Tickets to the gig started at $250, so we naturally couldn’t afford a plane ticket and admission. Nevertheless, we were still pretty damn excited about Ryan Adams finally returning to the stage last Thursday. If you didn’t already know, the 35-year-old studio rat came out of hiding to perform at I Found This Funny – a Beverly Hills charity event curated by funny man Judd Apatow that benefited 826LA. Deborah Vankin of the LA Times reports that Mr. Mandy Moore revealed three brand new songs which she described as “hauntingly beautiful.” And while we’re still waiting for videos of those cuts to pop up, we’re also stoked about this rehearsal footage (via TwentyFourBit) recently posted onto the World Wide Web.

The five-minute clip looks like it was shot just a few rows away from the stage at the Writers Guild Theater, and shows Adams and the wifey leading support players through “Oh My Sweet Carolina”. Moore contributes a great vocal harmony to the classic track from her husband’s 2000 Bloodshot Records debut, Heartbreaker, and the cut is still as delightfully melancholy as it was when we first heard it a decade ago. Hell, this practice version of the song may even trump the duet Adams performed with Sir Elton John way back in the day.

He misses a few guitar parts here and there, and the last verse doesn’t have the emotional heft that it did on record, but who can blame him for wanting to change up a nearly ten-year old song? The few people in the audience surely loved it, and the excitement in Adams’ voice is clearly audible at the end of the video. Let’s just hope he uses that energy to finally release all of those albums he’s been talking about lately. Check out the video below.

Image via TabloidProdigy.com