An interview with Matthew Ryan

by Jeremy Griffin

This is the second interview we’ve conducted with singer/songwriter Matthew Ryan, whose 9th studio album I Recall Standing As Though Nothing Could Fall was recently released, and I’ve gotta say: I’ve honestly never met a more approachable professional musician (nor have I met one as grammar-conscious). Ryan recently took time out of his schedule (he’s currently on tour with his band the Red Needles) to discuss the new album as well as his views on songwriting as a craft.

1. You recently moved from Nashville. Tell us a little about what led to that.

I’ve actually moved to a small town northwest of Pittsburgh. Real severe landscape and that particular architecture that expects cold weather. Lots of bridges and old stone churches. It’s a town I fell in love with over the course of the last ten years and several visits. It feels a bit like Woodstock, NY. I felt it was time for a change; if you live one place for too long you can start to live in the past that you built there. I felt change was almost overdue and I needed to reengage with the present, shake it up, look at different streets, buildings and places, hear different accents. Nashville was great to me, and I’ll miss the day to day with many of my friends. But it was time to move on.

2. So, let’s talk about the new album, I Recall Standing As Though Nothing Could Fall. You started recording in your home studio a few albums back, and you began this one last year, and from what I understand you finished it in nine months, is that correct? What was that process like? How do you think recording at home has changed your songwriting process, if at all? Is there a greater degree of freedom, an incentive to experiment?

It did take 9 months, maybe 10. It was a bear. I had no choice with this album, but these songs insisted on coming together at this particular time. It wasn’t the album I intended to make, but whatever it is that pulls these things from you should be respected. The times we’re living in are provoking action, and for me that generally manifests itself in songs. So I hunkered down with it, did all I could to honor it and tell the truth as I see it as best I could. As far as the approach, it’s a utilitarian philosophy that drives the process. I have 3 recording systems at home and options outside my home to work with others in various studios when the songs dictate. It’s really about curiosity and following what excites me.

The last couple albums have been more home projects that were followed through at the pace of what the creativity allowed along with great contributions from friends. I love working at home because there’s no acting, the songs are captured at the moment they arrive. Seems to me there’s a certain purity to that because the moment a song is finished it can be difficult to reengage with that original spark and it can often just become performance. The approach will continue to adapt to what the work requires. I feel an earthier album coming. But we’ll see, the muse has been stubborn lately.

3. I’ve done my best to keep up with interviews you’ve done, and one thing I’ve noticed that a lot of them seem to have in common is the tendency of the interviewers to comment on the perceived “grimness” of your music, which comments are usually followed by you politely pointing out that you really don’t perceive your work as “grim” at all. What is it about the way in which you craft songs that you think leads people to often view it in such a way?

I really don’t know, Jeremy. I don’t know what lives those that say those things are living. Everyone I know is suffering some sort of weight, some sort of heartache. And through happiness, beauty and great events in our lives there are other plots. My songs engage with all of it and above all want you to persevere. There’s so much we don’t know, the world we’re sharing is beautiful and hard. There’s great wealth and great despair. And I guess there’s a part of me that feels it’s wrong to whistle past the graveyard, so to speak. And some may view that as a bummer, and maybe that’s what they’re really saying. I understand the need for escapism and preoccupation. There’s plenty of music for that, but that’s not my lot. I’ve always felt stronger and ultimately comforted by confronting what daunts or troubles me. I guess that’s what my work hopes to offer: a certain beauty or resilient poetry to the harder things in living. Life is beautiful and worth every aching moment, and life is better if we suss it all out.

4. Following from this, you said in our last interview that you were definitely more of a writer than a talker, and I’ve noticed in interviews the difficulty that often arises when trying to explain in words what you try to get across with your music. Without a doubt, you’re not alone in this regard; most musicians I’ve spoken to seem to feel that talking is inadequate for conveying their musical goals. What do you think is the hardest part about discussing your music, how you write, and what you hope to accomplish?

I never want to understand how I write. I admire craft, but I prefer that sensation of discovery that the way I work offers. I open myself up to it, and allow it to arrive. The less I think while writing, the better the song is. It’s difficult to discuss because with all the punk rock and bravado and all the reasons someone does what I do, I above all have very earnest hopes for what my work accomplishes with listeners.

5. This album comes an interesting time in regard to the sociopolitical climate in America, and it’s clear from songs like “I Don’t Want a Third World War” that you remain a very socially engaged artist. How do you think the current political, economic, and social discourses in America influenced this album (if at all)?

We’re at a very delicate intersection in our country and the world, Jeremy. This album is informed completely and thoroughly by this current friction. “I Want Peace,” “Hey Kid,” “Third World War,” “My Darker Side,” “Here Comes The Snow,” “Kings Of Trash” and above all “I Still Believe In You” all speak directly to my feelings on the situation and where I believe the solutions are.

6. You’ve rejected the notion that your work is a kind of complex diary-writing, although you have also claimed music to be a kind of meditation for you. When you write, how much of it is done with the fans in mind? Do you write exclusively for your own peace of mind, or is there an awareness of how your fans might react?

I rarely have written with listeners in mind. That’s not because I don’t care, but because my process doesn’t flourish that way. And the truth is, whenever I did let notions of what listeners might want or think or feel for a song, well, let’s just say things got messy. I’ve buried every song I ever happened to finish in that fashion. Something just rings untrue about them. My voice requires a certain timbre in intent, language, rhythm and melody. I write because I feel compelled to; it’s a beautiful thing that’s indescribable. Meditation is a clumsy word for it, but on some level it works because it feels like I’m communing with something greater than myself when I achieve a certain resonance. I only have an awareness of how a listener will react weeks, months and sometimes even years after a song is done. However, there are times I get excited about a song immediately when it feels as though I tapped a particularly rich vein.

7. You very recently performed at the Replacements Tribute at Bowery Electric. What is your favorite Replacements tune? (If your answer is anything other than “Alex Chilton,” “Left of the Dial,” or “Can’t Hardly Wait,” then you are wrong and I pity you.)

Ha! “Can’t Hardly Wait” is on my list, so I guess I’ve escaped your pity. I also love “Skyway,” “Here Comes A Regular,” “The Ledge,” “Achin’ To Be,” “Bastards Of Young,” “A Little Mascara” and “I’ll Be You” is a great rock n roll song regardless of all the slack Don’t Tell A Soul gets. There’s too many to list to be absolutely honest.*

Well played, sir. You can check out the new album, tour dates, interviews, and Matthew Ryan’s discography here.

The Tao of Roots Rock

by Jeremy Griffin

I Recall Standing as Though Nothing Could Fall

by Matthew Ryan

Usually when I write a music review, I like to spend a week or so ahead of time listening to the album while I go about my daily routines–driving to work, washing dishes, etc. I’ve that found leaving it on in the background like this is the easiest way for me to absorb the content before penning the actual review.

However, this proved extremely difficult with Matthew Ryan’s I Recall Standing As Though Nothing Could Fall. Not because the album is bad–far from it. Like most of Ryan’s previous albums, I Recall Standing isn’t the kind of thing you can leave on in the background and forget about. It commands your attention with an unmistakable sense of purpose.

I Recall Standing, Ryan’s thirteenth album, finds the songwriter continuing to explore ways to merge his Nashville alt country sound with new wave electronica. The album is full of crystaline piano melodies, brooding fuzzed-out guitars, and twinkling synth beats, all of it brought together by Ryan’s distinctive voice, which teeters between a ghostly whisper and an all-out Tom Waits’ growl. There are moments of elegant fragility, like the violin-laden ”Song for a Friend,” and there are moments of cool, gritty bravado, like “All Hail the Kings of Trash.” In between, you’ve got a stellar collection of tunes from an artist that No Depression magazine once hailed as “the best singer-songwriter rock kinda thing to come around since Freedy Johnston’s Can You Fly?”

To call Ryan an activist songwriter might be a stretch, though the anti-war sentiment on I Recall Standing is as forceful as it has been on any of his albums. The most obvious instance of this is in “I Don’t Want a Third World War”:

Our darkness is catching up with us

We’re turning to cannibals

Darkness is catching up with us

We’re acting like animals

Look a child in the eye and say

What were you hoping for?

You shouldn’t expect too much

Look a child in the eye and say

What are you crying for? 

You should never expect too much from us

This is as close as one of Ryan’s songs comes to Not Working, mostly because of how strikingly direct it is; those familiar with his other albums know that the thrust of his songwriting talent lies in the poeticism of his lyrics, the way in which the seemingly disparate images in his lyrics speak to the complexity of human suffering. Of course, those folks probably also know that this isn’t saying much: in the big scheme of things, even Ryan’s near misses ring truer and more heartfelt than the top selections from some of his Nashville contemporaries’ catalogues.

I once asked Ryan in an interview to describe his songwriting process. He responded by explaining that there really wasn’t one; the songs crafted themselves. “It can get dangerously mystical talking about songwriting,” he said, ”but for me it’s a form of meditation.” Dangerously mystical. That seems like an oddly apt way to describe I Recall Standing, the way it grips your focus all the way through. A kind of hypnosis. You want a challenge? Put the album on and try not to listen. Just try.

An Interview with Matthew Ryan

by Jeremy Griffin

“I’m much more of a writer than I am a talker.” This was what Matthew Ryan said when I asked him if he’d prefer to do this interview over email. This response seemed strikingly appropriate, given that most of the reviews I’ve ever read about his work refer to him, in one context or another, as a poet, usually rendering a justified comparison to Dylan, Springsteen, and/or Cohen (just look here and here and here). Of course, Ryan is certainly not the first artist to sing about heartache and isolation, but he is one of the few who can do so in a way always manages to feel fresh and new and interesting. This is due in no small part to his eagerness to experiment with his Nashville-cultivated roots-rock sound, often infusing it with elements of new wave and dance music, as demonstrated on his twelfth and most recent album Dear Lover. He was kind enough to take some time out from touring in support of the album to talk briefly about its creation and about his musical career as a whole:

CB: Tell us a bit about Dear Lover. How would you describe it to your
listeners?

MR: Well, it was recorded at home for the most part, so it has an immediacy and intimacy about it. It’s a cinematic record, but not polished. I’ve often said I make music for humans, but that’s not to say it’s for everybody. Dear Lover is a very filmic record, it circles around a theme. It’s trying to define what holds love together, particularly in the modern context of speedy culture, war and economic uncertainty. You can’t remove the experience of an individual from the turmoils of the time they live in. Dear Lover is looking for a rock, a certain intimacy in cold times.

CB: You mentioned in an interview back in 2008 that your more recent work is much less cynical than that of May Day (his first album, released on A&M in 1996). Having just released a new album–making this number twelve, I believe?–is this still the case? What do you think accounts for this?

MR: I find my hope leans on the more elemental themes of living as I get older. Love, persistence, and optimism. Because contrary to what a lot of less dimensional marketing and entertainment tells us, life is a dynamic struggle. It’s beautiful and scary, it’s full of the sublime and the gutting. It’s just how it is. Tying myself to the more positive characters inside us keeps my hope intact. Darkness is seductive, and I write about darkness a lot. One has to acknowledge it, otherwise what I’ve said is pollyanna. Happiness is defined by your ability to honestly negotiate and come to terms with the harder parts of living. I’m looking for real happiness.

CB: Do you have a particular process or routine you use when crafting a song, or is it more organic, unpredictable? Was writing the songs for Dear Lover any different than writing for previous albums?

MR: Don’t take this as snide, but I don’t craft songs. I let songs come. It can get dangerously mystical talking about songwriting, but for me it’s a form of meditation. For Dear Lover though, the process was unique because 99% of what you hear was written on the mic. I recorded the music first, and sang the lyrics as they came. I believe it makes for a particular kind of conversation in music. I hope the listener agrees.

CB: Your songs—to me anyway—have a kind of literary sensibility to them, often in terms of narrative structure or the poeticism of your lyrics. You’ve made reference in other interviews some of your favorite writers, and you mentioned to me that you are much more of a writer than a talker. What is the relationship between your music and literature? Does one inform the other?

MR: I love art. Art inspires and converses with our humanity. So my influences tend to be everything from great films, to great writers and poets, painters, singers, photographers and speakers. I am what I eat guess.

CB: You’ve said that, in regard to song lyrics, the words should be personal without crossing the line into diary writing. I think it’s fair to say that there’s a lot of heartache and emotional chaos in your songs; the fact that you can render these things in such an original and stirring way is, I think, one of the things that makes your music meaningful for your listeners. How do you negotiate that line between autobiography and writing about, I guess you could say, the “concept” of love or romance or desire, etc.? Where or how do you draw that line?

MR: To write from a personal perspective about the universal experiences of being human is not diary writing. I guess the goal is to tell the truth as best you can. If you’ve done that people can generally see themselves in it. People are complex, feeling, seeing and hopeful things. Nobody wants conflict, yet conflict is everywhere. It’s in that space between what we are and how we come to terms with the perpetual motion of victories, peace, love, war, disappointment and loneliness where art is found. And that’s the space I’m writing about.

CB: Having come into your own in the Nashville scene and having worked with veterans like Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams, how much have these experiences influenced your songwriting sensibilities? Similarly, how have these sensibilities evolved over the years, and what do you think were the causes of this?

MR: Lucinda Williams and Steve Earle taught me that persistence, dignity, conviction and a cause greater than yourself are the nuts and bolts of being an artist. I’ve embraced that idea, and it’s all that motivates me.

CB: What is in your CD player/iPod/etc. right now?

MR: I still listen to albums separately as a piece. Glasvegas is my latest love as far as records go. Found them through a friend and real advocacy. That’s the way it s now. And I hope people find Dear Lover the same way. Like through interviews like this, Jeremy. Thank you for taking the time to ask me these questions.

(This last question I asked simply for my own curiosity without the intention of including it in the finalized interview, but the response seemed so pertinent to the site’s goals and the last line is just so badass that I went ahead and threw it in.)

CB: You were on track to become a school teacher before going into music, is that correct? I find this interesting because, as a teacher and musician myself, I have noticed a huge correlation between the two (everyone at Corduroy–I think there’s like 4 of us–is in some way a teacher and musician). For you, what is the connection between teaching and playing music?

MR: Teachers and artists want to contribute something useful to the world. I believe that’s the correlation. Art and education are essential tools in building the tomorrow we all suspect we’re capable of. Not that today is so horrible, but tomorrow can always be better.*

*For tour dates, videos, merchandise, and all manner of cool MR stuff, check out his website.*

Dear Lover: Matthew Ryan

by Jeremy Griffin

It seems fitting that I was introduced to Matthew Ryan’s music by the same dude who first got me into the Replacements years prior, not simply because of the influence that the Mats have had on Ryan—though I guess there’s that, too—but because both artists have, in a very similar fashion, fundamentally altered the way I think about music, what it can do. Much like the Replacements, Ryan is one of those few artists whose music actually does something to the listener. What I mean is, there’s a staggering earnestness that makes it feel important and real and that also makes it impossible to discuss without thinking about first kisses and missed opportunities and all of that gushy sentimental business that, whether we’d like to admit it or not, invariably make us who we are.

And that’s sort of what his latest album Dear Lover is all about, how all of that sob-inducing crap that makes romance such a fiasco is also precisely what also makes it worthwhile. These are love songs in the best sense of the term, meaning that they aren’t songs about what we think love should be like but what it is actually like, as exemplified in the title track, “Dear Lover”: I could be your superhero/ I could be your biggest disappointment…Most of us start out just thinking it’s east/ When the hardest thing you’ll do is remember how to smile, girl.

Over the course of his career, Ryan has increasingly sought to fuse elements of his original roots rock sound with the revamped eighties’ musical aesthetic employed by bands like the Killers and Bloc Party, the result of which has been/is a catalogue of songs whose dimensionality is so pronounced you want to put your fist through it. Dear Lover alternates between synth-heavy pop tunes and meditative acoustic ballads, though it’s the humid growl of fuzzed-out guitars the allows the songs to reach their critical mass, as in tracks like “The Wilderness,” “City Life,” and “We Are Snowmen,” whose resolutions culminate in the form of bright, shuddering crescendos.

Ultimately, it’s Ryan’s voice that gives the album its weight. To call his voice is gravelly would be a phenomenal understatement. Rather, he sounds like someone who’s spent the past three weeks straight screaming at the top of his lungs, pausing every so often for a shot of bourbon and a Pall Mall. And it works! This is because he’s not necessarily trying to channel any Dylanesque phantoms, like some of his contemporaries. With the blossoming indie-and-alt-country scene popping out droves of stylishly grizzled folk singers whose overly rehearsed rasps belie the fact that most of them have only recently completed puberty, it’s easy for the listener to lose the thread of authenticity. But the distinctiveness of Ryan’s voice, the combination of gruffness and fragility, simply underscores the often heart-rending honesty of his music.

I read a review of this album (actually, it was more of a review of a performance Ryan gave in Chicago during which he talked about the recording process of Dear Lover and played the album over the club stereo system) in which the writer suggested that the work of any musician was inherently honest, because, I guess, that’s just what musicians do, or something to that effect, and naturally I couldn’t help but roll my eyes; it seems to me that part of what makes albums like Dear Lover feel so gut-clenchingly sincere is the fact that so much stuff out there feels the exact opposite. And I’m not trying to make the case that “bad” music, such as it is, is intrinsically insincere (I’ve always hated that hipsterish notion that people who make “bad” music are somehow lying to me; I have no doubt that the dudes in Smashmouth really, truly believe they’re being “honest”). All I’m saying is that part of what makes Good music really matter is the feeling that the artist or whoever is handing you something valuable and authentic, that they’re telling you something you actually need to hear. It’s a tricky thing to pull off, but that’s how I feel when I listen to Dear Lover: that in some way I’m better off for it.