Lights dimmed, faded to blue and a slow fog rose as Ryan Adams took the stage Tuesday night for his first Milwaukee show in seven years. For close to two hours, nearly all of the 2,450 seats at the Riverside Theater remained vacant, as most of the audience preferred instead to stand and sing along for the entire performance.
Ryan Adams and his band The Shining aka “RATS” played a moderately mellow set consisting of twenty-one songs where Adams balanced bluesy rock ballads and mournfully soulful songs on his acoustic, throwing his electric guitar across stage left at one point to a crew member in favor of an acoustic. The set opened with his most recent, self-titled album’s first song “Gimme Something Good,” and continued with old-worn fan favorites through brand new material from his latest of fourteen albums published over the course of his career. The set included an improv song Adams deemed as the “ballad of the Milwaukee security guard.”
“At first I thought you looked like that dude from breaking bad, but I never watched more than two episodes cause it gave me panic attacks,” said Adams, “but maybe that was just the crack…security guard at the show, I respect you bro.”
Ryan had other thoughts on Milwaukee natives besides the security guards. Often going on tangents between songs, he had this to say of the north, “You’re all heroes and I love this town so much. You know how weird you people are up here? It’s inspiring. You know the cold also drives the Norwegians crazy.”
Eliciting screams from the audience at the very first harmonica notes, Adams performed crowd favorite “Come Pick Me Up,” with his opening act singer-songwriter Butch Walker, to close the show. Butch and Ryan have long followed each other’s music careers and when Butch asked Ryan to produce his upcoming album “Afraid of Ghosts” out February 3rd, he ended up joining Ryan’s tour. Playing songs such as “ATL” and “Chrissie Hynde” got some of the crowd singing along, against his comedic claims that the audience probably had no idea who he was. Butch mixed heartbreaking piano songs with intense electric guitar solos and was even joined by Adams rocking the drum kit for his last song.
Contrary to the singer songwriter’s notoriously finicky reputation, receiving mixed reviews from his Minneapolis show prior to Milwaukee, he played an incident-free set while joking often and even attempting to clarify his past behavior. Ryan is sometimes confused with country star Bryan Adams, and belligerent “fans” call out for country songs during Ryan’s sets. A similar incident occurred at the Riverside with an insistent crowd member calling for Bryan Adams after every song. Ryan finally addressed the misguided interloper, “You should chill out and just let the person next to you enjoy the show cause you’re not funny. I wanna show you my soul, he’s genius (Bryan Adams), I’ll learn his whole catalogue, but you’re still not funny.”
Strict regulations were set to this particular show for lighting and photography. Adams suffers from an intense inner ear disease called Meniere’s, which causes balance and depth perception issues when there are shifts in the lighting, among other triggers. All stage lights were set behind Adams rather than facing him and security guards were instructed to ban all flash photography to deter onset of his symptoms.
Set List:
Gimme Something Good
Let it Ride
Stay with me
Dirty Rain
This House is not for Sale
Fix It
New York, New York
“Security Guard Song”
Shadows
A Kiss Before I Go
Dear Chicago
When the Stars go Blue
Lucky Now
Do I Wait
Oh My Sweet Carolina’
I See Monsters
Kim
Yesterday’s News
La Cienega Just Smiled
Am I Safe
Come Pick Me Up (With Butch Walker)