Adams erratic, irritating – and a hoot

Ryan Adams stepped onto the stage accompanied by recorded carnival music.

Then the sideshow began.

His set with his new band, the Cardinals, was a roller coaster ride of highs (expertly played guitar rock and countrified ballads) and lows (rambling solos and long between-song pauses).

The crowd’s overall verdict on this quirky and eccentric show seemed divided between those who had no patience for Adams’ banter and those who considered it a wildly entertaining evening of music and improvisational comedy.

I shared both feelings at various times during the night. On balance, I must admit I found most of the evening to be a total hoot.

In fact, one of the best things about the show was Adams’ complete lack of any show-biz polish.

Once, in one of many onstage debates over which song to play next, he said, “Don’t worry, we’ll eventually play a good one.”

At another point, when people in the crowd began calling out the names of their favorite songs, he said, “Oh, wait, oh wait, oh wait, oh wait, I just got a great idea, I’m just gonna play something I want to play.”

He obviously considers stage banter to be a form of stream-of-consciousness comedy. At one point, he introduced a song by saying, “You might remember this song from the soundtrack to ‘Xanadu.’ It was in the scene where Olivia Newton-John found out she won the lottery.”

He introduced another by saying, “OK, this is a song I wrote in nineteen hundred and seventy eleventy,” and another by saying, “I wrote this song in 1971. It was a big hit for old Lefty Wormersh.”

Sure.

When he introduced the band, he referred to himself as “Milton Berle.” Yet if he can be compared to any old-school entertainer, it would be Dean Martin, who played on his drunken persona. Adams’ shtick is based on a different intoxicant, with his constant references to reefer.

Like Martin, he’s all business when he launches into a song. Many of Adams’ songs were well-written and expertly played, including “Magnolia Mountain,” from his new “Cold Roses” CD, which sounded like a happy mixture of Tom Petty crossed with the Grateful Dead.

One of the best received songs was “Shakedown on Ninth Street,” set to a classic and thunderous Bo Diddley beat.

However, Adams’ punk-like rejection of all things show-biz sometimes came across as just plain tedious. It’s one thing to have long stretches of stage banter, it’s another to force the audience to sit there while the band takes minutes to figure out what song to play next.

And would it have killed him to play his current hit single, “Let It Ride”?

Adams’ act was not ideally suited to the Festival at Sandpoint audience, which is not exactly known for being “punk.” Lots of people took off early, having heard enough.

But you know what would have been far worse, at least for true Adams aficionados? A set where he just did nothing but play familiar songs and kept his mouth shut. Part of the fun is seeing what the guy will say next.