My new pal, Ryan Adams

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Ryan Adams wrote a song that perfectly captures the Chicago chill and, appropriately enough, plays here just before the start of winter. | Jim Cooper~AP

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Updated: December 28, 2011 8:06AM

I made a new friend while vacationing in San Diego. His name is Ryan Adams. He’s a rock star. Maybe you’ve heard of him.

Ryan and I enjoyed a nice chat, our first, at the Balboa Theater, a classy joint that until a recent makeover was a ramshackle eyesore favored by homeless squatters.

The Balboa was the first stop on Ryan’s tour promoting his new album, “Ashes and Fire,” a really good record.

Our friendship began while Ryan took a short break from playing some of his most uplifting songs, the ones about getting dumped, getting screwed over by friends, longing for people and places left behind and other ditties exploring the overwhelming pain of emotional turmoil in early adulthood — the kind of stuff that really hits home for a single guy in his late 30s.

I introduced myself in what typically is a violation of proper Ryan Adams’ concert decorum — you don’t speak, clap or sing along. You don’t request a song. You shut up and listen because, well, my friend Ryan he can be ornery.

Still, in that hushed moment I belted out a request. I’m pushy like that. “Play ‘Dear Chicago,’ ” I yelled.

Other folks yelled requests, too, but Ryan turned my way and said, humbly, of course, “That’s a good one.”

Ryan said he would love to play “Dear Chicago” for me, but he “sucked” at playing it live. I was out of luck.

“Dear Chicago” is a great song on Ryan’s 2002 record “Demolition.” The song is probably about a girl. A lot of Ryan’s songs seem to be about girls, but this song really could be about our city. At least that’s the way I like to think of it.

It starts like this:

Dear Chicago, You’ll never guess. You know the girl you said I’d meet someday?

Well, I’ve got something to confess. She picked me up on Friday.

Asked me if she reminded me of you.

I just laughed and lit a cigarette, said, “That’s impossible to do.”

I like that line, Chicago is a unique place. You can’t describe it by saying it’s a smaller Big Apple, a bigger version of Boston or cleaner, wealthier Detroit.

Plus, later in the song there’s a line about falling out of love with New York City, which as a Chicagoan I highly recommend to anyone.

Ryan’s “Dear Chicago” may not be as beloved as other Chicago-centric songs. It just doesn’t drip with the phony “razzmatazz” in Frank Sinatra’s “My Kind of Town.” It doesn’t have a direct tie to history like “The Night Chicago Died” or “The Super Bowl Shuffle.” It isn’t about a special place like Aliotta Haynes Jeremiah’s 1971 hit “Lake Shore Drive.”

But at its emotional core, “Dear Chicago” is an important Chicago song. It captures the essence of recurring suffering — something horribly draining, relentlessly nagging and constant — that’s undoubtedly part of being a Chicagoan.

Yes, I mean winter.

“Nothing breathes here in the cold. Nothing moves or even smiles,” the song goes. “I’ve been thinking some of suicide, but there’s bars out here for miles.”

Sounds like February in Chicago to me.

But my friend Ryan told me he “sucks” at playing that song and he just can’t suck on stage. It’s bad for business.

“But I came all the way from Chicago,” I yelled from the sixth row in San Diego.

“I know you did,” Ryan said, further explaining in detail his trouble with the guitar part, a set of tricky fingerings called “hammer-ons.” “But I just can’t get it right.”

There was silence again as Ryan flipped through the songbook on his music stand. I set aside my disappointment and yelled out again, “I still think you’re all right, man.”

It’s the kind of continued interruption often confused with heckling that might have set off Ryan on a tirade when he was younger, angrier and possibly more stoned, back when he’d leave an f-bomb-filled message on a rock critic’s voicemail in response to a snarky review.

Instead, Ryan replied calmly to my badgering, “I think you’re all right, too.”

See, that’s the kind of thing friends say to each other.

Of course, I haven’t had a chance to talk to my new friend since then for a variety of reasons. I’ve been pretty busy and, well, you know, Ryan’s been on the road — Big Sur, Napa Valley, Seattle, Paris, New York among his stops.

But I plan to see Ryan soon. He’s coming to Chicago to play the Cadillac Palace Theater on Dec. 11, just 10 days before winter.

And I’m hoping he’ll have practiced those hammer-ons and decide to give “Dear Chicago” a shot, you know, since we’re friends and all.