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There's
a long tradition of classic unreleased albums in rock
'n' roll history -- spanning from Elvis Presley's'
Million Dollar Quartet in the '50s, to the Beach Boys'
Smile in the '60s, to Prince's Black Album in the
'80s. Pneumonia, Whiskeytown's final unreleased
album, achieved that sort of legendary status in certain
rock circles over the last several years; in fact,
the band's fans were bidding as much as $100 (and
even more) on ebay for CD copies of an earlier version
of the album back when it looked like Pneumonia
would never see the light of day.
Music
fans should rejoice to hear that they'll finally have
an opportunity to hear the album which got "lost"
in the shuffle during the Universal/PolyGram merger
two years ago. Pneumonia was recorded three
years ago in an old abandoned church in Woodstock,
NY by the band's remaining core members -- Ryan Adams,
Mike Daley, and Caitlin Cary -- in addition to special
guests like Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha,
former Replacements/current Guns N' Roses bassist
Tommy Stinson, and drummer/producer Ethan Johns. Appropriately,
front-man Adams has compared the recording process
of Pneumonia to "those Woodstock albums, like
the Band made in the '60s."
Pneumonia
turned out to be the swan song effort for Whiskeytown,
which had released two critically acclaimed albums
-- Faithless Street and Stranger's Almanac -- for
the Outpost/Geffen label during the late '90s. The
albums placed the North Carolina-based band at the
forefront of the "No Depression" alternative-country
movement. "We were just a bar band that couldn't
believe anybody liked us in the first place,"
Adams recalled late last year.." So it was really
like this long joke. We would laugh that we were signed,
or laugh when our record performed okay. We were just
like 'Oh my God!' And I think when the pressure got
added later on, they were like, 'This is for real
now.' And I was like, 'God, I don't even know how
to play a guitar!' You know? I better go learn! Suddenly,
we were like, 'Oh, man.' I mean, we weren't qualified
for the punch line. We were still busy telling the
joke!"
Recorded after several original Whiskeytown members
had left the band, Pneumonia became a labor
of love for the remaining crew and went through many
changes and incarnations. The sequencing changed numerous
times. It was originally intended as a double-CD set,
much like Wilco's Being There. But the idea
of a down-to-earth, fourteen track album steadily
began to emerge among the band members. Says Adams,
"I think the point of Pneumonia -- even
when we were recording it -- was we wanted it to be
something a little less epic and more of a snapshot
of that time. Ethan left it pretty much as it was
recorded and kept in the rough edges and the sound
of that empty church."
Despite
or perhaps even due to the demise of Whiskeytown,
the unreleased album has taken on a myth of its own.
New Times Los Angeles called an earlier incarnation
of Pneumonia "a rock 'n' roll masterpiece".
The international critical success of Adams's first
solo album has only seemed to bring more attention
to the final Whiskeytown release. In a time when rock
'n' roll heroes seem to be scarce and manufactured,
the 26-year-old artist is clearly the real deal --
and both rock fans and critics have latched onto the
prolific and eclectic musician as a result.
"I got compared a lot to Gram Parsons for awhile,"
recalls Adams. "And then I got compared to Paul
Westerberg for awhile. And it seems like lately Bob
Dylan is the thing." He seems somewhat bemused
by the whole deal. "What I figured out is I've
got this schizophrenic musical appreciation and it
just kinda shows up in different stages. I'm playing
with colors, for sure, but I'm definitely switching
canvases a lot and that's really important to me.
Some people want to be rock stars, but I just want
to make really cool-sounding records."
Not
bad at all for a guy who claims to have started his
career as a punch line to his own joke.
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