I’ve been looking forward to seeing Ryan Adams in concert since I first heard his outstanding release, Gold back in 2001. Last night that six year wait was over, when Ryan Adams and the Cardinals played a sold-out show at Madison’s Barrymore Theatre.

The band started the concert with a amazingly tight version of “Goodnight Rose.” Toward the end of the song, they jammed a bit, started fading out and sang the word “goodnight” in an almost mantra-like manner. I expected the song to continue to fade out and finish, when the band crescendoed and launched into the final chorus of the song. Wow! This is going to be good, I thought.

Those high expectations were not dispelled through the first half of the show, as the Adams and the Cardinals continued. This was definitely a band’s concert, not a solo artist with a backing band. With no spotlights on Adams at all (in fact the dim lighting made it hard to even get a good look at the performers) the emphasis was on the musicianship of the five piece band. They were tight, together — basically at a collaborative peak, performing outstanding versions of “Cold Roses,” “Everybody Knows,” “Rescue Blues,” and “Two,” one of my favorite songs from their newest release, Easy Tiger.

In the middle of “Two” when Adams got to the lyric “If I could, I’d treat you like you wanted me to, I promise,” he instead sang “If we could get some decent sound, we’d play a good show, I promise.”

Which caused me to do a double take. Where I was, the sound was great. After the song he asked the guys at the sound board to fix the situation, because the vocals were too high on his monitors. The band looked a bit flustered, and the magic spell was broken. The second half of the concert was good, but it wasn’t at the same level of the first eight songs. Once the sound was “fixed” I thought it was worse than before, and had a hard time hearing some of the vocals.

After a few songs, the band did get back into a groove. Highlights of the second half of the concert were an extended jam on “What Sin Replaces Love,” and a bewitching “When The Stars Go Blue.”

The one disappointment I had was the encore. Ryan Adams came back on stage alone, sat at the piano, played the somber “Sylvia Path,” and the show was over. As I walked out of the theater a little disappointed at the short encore, I looked at my watch. Adams and the Cardinals played a two-hour show — all in all, a good two-hour show. Should I be disappointed by an encore of only one song? Perhaps this is what encores should be, a single song as a thank you for the audience’s appreciation, instead of an excuse for the band to take a break, and play another set.

A setlist of last night’s show is available at Setlist.fm.