Tivoli bar-bender and and all-round legend, Matt Scurrah took the night off slinging drinks to spend in the VERY sold-out crowd for Ryan Adams - who let's face it, is a hero in the eyes of most of us here. With a 3-hour set, and a stunning lighting and stage design, he mostly certainly didn't disappoint. Read on... 

*****

Lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice… but Ryan Adams does. A 3 hour set at Woolly Mammoth Monday night, a 3 hour set at the Tivoli Tuesday night and Brisbane woke Wednesday with a hazy head and hurt’n heart wondering what the hell happened.

When the doors open on Tuesday night and the punters flocked into a sold out show at the Tivoli the floor was filled with people who were not quite sure what they were going to get.

Mister Ryan Adams has been notorious for keep fans on their toes at his lives shows, but when the lights went down and smoke started pouring out from the stage you could feel this show was going to be something special.

Ryan took the stage with a practiced apathy born of decades of performing and the moment he donned his guitar and played the first note, it left the crowd little room for doubt who's stage it was for the rest of the night.

He took a break soon enough to let us know that it wasn’t us it was him - he felt like he was losing his voice and wanted to preserve it as much as possible. That resolve didn’t hold too long though when an audience member shouted out for him to play a track and Ryan spent quite a while explaining to him that he was in a music venue, not a McDonalds and he didn’t get to pick and choose what he got. Cheekily, he then graced the crowd with an 8 second version of the aforementioned track and launched back into it, leaving the crowd in stiches and the heckler a particularly deep shade of red.

After a rousing rendition of New York, New York Ryan fed straight into Everybody Knows and at that point it was pretty clear he had the room hook, line and sinker.

He’d built us up with joy so thoroughly that until this point we had forgotten Ryan Adams was a man who was never much for sunny days - he systematically destroyed us all with his cover of Oasis’ Wonderwall. 

Two tracks later Ryan decided he needed to bring the brevity back a little bit. Drawing inspiration from the crowd, he launched into an improv song about an audience member he dubbed “Wednesday Adams, the saddest girl in the room". Soon after though, he retracted his Wednesday Adams statement, announcing that she was probably just a Bob Dylan fan. 

This provided a nice segue however to another story about the time he met Bob Dylan. We were all listening attentively. Another one of his friends, Elton John called him up one day and invited him around for dinner. Ryan went, and sure enough there was even a placeholder card at the table for Bob, but he wasn’t there. When Bob finally turned up, Ryan swore he saw dust fall off him as he entered the room, as if he was padded down with it right before he entered the house. Wearing a cape, he walked straight up to Ryan.

Being a bit stricken for words and not really knowing what to say to this cowboy super hero, he blurted out: “we had Salmon (for dinner)”, and felt like a fool for doing so. Bob however was only interested in one thing: “Now what exactly is <pause for Bob Dylan effect> a Winding Wheel?” to which Ryan’s response was “I don’t know man, it’s not really anything, I just thought it sound good.” 

While he had us feeling a little vulnerable, Ryan then decided that would be a good time to play Winding Wheel. It was the first time all night he took front-and-centre stage under the limelight, and the first time all night after an uncountable amount of guitar changes, that he donned an acoustic guitar. 

It was back to business after that, and the business was real good, stopping only to dismiss another heckler that might have been up a bit past his bedtime. “Go home Dad, you’re drunk", he blurted. 

Songs came and went and at no point did Ryan look like stopping. It almost felt as though he was going to play until someone took his guitar away from him. He launched into Shakedown on 9th Street and the whole crowd was a-dancing along to the demise of his sweet Lucy and just when he had us moving and shaking, he finished promptly at 11.59pm - 1 minute before sound curfew.

Ryan took his music and he transformed it in front of us on stage, those extended guitar solos made for a rare but very real, genuine rock and roll experience. He took a 1 hour and 39 minute song run time set and created a 2 hour and 48 minute experience that won’t be rivaled anytime soon.

He didn’t play an encore, but when you play a show right, you don’t need to.  

*****

Thanks for your words Matt. And thanks for the photos other Matt (Palmer). 

(Photos only permitted to be taken from the sound desk)