Photo: Press
For an artist to be as prolific as Ryan Adams, they need three things: great ideas, great friends and a great place to work. The latter for Adams is his home studio PAX AM - a haven and breeding ground for creativity as well as a place to just hang.
It's said that Prince's Paisley Park is like 'an academy' and Jack White's Third Man is 'a factory' - but Adams says his Los Angeles studio is like a cross between a social club and 'a laboratory'.
"I don’t really know how PAX AM works," shrugs Adams. "Now there’s a chaos factor. We have invited people who now come back. It sounds like name-dropping to say this, but [Husker Du's] Bob Mould literally does just pop into town and I won’t know until he’s there. He lives down in San Francisco, so it’s not that far to LA - I mean Californians just drive any-fucking-where. You can find yourself driving down to Santa Cruz just because you want a decent fish taco.
Bob willl be like ‘Driven down to LA today to see a buddy, 30 minutes away - see you in 30!’ I’ll just tell the guys. My studio always has amps set up in pretty much the same place, drums, consoles, external mics so the board is always set to mix – and we just turn that thing on, man. Bob can just come and everything is set up so you can just instantaneously make the energy."
Adams and band on stage at iTunes Festival. Photo: iTunes Festival, London
Fans on his current UK tour have been delighted when Johnny Depp joined Adams on stage for a raucous run through tracks. It's that 'energy' with Mould that has brought them all together - jamming together to create some pretty interesting new material.
"We've actually had a couple (of sessions) now," Adams tells Gigwise. "The first one was pretty out of control - it was awesome. Bob was on guitar, I was on bass half the time and Johnny was on bass half the time and switched through guitar. My friend Marshall was on drums.
"The jams aren't just 'Let's just goof off' - the songs are real. Songs are constructed. I don't think some of those jams would have sounded out of place on a Die Kreuzen record or Husker Du's Metal Circus or something. Even a few of them were kind of contemporary, it was cool."
When asked if the recordings were likely to be released soon, Adams replies: "I don't know, man. We haven't sat down and finished all the vocal stuff on that yet, it just exists. It exists and we'll do something with it.
"Sometimes we go through Johnny's phone because he plays guitar into his voicenotes, so he'll have some riff or some bridge or some chorus that he'll have done on a film set somewhere or whatever and he'll come round and play us a couple and I'll be like 'Oh man, let's put a verse there', stuff starts happened and an hour later the song is done. It's the same with anybody there. It's that kind of thing - 'What are we going to do today?'"
Watch Ryan covering Bob Mould's 'Black Sheets Of Rain' below
It's that casual carefree approach that has made PAX-AM such a beehive of activity, and a magnet for in-the-know musicians from miles around.
"I think that because it’s that way, it’s allowed a lot of stuff to happen," says Adams. "That’s the way I wanted it. I had all of this leftover gear that was sitting in storage and that space became available. I knew that if I set up my own private studio in LA and invited all these great musicians who are used to always paying [for studio time], always being on the clock for how much money it is per hour, always being stuffy.
Then I just go ‘Hey man, this place is just set up like it is It’s very home-y there, I mean VERY home-y. There’s like comic book stacks in the bathroom, there’s my office which is generally open, there’s one computer (it usually stays off), manual typewriters and books up in the wall – it’s very chill.
"That environment became very conducive for people to come in and they relax. They pick up a bass and guitar and we just go."
The key beneficaries of Adams studio time are, naturally enough, his touring band. Following his acoustic tour for Ashes & Fire, fans of the rockier Adams will be pleased to see him on the road with his new backing band drummer Freddie Bokkenheuser, guitarist Mike Viola, keyboardist Daniel Clarke and bassist Charlie Stavish - the latter recently the recepient of heavy appreciation at Adams' Shepherds Bush, with fans hollering "WE LOVE YOU CHARLIE" well into the night, often drowning out the screams for Johnny Depp.
"I love that!", beams Adams "I encourage that."
Adams is clearly someone who enjoys being in a group of talented contemporaries. "I like them, we enjoy each other’s company, it’s easy," says Adams of his new band. "They’re better musicians than I am, and in different ways which is super cool for me. It’s like playing basketball with the tall kids. I know that whatever I throw out there, I’m going to get this really cool thing back that’s like a question mark and kinda mysterious and it’s going to make me think.
"I just in general feel a little more peaceful all round."
Naturally, they're largely to thank for huge, loud, life-affirming nature of Adams' latest self-titled effort, as well the rip-roaring punk of his 1984 EP - both achieved through constantly having their noses to the grindstone over the past three years.
"That time was the most fruitful period I’ve had in a long time," admits Adams. "Every day, me, myself and Charlie made the ‘weekend rule’ – just so our home lives weren’t fucked just because of the amount of beautiful energy that was at PAX-AM. It’s just 10 or 15 minutes from all of our homes, so we had to make that rule. All of our wives, girlfriends or fiances go to bed at a relatively early time, like 9 or 10 o’clock at night.
"We would work from 4pm-12am and not work weekends, like a proper job just so we could contain the amount of energy. For about four of five months it was out of fucking control and it would be ten day stretches, of getting up and going down when it was still early. It wasn’t a problem for anybody, it just got to the point where we were tapping into the idea of just making a new song every day. It was really interesting and fucked up, how much material and different kinds of material were being constructed. It wasn’t always finished, which is actually more daunting. There are a lot of ready-to-be-constructed bridges and choruses and verses all hanging out on tape in the studio.
"It’s really cool. It’s exactly the perfect laboratory."
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