I was tired of really fucking loud versions of my really quiet songs.
Ryan Adams talks to The AV Club.
Music is my thing. It’s my thing; it’s what I love. It’s what I do. It’s football to me; it’s Christmas to me; religion to me; poetry to me. It’s all those things, and I believe that it’s possible for people to compartmentalize their lives so they can be who they are and still function in the real world around others. But it’s always been this very big thing to me, and I can’t imagine it not being that. I don’t have a life that requires me to choose. I can be myself and love music the way I love it, and it’s not compromised.
And this passage, only because it mentions metal and LOTR:
...It’s this one long, never-ending story of me being a record collector, being a metal enthusiast. My weird side effect of that is that I play acoustic guitar and write these songs. It’s as weird to me now that I do what I do as it ever has been. It’s sort of like, “Wow, I’m still writing these kinds of songs. This is wild.” And then, I’m still listening to fucking Satyricon, you know what I mean? I get a fuckin’ boner listening to Dark Medieval Times. I get a musical boner that’s in the shape of an inverted cross. [Laughs.] I’m fucking down for it. But then I go to my songs, and I write these fuckin’ acoustic songs about this stuff. In my weird mind, it’s sort of like, “Maybe this stuff belongs… It’s the kind of music they would play in the woods outside of Mordor.”