Prisoner

With decades of acclaimed work to his credit, and accolades ranging from "one of the most elegant singer-songwriters of his generation” (The New York Times) to “one of the few truly great roots-rock troubadours left” (Entertainment Weekly), Prisoner—Ryan Adams' first album of all new original material since 2014’s Ryan Adams—is primed to add new superlatives to the C.V. of Jacksonville, NC’s most celebrated multiple-Grammy-nominee-and-zero-winner. Set for release February 17, 2017 via the partnership between his own PAX-AM label and Blue Note Records, Prisoner is somehow one of the most personal yet universal works of Ryan’s mercurial catalogue.

Regardless of how history may come to see it, one fact rings undeniable when it comes to Prisoner: It was the only record Ryan Adams could make at this point in his life. As Ryan recalls, the title track was the third song written in the period of Prisoner’s ges­tation, and the preternatural ease with which the lyrics and arrangement came to him was the point where the muse took hold. From that song on, Ryan was in the thrall of a record that was coming to life with him as a vessel. "Some records are made by design,” Ryan explains, “You feel like a carpenter making a bookshelf, creating that because that’s what you do—but then there are records that come to you, like a waking dream but you’re lucid. Prisoner is one of those records. I know for a fact that something deeper was speaking to me and I was just there taking notes. I was so engrossed in my experiences as a human being that this is the only record I could write.”