Whiskeytown

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Whiskeytown
From left, Caitlin Cary and Ryan Adams, the only members of Whiskeytown who were active throughout the band's entire history. Both have moved on to successful solo careers.
From left, Caitlin Cary and Ryan Adams, the only members of Whiskeytown who were active throughout the band's entire history. Both have moved on to successful solo careers.
Background information
Origin Raleigh, North Carolina
Genre(s) Alternative country
Country
Years active 1994-1999

Whiskeytown was an alternative country band formed in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1994. Fronted by Ryan Adams, other members included Caitlin Cary, Phil Wandscher, Eric "Skillet" Gilmore, and Mike Daly. They disbanded in 1999, with Adams leaving to pursue his solo career. In 2005, Adams and Cary announced that they would reform the band and record another LP.

The band is considered one of the genre's most influential and successful, along with Uncle Tupelo, The Jayhawks and The Old 97's. Like these acts, Whiskeytown gradually expanded its sound outside the confines of alt-country, while still keeping roots in acts like singer/songwriter Gram Parsons and alternative rock band The Replacements. Much like Uncle Tupelo member Jeff Tweedy's current band Wilco, Adams eventually grew out of many of the sound's trappings altogether as a solo artist.

Throughout Whiskeytown's history, Adams carried a reputation for being difficult to work with, and as a result, member changes came fast and furious. Despite the fact that the band only released three albums, none of the albums feature a consistent lineup, with only Adams and Cary remaining constants.

Contents

[edit] History

Whiskeytown began in 1994 in Raleigh, North Carolina. After performing punk rock with a band called The Patty Duke Syndrome, Adams found inspiration in the country-rock of Gram Parsons, and started a band with violinist Caitlin Cary, drummer Eric "Skillet" Gilmore, bassist Steve Grothman and guitarist Phil Wandscher. His punk-rock days were touched upon on the title track to Whiskeytown's first album, Faithless Street: "Well I started this damn country band/'cause punk rock is too hard to sing."

[edit] Faithless Street era (1995-1996)

Faithless Street, released on Mood Food Records in 1996, established the band as one of the genre's leaders, thanks to glowing reviews in publications such as No Depression, and helped the band score a major-label record deal with the Geffen Records imprint Outpost.

Faithless was re-released on the imprint in 1998 with nearly a dozen bonus tracks from the era, some of which are new, and others of which showed up on Stranger's Almanac, Rural Free Delivery, and other early EPs in different versions. One track, "Oklahoma," was removed. Adams claimed that the reason for the re-release was the muddy sound of the original version and his distaste for "Oklahoma," which was added to the album despite his objections. [1]

The liner notes to the re-release provide some insight to the band's dynamic at the time, referring to the lineup as "this version of Whiskeytown" and featuring a quote from Adams regarding the 1995 recording sessions: "In retrospect, I knew that was the last optimism I was gonna have for a long time."

[edit] Stranger's Almanac era (1997-1998)

Whiskeytown's 1997 major-label debut, Stranger's Almanac, helped to establish Adams' reputation as both an excellent songwriter with potential for superstardom and as a hard partying and heavy drinking artist who was hard to work with. In the midst of the album's recording, Gilmore and Grothman left, and Wandscher left soon after the album's release. The band cycled through numerous members throughout the next year, including Jeff Rice and Steven Terry, both of whom were involved in the recording of Almanac but left later that year.

The band's reputation preceded it in the live setting. In a 1997 Detroit Free Press article titled Whiskeytown: half band, half soap opera, a June 1997 show at Mac's Bar in Lansing, Michigan was described by fans as a half-baked performance that ended with Adams critical of the venue and its fans. Adams claimed that the road-weary band was poorly treated by the venue's management.

In response to the negative publicity that followed, Adams said: "They said I was whiny about playing a sports bar. I'm like, you know what? I don't care who else was cool enough to play there. I'm cool enough to not want to play there, because I wasn't comfortable with it."

Despite the band's internal strife, Almanac was a successful album with critics, with the tracks "16 Days" and the Replacements-esque "Yesterday's News" receiving significant radio play. The positive reviews came from increasingly mainstream publications such as Rolling Stone, who claimed at the time, "If there's to be a nirvana among the bands that are imprecisely dubbed alternative country, look to Whiskeytown." [2]

[edit] Pneumonia and the band's demise (1999-2001)

Even with the personnel changes, the band managed to add a new core member in multi-instrumentalist Mike Daly, who contributed significantly to the band's sound on their third album, Pneumonia.

The album's recording was a much different affair from the first two likely because of the band's constantly changing dynamic. The traditional country of the first two albums, especially Faithless, was largely replaced with a more sophisticated country-rooted pop sound, very similar to Wilco's 1999 album Summerteeth. Also adding to the different flavor of the album was a cast of guest stars, including The Replacements' Tommy Stinson and The Smashing Pumpkins' James Iha.

Despite the album's completion and Whiskeytown's sizable fanbase, Outpost Records closed during the merger between Polygram and Universal, and as a result the album stayed in limbo for nearly two years, effectively ending the band.

Lost Highway Records, the roots-minded label imprint of Universal Music, picked up the album after signing Adams (who, in the interim, recorded his highly-acclaimed debut solo record Heartbreaker on indie label Bloodshot Records) and released it in May 2001[3].

[edit] Post-Whiskeytown and talk of reunion

Since the band's break-up in 1999, most core members have chosen to remain active in music. Cary, who married original drummer Eric "Skillet" Gilmore, has released three solo albums and created a female folk trio named Tres Chicas. [4]

Adams has remained in the spotlight since the band's breakup, releasing numerous solo albums, including three in 2005. He has drawn considerable praise from such legends as Elton John and Phil Lesh for his songwriting. [5] Meanwhile he has maintained his reputation for bad behavior, most notably when he threw a fan out of a concert for jokingly requesting a song by his near-namesake Bryan Adams in Nashville in 2002. [6]

Adams and Cary have claimed to be reuniting Whiskeytown on multiple occasions, as recently as 2005, but as of yet, nothing new has been released. The band did reunite for a one-off, impromptu gig after one of Adams' shows is Raleigh, NC, in 2005. Gilmore, Cary, and Adams were joined on-stage by Adams' current pedal steel player, Jon Graboff, and then-bassist Catherine Popper.

[edit] Influences

Ryan Adams was born in the military town of Jacksonville, North Carolina. He has referenced Jacksonville multiple times in song, both with Whiskeytown and as a solo artist. The two most notable Whiskeytown references are Faithless Street's "Midway Park," named after an off-base military housing community outside of Camp Lejeune, and "Jacksonville Skyline" from 2001's Pneumonia, which speaks of the "neon signs, car dealerships and diners" that are prevalent throughout the community, which is described as a "city with a hopeless streetlight." Adams' new band, Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, carry the name of the mascot of Jacksonville High School, which Adams attended. The Cardinals have also recorded an album titled "Jacksonville City Nights" from which the song "The End" deals explicitly with Adams's feelings for his hometown.

[edit] Members

[edit] Founding members

[edit] Later members

[edit] Discography

[edit] Albums

[edit] Singles and EPs

[edit] Compilations

  • Who the Hell? A Tribute to Richard Hell (1996)
  • Smash Hits Opry (1996)
  • Alt. Country Exposed Roots (1999)
  • Return of the Grievous Angel: A Tribute to Gram Parsons (1999)
  • Lost Highway: Lost & Found Vol. 1 (2003)
  • No Depression: What It Sounds Like Vol. 1 (2004)
  • Big Star, Small World (2006)

[edit] External links

v • d • e
Ryan Adams
Albums
Singles
"New York, New York" · "Answering Bell" · "Nuclear" · "So Alive" · "This Is It" · "Wonderwall" · "Let It Ride" · "Easy Plateau" · "Two" · "Halloweenhead"
See also