Ryan Adams road trip 2008 Night 2, 10/17/2008
so the morning of the ATL show, i drove up to Birmingham to meet up with my friend Susan and then drive to ATL. in order to waste time, i ate at a Subway near her house (have y’all tried the chicken pizzalorio [pizaloria, pizzaiola?] yet? it’s a $5 foot long and worth every penny). then i sat in my car, read my Bible, sent texts, then called someone to gush about the show the previous night. i could not stop thinking about the new songs. Susan called me to let me know she finally got home, i met her at the house, and we left, with what we thought was PLENTY of time to get to Atlanta. little did we know how things would change.
i drove her car so that she could catch up on sleep, and everything’s going fine. traffic is moving well, i was on my way to another Ryan Adams show, what could go wrong? i’ll tell you what could go wrong! traffic came to a stand still somewhere around Anniston, and for the next hour, we were basically stopped. STOPPED! i must say on my drive from home up to Tuscaloosa the previous day i saw two 18 wheeler wrecks, one in which the truck had flipped off into the trees in the median, and another where the truck had turned over spilling what looked to be bags of rice. both of these accidents were on a sunny day, last Friday was kind of dreary. i figured with the traffic stopped, there must be something major. after an hour, we finally got moving, and the way the interstate was set up, the three lanes merged to two for construction. normally this is not a major deal until there is an older man in a white minivan who is stalled in the right lane. STALLED IN THE RIGHT LANE IN A CONSTRUCTION AREA! this man appeared to not know the rules of trying to move your car off of the roadway when we passed. i blew the horn at him. Susan called the stalled vehicle in to the highway patrol so they could maybe GET HIM OFF THE ROAD! as we went further down the road we saw a massive accident of i think two 18 wheelers which was pulled off into the median. the traffic going the other way was at a crawl, but eastbound I-20 was moving smoothly. we deserved it!
because of the traffic mishap, we had to skip stopping at Jeff and Adriene’s and went straight to the venue. we stopped for Chick-Fil-A at the same exit we were getting off at, and got to the parking lot at 8:20 (or something like that). we made our way inside, and i stopped at the merch booth to get my poster. while in line i was able to weigh in on a conversation about the new songs with the people in front of me. i thought they were cool, until the couple in front of me decided to buy 2 shirts, and have to check sizes on each, and then kind of also think about getting a poster, but then not, then rethink if one of the shirts they got was the right size OMG JUST BUY YOUR STUFF AND MOVE! it was 8:32 by this point, i was trying to play it cool and not freak out, but these people, seriously were pushing on my nerves. the guy behind me had been making comments to me about if i was going to be able to buy my stuff and move ASAP when i got to the front, and i told him i was ready. i also bought a shirt, and i knew the size when i got to the front. also, the guy asked me if i was on the Archive, which i told him i was. we exchanged user names, but i honestly forgot his. his g/f (i guess?) kind of rolled her eyes at us. i thought meeting people from the internet was not considered weird anymore? i made my way to my seat with about a minute to spare.
the show started and the band sounded spectacular. the venue was an open air ampitheatre which seemed to have been built recently, so the acoustics were great.
they started with Born Into A Light and kept rolling with a fantastic Cobwebs. when i first had heard that song, i didn’t really know what to think, but after seeing it live i really started to love it. the show kept building though, Bartering Lines was insane. Wonderwall was AMAZING! i was a little distracted in Tuscaloosa for this song, because ‘that’ girl got up twice DURING the song, but in ATL, all the people around me were staying in their seats. it was awesome. after they did Off Broadway, Ryan said something about his voice going out, and he was sorry, but they were going to do their best. this was the last show of the US headlining tour, i was hoping they were going to play extra long, so the voice thing didn’t sound too good. the weird thing was, then they played The Sun Also Sets, which is a hard song to sing the way he does live. i didn’t understand, but i appreciated the effort to give us the full experience. between songs Ryan mentioned the voice thing, which after being repeated, i started to feel the show was going to be cut short. after Shakedown, he finally apologized for what seemed like the 20th time, and said he felt humiliated, but he was not going to be able to go on. i felt bad for him, because he kept apologizing, and his posture was just one of defeat. when he said that was it, the band kind of looked at him puzzled, and reluctantly followed his lead and left the stage.
Susan and i figured maybe he’d go drink some tea with honey, or the band would convince him to come back on and sing quieter songs that wouldn’t be so taxing on his voice. he had sung the regular songs without changing the setlist in spite of his voice issues, which made me wonder why he did that. people started booing. and then it got louder. we were going to wait until they started taking everything apart though, which they hadn’t yet. i figure it was about 10 minutes or so before the houselights came on. the roses on the backdrop were still lit though, and we figured once they turned those off that would be the end for real. the people booing kept saying things like they wanted a refund, or that they should have known this would happen. i was more sad about what could have happened than what should have happened. they had sounded so great, i was disappointed for it to end like that. about 15 minutes after the band left the stage, they turned the roses off, which signaled our time to leave. 
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