Whiskeytown's Adams Bows Solo

September 8 -- Whiskeytown frontman Ryan Adams moved to New York City two and a half years ago — for a woman. The relationship didn't work out, but he did get his first solo album, the intensely personal Heartbreaker, out of the experience.

"I really needed to do it for me, and for the songs," Adams, 25, says of the album. "When I lived in New York, I didn't really play with the band anymore. I was writing by myself, and writing a lot of these songs. I did a solo tour of the Southeast that went really well. I expected 20 people, at most, at these clubs, and we actually were doing really big shows, with a lot of people there. They were so silent when I played it made the songs feel heavier. So I just kind of went for it."

Adams recorded the hushed and rootsy Heartbreaker in Nashville, Tenn. — where he now resides — with producer Evan Johns and a guest list that includes Emmylou Harris, Kim Richey, Gillian Welch, and David Rawlings.

With Whiskeytown "in flux" and unlikely to tour after the release of its next album, Pneumonia, in 2001, Adams says the solo experience was exactly what he needed to move on to the next phase of his musical career.

"It was extraordinarily liberating for me to step away from the Whiskeytown thing and do this," he says. "I needed, spiritually, to be kind of clean and free and feeling out these different things. I feel reborn now. When it's under my name, I feel like I can go and do anything, make any kind of record I want. That's a really good way to feel."

Adams, who also guests on Alejandro Escovedo's next album, plans a fall tour to promote Heartbreaker with a new band he's formed in Nashville. After that, he'll take the group into the studio for what he predicts will be more of a straightforward rock record.