I’m glad I actually like Jacksonville City Nights, because the front cover is so damn cool.

But seriously, Adams and his Cardinals actually improve on the quite good Cold Roses and do so by immersing themselves deeper into country music.  This is Adams’ tribute to a more traditional side, complete with pedal steel all over the place and overall honky-tonkin’ meant for town hall dances and back porch pickin’.

The opening “A Kiss Before I Go” lays Adams' agenda out clearly:

Classic country sentiment of the sort that fuels that tired argument that country is nothing but songs about sleepin’ single in a double bed.  Well, that’s life, bub. 

Adams takes a cue from Neil Young with the backing vocal arrangement of the aching “Dear John” and has a serious cry in “September”, and laments not one but two family losses in “Pa”.  With “Peaceful Valley”, real life has become too much to bear and all that’s left is a prayer to “take me home to the peaceful valley, down the winding rivers, to your city of souls”.

“Loss”, whether in the form of death or a broken heart, is the recurring theme here.  The tempting notion about Jacksonville City Nights is that it simply isn’t a CD you can listen to any old time.  While it’s true that songs like “The End” can be emotionally draining, Adams and his Cardinals deliver a heaping helping of diversity here.  Sure these songs are great big bummers, man, but it’s not a bummer album the way, say, Lou Reed’s Berlin is - which achieved it’s suicide-inducing effect by basically being one huge tragic number split up into smaller parts.  Adams has the luxury of a great band with him (one slight change from Cold Roses – pedal steel maestro John Graboff in place of Cindy Cashdollar) and they put themselves to work – steering clear of playing the same moan over and over.

Adams had a bunch of great songs and saw that country music was where they belonged. A wise decision.