Even though Ryan's name is front and center on the album cover, there definitely seems to be a band vibe throughout the record.
Ryan: We've been a band since [2005's] 'Cold Roses' but for some reason we just couldn't get anyone to understand that. I really don't want to make a record under "Ryan Adams." Hearing my own name makes me want to take a dagger and like literally shove it so f---ing hard into my stomach until I'm dead that I just can't f---ing stand it. I just want to be in the band that I'm in and I just want to go home and be alone for the rest of my f---ng life and die under a big stack of comics and let roaches eat my f---ing eyes out of my skull because that's how it is. But it's cool.
Jon: That being said ...
Ryan: I've had this [Cardinals] dream for a long time ... and it's shared by four of my best friends. That's really intense and we carry it everyday, we carry it all over the place and it works. It's just going to be good to get past this area where it has to have something to do with me because I'm just f---ing tired of my s--- and I just want to make some tunes.
What do the Cardinals do on the road?
Jon: Panty raids. [laughs] I'm only kidding, of course ... chess.
Ryan: Brad and Jon play chess a lot, Neal sits in his bunk and stares at the top [laughs], and chills out and watches surf movies.
Neal: We're all friends, we hang out and do stuff together. It's not just something where we just work.
You guys also make homemade monster movies? Tell us about them.
Ryan: We just hit up a Super K in the middle of the night [and] get the bus driver to stop. We get a couple of masks and then we're off in the middle of nowhere. We just go out in the parking lot and like come up with a dumb thing. I'll have my camera out and there will be almost no dialogue but there will be a lot of plastic swordplay, and maybe some gunplay if we can find guns.
Chris: Its fun to watch the locals watch it happen.
Ryan, you've been in the media spotlight for the last couple of years. What is your opinion about how the media covers you?
Ryan: Do you have a phone number or an address for the Media? I don't believe in things like the media or the corporation because that doesn't exist. If you broke apart that idea what you would find is thousands of individuals who have broken hearts, who have something wonderful to say, who have stories, and that's what I'm interested in.
Are you thinking about the next album?
Neal: Yeah we're thinking about it alright, there's already new songs for it. We already have a song, like song 1, of the next journey.
Ryan: I always get so excited about making the next ... I'm like an over excited ... you know like people who bake, they make baked goods -- I get so excited just to get up and get in the kitchen. Just the kitchen smells and what we're going to put in it this time. That's my favorite thing. By the time we get to the lyrics, I'm usually pretty worn out because it's usually going to be the same thing: "She's going to stay with him, it's never going to f---ing happen and I'm going to die alone." That's the way it's going to be.
Jon: Under a mountain of comics.
---David Chiu
