songs, there were long downtimes, fun and games. It wasn’t a very tight ship, depending on your taste I guess that could be a good thing or a bad thing. I enjoyed the show but wish there was less down time between songs, I don’t think they ever stringed a few songs together.

With this laid back atmosphere I was increasingly worried Ryan might have one of his “freakouts” and walk off stage. He was throwing em back at a good pace. But he seemed happy and he was enjoying himself, so thankfully the concert wasn’t cut short. I’m stoked I got to see him, it really was musically inspiring and just plain fun. Great show boys, keep it up!

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