Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker
When I decided to start writing about records in these posts, I told myself that until I worked through my very long list of records, I wouldn’t repeat an artist. Well, I’m breaking my own rule here and I think I can justify it. This was a record that changed my life. Many people make that claim, but it legitimately impacted how I ended up in places and with people that I did. The punk rock, Brit Pop obsessed kid started writing, not just on the acoustic guitar, but for the acoustic guitar. It made me want to move to Los Angeles (the first time). It took me to Boardner’s on Hollywood and Cherokee. It inspired a lot of Saturday nights and soothed a lot of Sunday mornings.
I can’t remember how I ended up reading No Depression, but I did. It was late summer, 2000, and I was living in Indianapolis. Whatever it was I read, in the September-October issue with Allison Moorer on the cover (released August 6, 2000), moved me to go buy Heartbreaker. My memory is fuzzy in that I think I bought Heartbreaker and Stranger’s Almanac at the same time, but I know I’ve also said/written it was Heartbreaker and Gold. That was twenty-three years ago, but I will say, Gold didn’t come out until 2001 and I know I had that issue with Moorer on the cover, so I’m going to lean towards Strangers Alamanac. Either way, after a couple days, I went back to the record store and bought everything else I could find by him.
I had never heard anything like this before. It was country-folk, but it didn’t fit a mold. I definitely recognized Ryan was a punk even before hearing earlier Whiskeytown and reading about his love of it. The songs are mostly quiet and sad, a fact owed to both his break-up with Amy Lombardi (later Neko Case’s manager) and the songs he wrote while living in her apartment in New York where he had to play quietly.
After leaving New York, he headed to Nashville to hook up with David Rawlings and Gillian Welch at Woodland Studios. Woodland has seen numerous amazing artists walk through its doors in East Nashville and countless number of civilians in its parking lot because it’s right in the middle of Five Points. I parked there the last time I was in town to eat across the street. I always give a little nod every time I go by.
Titling the album Heartbreaker was a split-second decision made based on a t-shirt Mariah Carey was wearing on a poster (at least according to Ryan) but it’s a perfect title for this record. The cover and the title give anyone, back in the day, the right information they need to know what inside. With a couple of notable exceptions, it’s a quiet, whiskey-soaked journey through the emotions you go through post-break up.
I remember “Come Pick Me Up” getting the majority of attention initially. It’s a great song and it has some F bombs, which people like, including me when I was 20 and 21, but it’s a little cringey now. Later, “Oh My Sweet Carolina” grabbed some attention, deservedly so as well as “In My Time of Need” when Joan Baez covered it. All three of those are great songs, I’ve always loved “Oh My Sweet Carolina” and “In My Time of Need” especially, but there’s something that always draws me to “Call Me on Your Way Back Home” first. The song is relatively simple, but honest and direct and you can hear the sincerity in his voice as the song builds around him.
Ryan has always been incredibly prolific, even when struggling with addiction, and this album could’ve been ten to twelve songs instead of fifteen, but his “filler” is a lot better than a lot of people’s singles. The album also features David and Gillian as well as Kim Richey and Emmylou Harris who all give amazing supporting performances.
The thing that makes this record so incredible is the same thing that makes it hard for me to listen to now (with the exceptions of a few songs): it’s an album written by a young man. It perfectly incapsulates what it is to be a not-yet-fully-formed man in a confusing world, trying to figure out how to be the man you’re supposed to be, especially in the context of your place in a relationship with a woman. After being married for seventeen years, I can look back through the lens of this record and see who I was and I’m not very likable. I’m probably not the most likable man now, but at least I’ve learned a few things since then. Namely, relationships aren’t about what that person gives you, but about what you can give them. If you both understand this, you have a good shot, but if you are constantly judging the other person by how they make you feel, you might as well walk away now. And, sadly, this is what our culture teaches you should pursue.
The only contact I’ve had with Ryan is through Instagram comments about our mutual sobriety, and I’ve done nothing more than send a few emails back and forth with Amy regarding a benefit show I put on in Chicago back in the day, so I don’t know anything about the relationship other than what’s in the songs. Amy has been silent about it all these years, to her credit, but from what I hear in these songs, there was a lot of one-way expectations. I’m not throwing stones because when I was a young man, I had those too. But as a man in my forties now, it all seems so silly and sad.
All that having been said, it makes this record what a record should be: a document of the artist at the time he made it. Nothing more, nothing less. That is who David Ryan Adams was in 2000. It doesn’t mean it is who he is in 2023, nor does my affection for it mean I’m the same man I was in 2000 either. One thing Ryan was in 2000 was a much better songwriter than his peers. He’s known as a songwriter, but he’s a much better guitar player and singer than he gets credit for as well. There’s not a lot of showboating on this record, but all of his talents, barring guitar solos, are all here for you to experience.
If you haven’t listened to it, or haven’t listened to it in awhile, I definitely suggest you revisit it.