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Cardinals' jam soars late into the night

Katjusa Cisar  —  10/06/2008 6:52 am

The Cardinals put on a sprawling three-hour show Sunday night at the Overture Center and probably would have kept playing into hour four if someone hadn't stepped out from backstage around 11:15 p.m. to tell lead singer Ryan Adams that they'd run over.

He turned to the audience in disbelief and announced, "We totally lost track of time. We got fined." After a huddle with the band to decide the last song, he joked, "Oh my gosh, it's probably costing us a thousand million dollars. How much money did that just cost to say that?"

Before taking their bows a full three hours after they started, the Cardinals then played a rousing version of "When the Stars Go Blue," off Adams' 2001 solo album, "Gold."

The Cardinals had no openers and took one 12-minute intermission. The stage featured two neon signs in the shape of carnations and a large carved backdrop sign akin to the mark of the Artist Formerly Known As Prince, but with a cardinal's signature crest.

Adams showed no signs of his former bad boy self or the rogue who fell into a fit of rage at a joke request for a Bryan Adams tune. He seems to have mellowed with age. A little jumpy and hyper, maybe, but he seemed utterly happy on stage. At one point he admonished the enthusiastic crowd to cut the song requests: "We'll play what we wrote down," he told them firmly, adding apologetically, "I just say that in defense of the people who came with an open mind."

All the press releases and announcements for the Cardinals' current tour downplayed Ryan Adams as the star or the band as a star vehicle. It turned out not to be marketing semantics: The Cardinals have congealed into a musical machine, each part indispensable. Sure, the four members of the band look to Adams for direction, but their performance had a decidedly democratic feel to it.

And if losing track of a time limit is any indication, the show felt more like a jam than a performance. Sometimes (and this is a matter of taste), songs meandered just a little too long into guitar-noodling jams. But at the best moments, you felt like you were sitting in on a band practice, watching them have at it with unself-conscious abandon.

Songs tended toward the slower end, but the band played quite a few country-tinged songs ("Let It Ride," for one) with stand-out pedal steel guitar by Jon Graboff. The straight rock 'n' roll songs got great punching, galloping beats from drummer Brad Pemberton.

Adams' plaintive voice shone on many songs, most notably his cover of Oasis' "Wonderwall." Adams stripped away the Gallagher sneer and turned the song into a tender ballad, rising occasionally into falsetto.

Katjusa Cisar  —  10/06/2008 6:52 am