The Return of the Grievous Angel?

It is said that a central tenet of Buddhism is the concept of Rebirth, the sense of the soul of a sentient being transferring to a new existence after death. One has to wonder if the soul of Ingram Cecil Connor III – known to you and I as singer-songwriter and country rock legend Gram Parsons, whose tragically short life ended at the age of twenty-six – was indeed transferred over a year after his death to a newly born compatriot who would proceed to take his own rightful place among the pantheon of songwriting greats. For surely it cannot be mere coincidence that sees these two legends even share the same birth date; Florida-born Gram Parsons on 5th November 1946 and North Carolina-born David Ryan Adams just over one year after the former’s September 1973 death on 5th November 1974. What brings us to this conclusion?

Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris at Armadillo World Headquarters, 1973. ©KUTX

Parsons had already made a name for himself, most notably in the re-formed post-Crosby/Clark Byrds for their Sweethearts of the Rodeo album and then with his own band The Flying Burrito Brothers playing their own brand of ‘Cosmic American Music’ before recording the only solo album released during his lifetime, January 1973’s sumptuous GP. A follow-up album, the no less excellent Grievous Angel was released posthumously in January 1974 from material recorded in sessions shortly before his death. Parsons is rightly or wrongly accorded the label ‘inventor of country rock’ and those two solo albums were indeed classics of the genre featuring no less a backing harmony vocal than that of future country queen Emmylou Harris. Amongst the tracks on offer are the standards “Love Hurts” and “We’ll Sweep Out the Ashes In the Morning” and Parsons’ own “Hickory Wind”, “The New Soft Shoe” and “Ooh Las Vegas”. Two seventies albums which deserve pride of place in any serious record collection.

The band Whiskeytown were formed in North Carolina state capital Raleigh in 1994, but over the course of its turbulent and short existence only two members remained constant, the main songwriter and vocalist, Jacksonville-born Ryan Adams and violinist Caitlin Cary. It is when listening to the first of Whiskeytown’s three albums, 1995’s Faithless Street that the Parsons analogies are clarified.

Parsons left us with a song co-written with Emmylou called “In My Hour of Darkness”….and the lyrics do portend:

‘Another young man safely strummed his silver string guitar

And he played to people everywhere some say he was a star

But he was just a country boy his simple songs confess

And the music he had in him so very few possess’

Enter Ryan Adams with his Whiskeytown collective and the title track of their debut claims:

‘Angels are messengers from God

Please send one down for me’

… and before long Whiskeytown have us in classic Parsons country rock territory on tracks such as “What May Seem Like Love”. Adams was very soon in prolific songwriter mode hitting the heights on follow-up album Strangers Almanac. Two tracks in and a first Adams classic appears in “Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart Tonight”, a song steeped in the essence of country music wordplay. The album includes other ten out of ten masterpieces such as “Houses on the Hill” and “Dancing with the Women at the Bar”. The next album Pneumonia wasn’t released until some six months or more after Adams had released his first solo album and only shortly before the second. Somehow, this album does indeed sound as if Adams was leaving his best material for a solo career. Nevertheless, still worthy of pride of place alongside its predecessors, tracks such as “Reasons to Lie” and “Easy Hearts” stand comparison with the finest of his earlier work mentioned earlier.

It was his first two solo albums that introduced the still mid-twenties Ryan Adams to a wider audience and acclaim from the music press. 2000’s Heartbreaker is a slice of perfect country music, with songs of loss and heartache, material so good that he could omit Pneumonia’s stand out songs from the tracklist. If “My Winding Wheel” and the classic “Oh My Sweet Carolina” (complete with Emmylou backing) don’t grab you then the middle section of “Damn Sam (I Love a Woman That Rains)” and “Come Pick Me Up” (a song to have you drowning tears into your Guinness) will have your short and curlies positively crushed. But he isn’t done, he then finds time for a nod to his long-deceased mentor, Gram Parsons, with the sublime “In My Time of Need”. He was on a roll now. A year later out came Gold, the album that contained the Grammy-nominated “New York, New York”, which kicks off the album. Gold starts as Heartbreaker left off with hit after hit, a pace difficult to maintain, and maybe leaving a couple of tracks out would have seen it send his reputation even higher. Adams wanted to make this a double album but the record company wouldn’t agree so it is a longer than usual single album with a slightly more varied sound than its predecessor. Alongside the opener, tracks like “Firecracker”, “La Cienaga Just Smiled”, “The Rescue Blues” and “Touch, Feel & Lose” ensure the album sits proudly alongside Heartbreaker in the Alternative Country, Blues, and Folk pantheon. For various reasons critics who swooned over Adams at the time of Heartbreaker thought that he was beginning to sell out with Gold and its successor Demolition. Songs supposedly all sounding a little samey or on the other hand bombastic, a view not shared at all by this writer. Demolition houses a collection of ballads that could easily sit alongside the best of Gold. Who cannot marvel at the sparse nature of “Desire” or “Cry on Demand” and the gorgeous “She Wants To Play Hearts”. Over the space of two solo years Adams has given us forty-five new songs and few if any could be considered average.

His profligacy would continue through what some consider his finest, 2004’s Love Is Hell, to the country-tinged Jacksonville City Nights, the top ten chartbusting Ashes and Fire and 2020’s Wednesdays. There have been many more, going so far as to release THIRTEEN different albums between 2022 and 2025 alone! Clearly a list far too long for such a short article.

As he enters his sixth decade Ryan Adams has ensured that the soul of Gram Parsons lives on in such a way that some of his recorded output could quite easily be imagined as coming from the great man himself.

This blog’s authors enjoying a pint before an intimate Ryan Adams gig in Bern’s ‘Bierhübeli’.