Ryan Adams likes to talk. If he’s feeling good, you get the whole heartfelt, idiosyncratic deluge. This makes for delight and danger when encountering an artist as emotional as Mr. Adams, who also is known for the occasional “Van Morrison Move”—getting moody, pissed off, whatever, and slinking surly from the stage with songs left on the roster. But not on this night. In fact, he seemed to relish his every moment in the celestial Red Rocks Amphitheatre because the 9,000 in attendance had been waiting for 5 hours to see him, and nobody else. And for an audience that has proven its loyalty like it’s a rite of passage, it quickly became evident that there is no musician more adequate to deliver on a weekend evening under a butter yellow moon than Ryan.

“I am so sorry to everyone here who is better dressed than I am,” he noted a few songs into his set. It was with a twinge of self-consciousness that I peered down at my black leather dress shoes (the ones with puritan buckles) under my well fitted jeans and felt vaguely appreciative that I had at least rolled up the sleeves of my blue and white striped button-down. Surely, I thought, he was poking fun at anyone who was pretentious enough to don nice clothes for a Friday night rock show. He, for his part, seemed to take after the late Kurt Cobain, with ripped jeans, a The Darkness t-shirt, a pair of ratty Chuck Taylor high-tops and stringy black hair which fell just below his ears when it wasn’t being blown cinematically out of his eyes. Much to the amusement of the crowd, Ryan continued his fret. “It’s so stupid… every time we’ve got an important gig, I’ve got no clothes. It’s so… stupid.”

Mr. Adams is likable. He's one of us, and this is immensely refreshing. He needed that simpatico, not to mention his rangy talented musical self, because, after our grueling wait, celebration was in order. By the time Mr. Adams walked on the stage at 11pm, the 9,000 had been forced to sit through four openers, two additional “co-headliners,” and a barrage of sponsors, Red Rocks promoters, and even the mayor of Denver, all of whom obsequiously and perpetually mentioned Starbucks. It was prescient, therefore, that the cool yellow moon which rose as Mr. Adams began his set was a waxing half moon, and after a lively “Magnolia Mountain”, Ryan and the Cardinals slipped into a soothing rendition of “Peaceful Valley”: “All my life I’ve been rocked into the darkness/with a gun to my head/trying to find a peaceful song/to sing when everything goes wrong”. This was efficacious.

After an hour set that included the tender “Goodnight Rose” and a beautiful “I Taught Myself How to Grow Old”, both from his new release Easy Tiger, as well as a stunning performance of an old tour-de-force, the title track from his 2005 release Cold Roses, infused with a segue of “What Sin”, Mr. Adams left the stage with the proclamation, “Colorado people are the nicest, bestest people around, and that’s a damn fact.” And after a five-minute encore cheer more exuberant than any I have ever heard at the venue, he returned to the stage to oblige and then some with a 6-song encore. “You guys are the most fan—tastic audience,” Ryan informed us emphatically a few songs into his “second set”, ordering thousands of watts of stage light upon the crowd, and subsequently staggering backwards at the awesome sight, childish delight running through his every feature. “I can’t believe you’re all still here!” he finished to wild ovation.

The whole night Ryan had his finger right on our pulse. We were loving every minute of it, and in return Ryan was taking care of us. He is a true artist, and so is sometimes given to semi-illogical ramblings which end only when he trails off in a moment of self-awareness, punctuates the bemused lull with a bark, and starts the next song. But he is also thoroughly endearing for his ability to connect with his audience as single, surprisingly personal entity. It is a subtle but cathartic shift when one is no longer really in one’s self, but is instead a piece of something much more significant, and meeting minds with an eccentric, sensitive, emotional, notoriously unreliable, but nonetheless brilliant and bubbling bardic poet, who, in that rare moment, is having the time of his life. The effect is a unity and levity, both inspired by and prepared to forgive, for instance, his ongoing narrative about his underwear: “I think it rides up most of the time, but most of the time I just don’t care. It really gets going though when I get… jammin’.”

“Why doesn’t anyone else ever say anything?” He asked at one point, looking at The Cardinals after trailing off in the middle of one of these often hilarious but rarely sensible spur of the moment monologues; “I’m starting to sound as usual like a bit of a…” “Spaz?” muttered a pretty girl nearby, clearly endeared and beaming nonetheless. “Ruff,” supplied Mr. Adams, and ripped into the next song.

-- Mio