Matthew Ryan's a keeper. He's the kind that one hopes will
be around to share his music for the long haul. Although it's seems like as the
years progress, sharing has hardly been a simple process for the Nashville
musician. Ryan's career began optimistically enough with he joined A&M
Records for his 1997 debut,
May Day, a scruffy rock 'n'
folk album that gave him a glimpse of the glow that is the mainstream via the
caustic, rocking, single, "Guilty." With
East Autumn
Grin, his follow-up in 2000, Ryan found his clearest artistic vision
-- a complete package that boasted song craft, emotional resonance, and
creative sonic textures. Think Dylan and/or Westerberg and/or Cohen and/or
Waits wrapped in a Lanois package. Not a bad place to be.
But by this time A&M -- since gobbled up in the
Universal Music mega-merger -- was no longer interested in his wares. Just like
that, his major-label career was over. Welcome to the club.
Since then, Ryan has tried to find his footing in the land
of indies. In 2001, he returned with
Concussion on the
dinky Waxy Silver Records. The release was a stark, acoustic affair, but one
that felt born as much from economic necessity as it was artistic exploration. And
last year, he joined Hybrid Recordings, the venture of former A&M honcho Al
Cafaro, for his latest
Regret Over The Wires . While the
new release hardly puts Ryan back in the big-time music-biz game -- Hybrid has to
prove itself as mush of a real playa -- the good news is, the artist never
sounded better.
Regret Over The Wires finds Ryan
recapturing the multi-hued sound of
East Autumn
Grin while
also wringing himself of every spec of emotion that had nearly drowned him in
the years since his fall from grace, from personal self-doubt and a seething view
of the corporate America's marginalization of all but the most wealthy of its
citizens, to the quest to find the light from the darkness.
It's a harrowing trip, indeed, one that constantly examines
one's own self-worth. But Ryan proves the kind of artist that can spread some
hope from his despair. "It's what I needed to do," he tells MoMZine
editor Neal Weiss. "I mean that in an emotional sense."
As he sings in "Little Things," "Songs are
souvenirs, for the peace that hasn't come, and if it never does, better still
that they be sung." As much as anything else,
Regret Over The
Wires serves as a powerful statement to the necessity of art,
especially music, as healer.
MoMZine: You said it was a record you had
to do. What did you feel you needed to get out?
RYAN: On so many levels this
album is about recognizing that life is not a walk through a pleasant,
sun-soaked park. Life is all things. Life is struggle, life is disappointment,
life is bittersweet, life ultimately is beautiful and you've got to make it
meaningful. It might just be the meaning within the conflict and the desire for
something better. By seeing beyond the darkness -- it sounds so dramatic -- but
I've finally sort of waken up and feel invigorated and hopeful and I wanted to
make as much beauty as I could.
MoMZine: Drama is good. No need for concerns
to the contrary.
RYAN: I'm completely aware that
my frame of mind now may be irrelevant in two years to where my head will be.
When you live with a certain self-awareness you know that a state is more often
than not some sort of transient experience, there's always a degree wanting to
be careful of your words because you can betray them. But at this point I just
wanted to reach for absolute beauty and I think that absolute beauty is the
only way to confront a culture and internal life that seems so vulgar and dark.
And in some ways, as I started to reach for that, it actually changed what my
experience was. Don't worry, I'm not a Scientologist or anything [laughs]. It
was a real self-examination. And I really believe that the more personal you
get the more universal you get. I don't think that wisdom in most cases is
something that you're born with, it's something that you earn. And I'm not
saying that I'm wise, I'm only saying that I've come to terms with some of the
conflict that I've endured and I can only hope and confide in those that would
share my point of view on it.
MoMZine: While one doesn't wish for one to
fall into dark places, is it fair to say that there's good in this in that the
album comes out of it?
RYAN: Absolutely. Nobody wants
to go through the horrible things that happen during living, whether it's the
loss of a parent or even worse -- gutted disillusionment -- these are the
things that can happen to you as you walk into adulthood and you start to
compare what you thought and what you're beginning to understand. I find this
record to be a point where I stepped off of the grass and onto the sidewalk,
you know what I mean? And I find myself just excited about the next record, and
singing these songs and knowing that if you don't hear the hope in these songs
then you're simply not listening.
MoMZine: The quote from "Little
Things," says "Songs are souvenirs, for the peace that hasn't come,
and if it never does, better still that they be sung." Fair to look at
that as a mission statement of sorts?
RYAN: Absolutely it is. Maybe
it's the Irish part of me who always sees the duality, but it's always the
notion of happiness that motivates. And if not happiness, at least
contentedness.
MoMZine: Would you consider this a happy
album?
RYAN: No, I wouldn't say that.
I would say that this is a record that's kinda like communication with the future,
saying, "Look I know you're gonna throw me some stuff that I'm not gonna
know how to handle. But I can tell you that I'm gonna handle it the best that I
can."
MoMZine: You get overtly political at times on
Regret…, including multiple references to the culture of
corporate decision-making. Is that new for you?
RYAN: No… I've always hinted at
it. Whether you're talking about Walt Whitman or Bob Dylan, there is a danger
in being overtly political. But I felt that I didn't care any more. Bob Dylan
is a monument. I have nothing but respect for him, but I can't allow somebody's
history to not give me the voice that I need to have. And these songs were all
through personal experience. There's no grandstanding. I think that they may
come across as more overt than previous efforts because I'm not pretending that
I'm not saying it. But these are all personal stories in the context of a
greater, more troubling reality that's going on in our country if not with the
worldwide economy and the exploitation going on in the rest of the world. The
distance between privilege and the working class is so exploited because the
people that are in power, from what I've seen and experienced, have no notion
of what it's like to lose your job, to lose your livelihood, to feel like
you're on the verge of losing anything that's meaningful. They really don't
seem to care. I mean, one of my favorite TV shows is
NOW,
on PBS, the Bill Moyer show, and it's just story after story of computer
programmer or consultant, one day being upper middle-class with a nice living,
supporting a family, and the next day being told you have two options, you can
either transfer the information that you have to our new office in India and
you can have your job for three more months, if not, we're letting you go
today. This is happening all the time… People are being exploited and their
lives are being crushed. And I don't think that the people of privilege and the
people of money and the people running these corporations, I don't think they
lose a fucking wink and it makes me sick.
MoMZine: These songs definitely resonate in
today's political climate.
RYAN: Well… I hope that these
songs become meaningful in some sort of communal sense. And I hope that they
become irrelevant. I hope that these songs become, "Well, remember back in
2003 when people were getting screwed like light bulbs?" But the truth is,
I felt that it needed to be said and I felt that through my experience I had
the right to talk about it. Some people may not think that it reflects on their
life but I would argue that would be untrue. I guess on some level you've got
to stand up at some point, particularly in such a strange time. And there seems
to be this almost numb indifference. I don't understand how you take the jobs
out of the country and expect to have consumers, unless they don't fucking
care. Unless they're counting on a world economy. Then who does that benefit?
That doesn't benefit us.
MoMZine: How much of this is rooted in your
experience with A&M Records, or would that be an
oversimplification?
RYAN: I don't think that it
would be an oversimplification. I think that with where I was raised, the
working-class unemployment I was raised in, my parents worked very hard and we
had a very nice row home outside of Philadelphia. When I got older they saved
money to send me to a private high school because the public school that was
available, it wasn't about education, it may as well have been some sort of
center for troubled teens. So my parents worked very hard. The point is that I
never felt immune to economic struggle. I saw how hard my parents worked. When
I was signed I was young, I certainly had my share of arrogance, I also had my
share of fear, and my share of existentialism. Not to make it into more that it
was but I had a great deal of conflict and a great deal of guilt about the fact
that my first record cost $300,000 to make and I knew what my folks were
making. I knew what the relationship was. And for some reason, at the time I
just thought, "Well, it's an economy just like any other and these people
have to make a living just like anybody else does, and I guess that's just the
way it spreads out." So in some strange way I felt like, the way I
justified it was, "I'm doing my part."
What amazed me about my experience with A&M was that I
never felt betrayed because I lost my contract and would never want to whine
about those things. But I think on some level I felt betrayed by my ambition
and my dream, which I think is understandable, but not unique to an artist. I
think that's a common experience whenever you go into anything, you take some
hits, you take some shots to the head, you know? But what really informed a lot
of where I was coming from -- I'll just make it broad -- was that it was
strictly business. There were things that happened, without getting specific,
there were loopholes in the contract so that they didn't have to follow through
on what their promises were, or that they followed through with the bare
minimum. But -- and this can come off as completely wrong, I'm aware of this --
I went for what was a good living and the feeling that you were making a living
from the work that you were doing, which I took a great amount of pride in, to
making $8000 the next year, because it benefited them to find a way to not make
it right. There was no concern whether I had kids or a mortgage. No concern. I
was completely disposable. Now, oddly enough, I'm watching my dad at the very
same time going through it with Scott Paper, which merged with Kimberly-Clark.
It was uncanny. Art, if anything, is riskier than working at a plant. So I'm
not saying that every artist deserves to make a living. Some people are barking
up the wrong tree. Of course I want to believe that I'm not. But there was a
strange continuity with what I saw my father going through and in some ways
just as sinister.
MoMZine: One of the good things about A&M,
on your second album you found a sound, which I believe you have returned to
here.
MoMZine: And the new record's a
continuation?
RYAN: Yeah. I grew up loving
polar music, polar as in the farthest points, for the Clash and Bob Dylan to
Roxy Music and the Blue Nile, and the Replacements. So to me, the challenge has
always been to find that space that was honoring it and not stealing from it so
that it wasn't schizophrenic. And it is a challenge. I think I came out with
the ability to write but I'm not Neil Young, I don't have a voice unlike any
other. So I know that there's some challenges there for me. I always feel like
I just missed. Always. You always feel like it could have been better, it could
have been closer. I understand what I'm drawing from but it's only out of
honoring something that is emotionally meaningful to me. I'm not a thief.
MoMZine: There is a sonic density to this
album.
RYAN: There's a lot more
science to this record. With
East Autumn Grin it was more
accidental. It was more like, "What would Phil Spector do?" Whereas,
with this I spent a lot of time with string arrangements and keyboard
arrangements. So I hope that it makes sense once you get inside. My hope is
that you go, "Oh wow, that's playing off of that."
MoMZine: At this point, are there conscious
attempts to avoid any sort of alt-country stigma? It's a label that seemed to
have wrongly followed you.
RYAN: If you use the word
"country," for most people, at best it means Alan Jackson, or, God
willing, Dwight Yoakam. At worst there's an endless list. I've never felt that
it was fair title for a lot of records. I've never embraced it. I think in some
ways it's just American music. But you have to keep in mind, we were listening
to the Replacements, the Clash, the Jesus & Mary Chain. I guess would just
hope that slowly but surely the records that I make start to make sense. I don't
know… I've resented it, not for any reason than I happen to live here and I see
the goofy billboards and just wondered… maybe I misunderstand the term. I just
hope people think of
