COME PICK ME UP SAYS RYAN ADAMS, I’M GOING TO WIND BACK WEDNESDAY

That's the audience in his pocket, that's the show rescued.

As the detritus, such as what is left of Ryan Adams’ reputation, washes up from one of the most disastrous tours of Australia in recent times, complete with walkouts, abuse, meltdowns, threats never to return, endless mindless chats, and long online rants – and that was just from him – the hard part is remembering what appealed in the first place.

Wind Back Wednesday is here to help, pulling into the station 20 years ago, on what was Adams’ second tour to Australia. With a reputation already mixed, but early-adopters holding the memory of how a gig heading nowhere was rescued and turned brilliant three years earlier, you could (in retrospect, sure, but in truth, in real time then too) see some of the reputational potholes ahead of our man from North Carolina. Did someone say hissy fit?

But hey, that road had more than potholes. At least in 2005. As for 2025? Yeah, maybe call the council, and watch your suspension.

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RYAN ADAM AND THE CARDINALS

Enmore Theatre, July 26, 2005

WELL, HE WOULD, wouldn't he?

We'd been primed to expect a wilful show: he does no other after all. It would probably be full of unknown songs from the next two, yet to be released, albums. Most likely, the fervent wish of one body of fans (a solo acoustic set like that which turned the night around when he played in Sydney in 2002) had as much chance of being met as the desire of another body of fans (for a country/rock-driven set of songs).

So of course, Adams began alone. On acoustic. And sang, in a voice quite startlingly pure and moving, not just the heart crushing Oh My Sweet Carolina, one of the most gorgeous of tracks from his 2000 debut Heartbreaker, but a bevy of songs from the same record: the windblown cry of In My Time Of Need, the bare to the bleeding stump Sweet Lil Gal, and a starkly intimate Call Me On Your Way Back Home.

Even when the band – Brad Pemberton on drums, Jon Graboff on steel guitar, JP Bowersock on guitar and Catherine Popper on bass and vocals – joined him it was to explore the country rock surrounds of Heartbreaker's Dylan-meets-Gene Clark, Come Pick Me Up, and make the natural link to Magnolia Mountain, a song from his most recent album, Cold Roses.

By now he had us parcelled up and put away in a pocket of his denim jacket. In that first set, soaked in pedal steel, rising above a slow to focus sound, and even surviving a potential hissy fit moment (when the inevitable smart-alec reprised 2002's baiting call for Bryan Adams' Summer Of '69), Adams and the Cardinals nailed the mood. They even came close to topping that start with When Will You Come Back Home, where his love of maudlin English pop was overlaid on the country roots.

The second set and encore were patchier (Beautiful Sorta is still more brawn than brain); rockier (I See Monsters began quietly and exploded into Neil Young territory - not the first or last time Adams went there this night); messier (a slovenly version of New York New York went nowhere, but not fast enough) and surprising (an amusing attempt at Summer Of 69 which ended with a flash of the Replacements' Talent Show).

Old songs such as When The Stars Go Blue were rescued from their burial under bluster last tour, new songs promised even more (including one desolate highway number so new he was reading the lyrics from his notebook) and patience was occasionally tested.

So it wasn't all successful. But when it worked … ah yes, it worked wonderfully.

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