Ryan Adams A Free Man!

Reportedly gone fishin' and casting around for a new record label...

By Fred Mills

"Hmmm, where to go... bye..."

That's the latest post on Ryan Adams' personal blog, dated yesterday, Dec. 2, and though fans can read what they want into it, it has particular resonance in light of an article published yesterday on the Mojo magazine blog. Adams is leaving his longtime label Lost Highway in the wake of the artist and label being unable to agree on how to proceed in terms of Adams' career, according to Mojo.

Referencing an interview with Adams that appears in this month's print edition of the magazine (Oasis appears on the cover), the songwriter is quoted as saying, "Today my attorney sent me my termination agreement with Lost Highway, signed. I'm not like, ‘Ding dong, the witch is dead,' because I respect them and understand what we went through, how I wanted to do things a certain way, more unconventional than what they were attached to."

Adams maintains that over the course of his nine-album tenure with Lost Highway he consistently indicated his intentions to experiment stylistically, but that the label was more focused on marketing his alt-country, Americana side. For their part, the record label commented to Billboard earlier this year that with Adams' contract now up following the release of the recent Cardinology, the artist is probably served better by being "totally independent."

Observed label head Luke Lewis, "We took some pretty harsh criticism for putting out so much music, but we could have put out more." [In 2009, Lost Highway will issue an Adams anthology featuring several new songs.] "As much as we've tried to accommodate him by putting out a lot of records, a major-label deal is probably a bit restrictive for Ryan. My sense is he'd be better served by being independent, and by that I mean totally independent."