**23/10/07 War Memorial Auditorium, Nashville TN**

[Sydneyfan]

Let's hope the good run of shows continues tonight.

SETLIST:
Peaceful Valley
Please Do Not Let Me Go
Goodnight Rose
Beautiful Sorta
Wildflowers
Shakedown on 9th Street
Bartering Lines
Games
Off Broadway
Rescue Blues

SETBREAK 9.30

Cold Roses
Dear John
Happy Birthday Spacewolf
Magnolia Mountain
Stars Go Blue
I Taught Myself To Grow Old
Let It Ride
Dear Chicago
Kiss Before I Go
I See Monsters

______________________
Two
Easy Plateau

off 11.08

from RAA

[Sydneyfan]

Show underway and we have a setlist..

[ewok.online]

the word "homogenized" comes to mind.

[raer7385]

read over at RAA that Ryan requested no booze be sold at this show.

[steelrfn10]

...i'm totally gonna kick myself for not going to DC next week...i can feel it coming

[Sydneyfan]

read over at RAA that Ryan requested no booze be sold at this show.

Interesting....and I wonder if it will reduce the number of shout-outs?
The venue wouldn't be too happy about that I suspect.

[raer7385]

that's what i was thinking. the venue must be pissed. but if it reduces the amount of hecklers, then that's great.

[raer7385]

:lol spacewolf has had the longest birthday

[Sydneyfan]

Damn, he played Wonderwall. :upyours

EDIT: Damn, no he didn't. False alarm. It was actually I See Monsters - the person texting got a bit confused.

[Sydneyfan]

I think they might be done and dusted in Nashville...no reports of any more encores.

[Paul Vick]

Solid show. I'd be happy with that. :upyours

[SweetBlackMagic]

Quick review:

Awesome show! Everyone was in a good mood...the whole band. Maybe it's being away from the Ryman. There were signs all over the bars that no alcohol would be sold after the show started, but they kept selling it anyway...bummer. I really think a concert is better without drunk asses.

We had "Jonny Graboff Joke Time" which was hilarious "Ryan...I don't like cocaine...just the way it smells." Ryan made fun of the CNN article..."I'm having a meltdown...someone call CNN." At some point someone yelled something out and Ryan was like, "Did you hear that? Some just yelled out CaddyShack...I swear to god!" Then he improved on it...something like "ohhh CaddyShack...I want my $2 back"...lol.

The crowd was pretty well-behaved the whole show...Ryan took the requests in stride. Someone yelled out "Dear Chicago" and Ryan looked at the band and said "mark another one off the list." He was really in a good mood and it showed in his playing and energy. Voice was the best I've heard while doing an electric show.

Highlights:

- Peaceful Valley (I never tire of the "trying to find a peaceful song" part)
- Shakedown (Those drums get me every time)
- Bartering Lines (First time I'd heard it live...MUCH better than the album version)
- Rescue Blues (Full-blown band version w/ Ryan on piano...awesome)
- Stars Go Blue (Better than other versions I remember for some reason)
- Let It Ride
- I See Monsters (KILLER ending)
- Easy Plateau (Another live first for me...must have lasted 12 minutes!!)

Lowlights (if you can call them that):

- I really miss the Blue Cave...would love to see them do both
- As well as Rescue Blues came off, I was really hoping for more songs at the piano...I think his voice is beyond amazing when he's sitting down at the piano
- The extended jamming is OK, but I would rather have more songs
- The sound was a little muddy at some points...but the War Memorial isn't the best acoustic venue in the world (or even the same city...lol)

Maybe Ryan can loosen up more away from the Ryman...I was really impressed with him last night. Longest show I've been to...good banter...and at the end he walked up to the mic and told the crowd, "We had fun tonight, huh?"

We absolutely did, Ryan. Bravo!

[Faded Rose]

SBM - what a great review - thanks. Sounds like a really good show. Our boy was obviously a happy bunny.

[burgerqueen]

Sounds like a pretty decent show, I'm glad they seem to be going well now.

[strawberrywine]

Has he stopped doing blue cave shows?

[burgerqueen]

It seems that way unfortunately. I really liked the idea of them doing 1/2 and 1/2. Seeing as he is taking a break in the middle of every show anyway that seems like it would have worked well. Who knows what the next tour may hold.

[fairbanks142]

What is a blue cave show?

[foggy]

What is a blue cave show?

Acoustic. (Red cave is electric)

[burgerqueen]

blue cave is acoustic
red cave is electric

[Faded Rose]

When he comes to the UK I don't care if it's blue or red as long as he comes and doesn't get too pissed off.

[phunkyp]

taper?

Great Show

[fairbanks142]

thanks

[costa]

did hatch show print do a poster for this? or just the tour series by daymon?

[taparoo]

Stars Go Blue
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1AxIxWzGso

Icy Monsters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA8GJ9qxso8

[Duke of URL]

I'm glad he avoided the Ryman this time around (it's just too full of bad karma), and I'm always in favor of less rather than more alcohol at shows anymore. I am just SO over drunken assholes making asses of themselves.

In my opinion, the nasty underbelly of the massive recording of shows and having the wonderful, widespread and almost immediate access to them online is that some fuckwits think they have to somehow validate their dismal existences by screaming out and ruining the recording. Alcohol only exacerbates this really stomach-turning (and, occasionally, murderous rage-inducing) trend.

Thanks for posting the reviews and those nifty YouTube links.

[Faded Rose]

This review (late as usual from me) sums up a lot of what Ryan means to me.....I know not everyone likes the hippie idea but I think he fits into that category pretty well.:)

Review: “Cardinal Powers Activate”: Ryan Adams Lands His Mothership in Nashville*

By Andy Smith, Editor
2007.10

The wickedly talented and wildly unpredictable Ryan Adams landed his mothership in Nashville on a rainy night in late October. The anxious faithful waited in the misty grey, nervously sucking down nicotine. Why were we worried? Because this was a Ryan Adams show, and we’d spent money and traveled great distances to check out a concert that based on the record could turn out to be an ecstatic delight or an excruciating disaster.

But Ryan Adams apparently loves Nashville as much as Nashville loves Ryan Adams, and we were treated to more than two hours of fan-pleasing, earth-shakingly ridiculous musical genius.

If I’d attended one of the Ryan Adams-is-an-emotional-drama-queen-with-a-wrecking-ball tragedies, this would be a very different review. On the way to the show, my friend and I joked that we’d beat up anyone who provoked Ryan to ruin the night, and then we would kick Ryan’s ass. Luckily, no one had to go there.

This critic has a low tolerance for rock stars who don’t, for a lack of a better phrase, “put out” for the people who pay their bills and devote an inordinate amount of spare time and spending money to supporting artists’ careers. But the collective mood among the fans on this Tuesday was to support Ryan by not inviting a fit. In fact, with all the folks fully sensitized to his internet legends and real-life mistakes, it was almost impossible to holler a drunken affirmation or reckless revelation without another fan admonishing you to keep it cool, lest we prompt another trademarked meltdown.

In fact, the buzz about his mental health and professional stealth have become so much a part of the Ryan Adams culture that even the artist got in on the backlash at one point, feigning an intentionally whiny voice and offering up the exclamation, “OMG, I am having a meltdown.” Making fun of himself and his critics in such a vulnerable manner offered a needed tonic to deal with the vigorous criticisms that have crowded the internet message boards with dismissive vitriol. But let’s face history: from Van Gogh to Janis Joplin, the great artists have always been high maintenance. And after witnessing him on a good night, I have to say that Ryan Adams is worth it; it’s worth putting up with the bad nights to occasionally taste these ineffable tinges and twinges of brilliance.

Without an opening band on the bill, fans had plenty of time to patronize the merch table and beer lines, swap past Ryan stories, and share setlist predictions. We welcomed Ryan and the Cardinals when they took the stage around 8:30pm for two spacey sets of intoxicating indie-twang. Unlike some artists that tour to feature songs from a new record while interspersing hits into a packaged plan, a Ryan and the Cardinals gig offers a much more eclectic and unruly affair.

From the bottomless vault of his insatiable vision, Ryan rocked us with two one-hour sets and a twenty minute encore that surveyed his prolific career. The first set kicked off with an almost always perfect “Peaceful Valley” and concluded with Ryan on keyboards for a rocking “Rescue Blues.”

Well into the wonderful second set, when the night approached its coda with impeccable versions of “Let It Ride,” “A Kiss Before I Go,” and “Two,” I too quickly realized that even more than two hours of this bliss would not be enough. During the cruelly seductive space jam of “Easy Plateau” that would be our finale, I experienced some sweetly creepy déjà vu for a memory that didn’t exist. The epic timelessness of the show had swallowed me.

After this experience, I fully understood the academic comparisons between Ryan and Jerry Garcia. More than that, I suddenly felt possessed with a desire to demand that all latter-day Deadheads start listening to Ryan instead of all the half-assed and fully-baked jambands that are such poor successors to Jerry’s hippy throne. While I know how bad it will be for the inner circle if the hippy throng starts showing up at Ryan shows, I also understood that this is simply some really good shit and more people need to buy his records and download his bootlegs. In the men’s room on the way out, another fan reminded me that there’s a dash of Sonic Youth in all this post-Dead alt-country crunchiness. Too punk to be a hippy and too hippy to be a punk, Ryan Adams is an artist like Jim James of My Morning Jacket who collapses and transcends those dying categories.

Since driving home from Nash Vegas through the Tennessee hills in the welcome October dreariness, the show has stuck with me like a dream. All day for the day after, as I walked across the wet grass and dead leaves of the college campus where I work, songs from last night like “Dear John,” “Magnolia Mountain,” “Games,” and “Cold Roses” have been high rotation on the headphones. Letting Ryan manage my minor key with emotional drips, lyrical density, and musical depth has manifested a magical and memorable anti-meltdown, and I can imagine that at least a few more fans who attended this last Nashville show will have to agree.