Last night
@Letsgohuskies11 and I ventured up to the Palace Theater in Waterbury to catch Ryan Adams and the Cardinals.
He’s seen Adams a few times and it was my first show, not realizing that the premise of his recent tour are long 2+ hour shows that feature ~ a dozen songs, some of which jammed out, mostly with heavy blues/rock themes. For example, their first song, Peaceful Valley, went 21 minutes that featured a Black Sabbath medley in the middle.
While I am not fearful of a good jam, I tended to enjoy the songs that kept closer to the spirit of the original, most due to the fact that as gifted he is as a writer, “good jamming” takes a lot of practice and a certain mentality. Adams doesn’t strike me as that.
There’s also getting used to Adams as the performer. Most of the show, he spoke in a Saturday Night Horror Feature ghoul voice and, in typical Adams fashion, was very sensitive to the crowd, most of which was awesome (he complimented the general crowd a few times) but as a handful got more wasted they embraced the role as the Adams agitator, relishing the verbal attacks from center stage.
Two particular guys in the back were the main culprits, but after someone requested “Summer of ‘69”, Adams halted the show and finished with a monologue about his bad press about that song (google it) and how that helped him become sober, etc.
You might ask: this show sounded unusual, right? The answer is yes, but overall, I enjoyed myself for most of the time and glad to have finally seen him. It was my first time in The Palace Theater in ~15 years, and the restoration is beautiful.
Oh, and there was a lot of smoke: