By Michael Niebuhr
It’s been almost two years since Ryan Adams & The Shining made their debut performance at the State Theatre in Portland, Maine and introduced a new era of sorts for Ryan Adams. It would be his first time playing festivals to any greater extent. And after an extended run of solo shows in between 2011 and 2014 he would happily proclaim to really enjoy hanging with these guys. From the outset the setlists were fun and aimed to peak the interest of fans. What with tour debuts of Blackhole songs and extended jams of old Ryan Adams & The Cardinals favourites they seemed set to rule.
Last summer the novelty seemed to wear off and the setlists got safe. That was only natural. When you’re playing festivals the sets are shorter and the audience is not “your” audience. At least it’s not made up of only your fan base. So you play it safe aiming for what you’re good at, known for and what may resemble “the hits”. I think this worked fine even if the Ryan Adams boards and internet trolls grew bored with it in an instant.
This summer looks to be a different beast all together. For one thing Ryan Adams & The Shining is not the only line-up we’re seeing this summer. Ryan will be doing solo shows as well, he will be playing double bills with Noel Gallagher & His High-Flying Birds, he will be playing at least one double bill with Kurt Vile & The Violators and he will be playing with Nicky Bluhm and The Infamous Stringdusters as his backing band again.
All this in the space of two months. Not only that, but Ryan is telling us he’s rehearsing new songs and old favourites with The Shining. Yesterday they got Halloweenhead and Goodnight Rose under their belt. After that Ryan asked the fans (on Twitter) what else they wanted to hear this summer. Now admittedly that is probably more for show than anything else, as the wishes came in by the dozen and ranged from 1984, III/IV to My Winding Wheel and the entire Gold album. In other words anything he’s ever put to tape.
But new songs are being rehearsed. I hope this in preparation for the release of a new album. If this summer is gonna look anything like 2014 a new single will drop soon. Ryan and the band will play it during the summer shows and on a few talk shows. And we’ll get a new album late August or September. That will set up the August and Fall shows to be very different affairs from the summer festival shows, and a string of band dates will probably see out the year in North America and Europe. Mind you, that’s all speculation.
We’ll be seeing the first new business very soon though. July 8th Ryan And & The Shining will appear at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. Thankfully in this day and age that means we’ll all be listening to recordings on July 9th at the latest. Thank you tapers. Thank you YouTube. Thank you Ryan Adams. It’s gonna be a great summer.
