Ryan Adams Tells Steve Earle How His Taste Evolved Into Alt-Country in the Early ’90s

Ryan Adams is set to release his sixteenth studio album, “Prisoner,” on February 17. Ahead of its release, the prolific musician stopped by Steve Earle’s “Hardcore Troubadour Radio” show in Outlaw Country, where he talked about the early ’90s music scene in Chapel Hill and how his taste evolved into alt-country.

The former frontman of Whiskeytown — an early ’90s alt-country band that formed in Raleigh, NC — detailed the music scene in the area and its unlikely connection to country music.

He explained that because of the explosion of guitar-driven music in the early ’90s, country music wasn’t all that popular in Raleigh.

“It wasn’t really an accepted idea, I don’t know why, but maybe because of the whole ’90s explosion of guitar stuff and everything from Swervedriver and My Bloody Valentine and that whole sound. I mean, we had Superchunk right there, which was just, that noise that they created was just unbelievable. I mean, I saw those, maybe the first Polvo show, the early Superchunk shows, a lot of that stuff. It inspired me so much,” he explained.

However, he started to notice some people who were “hip to Gram Parsons” and the like.

“I could never have predicted that I would’ve had some evening sitting around, you know, meeting some people, sitting around listening to some country record and going, ‘Oh, you know, I know this,'” he recalled. “And going, ‘Wow, they’re listening to this, like, this is okay.’ It was just some stuff that happened at my grandparents’ house that I knew. I didn’t know that anybody would go, ‘Let’s get bombed and listen to George Jones on purpose.'”