Matthew Ryan & the Problem with Pop
A dynamic young performer argues for greater relevance in modern songwriting
by Robert L. Doerschuk
October 3, 2000
As a songwriter and performer, Matthew Ryan is in, rather than of, Nashville. With the exception of Steve Earle and a handful of other individualists, the younger artists who live in Music City build their work like aluminum-sided boxes in a sea of cloned homes. They pursue style more than substance, never quite catching either.
This isn't Ryan's crowd, if he can be said to be part of any crowd at all. He's a loner, allied more to tradition than to those who pay it lip service. His songs have been compared to those of Bruce Springsteen, in their tumble of rustic images through hushed verses and up into soaring choruses. Ryan isn't comfortable with this association, nor with those that stand him alongside Steve Earle or John Mellencamp. At 29, with just two albums to his name, he is already his own man, with his own sound and story to tell.
Yet these artists, disparate as they are, share a dedication to write from the heart, and an awareness of the songwriter's obligation to his or her society. In spirit more than sound, all four drink from the well that nurtured the young Bob Dylan, and Woody Guthrie before him. Its waters draw from the deep reservoir of American folk music, and its voodoo, Ryan believes, can speak in the language of our time.
You can hear this all over East Autumn Grin, Ryan's latest album. Its songs express intimate issues -- love lost and won, loneliness -- through big musical gestures, with lots of room for fist-waving and shouting along. This collision of meditation and celebration produces the impression that we've all felt these things and will somehow help each other get through them again. It's a vaguely political spin -- which, of course, connects it to folk music in some essential way.
On this overcast afternoon, in a café half a block and more than a world away from the Sunset Grill, Nashville's air-kissing, shmoozed-out music biz Mecca, Ryan lit a cigarette and stared out at Hillsboro Road, looking for answers to the riddles that confront songwriters in the age of Spears and Aguilera.
'The best guitar players are self-taught, and the best writers are self-taught.'
Snapshots in a Rainstorm
You've lived in Nashville for about seven years. Have you picked up on the local tradition of writing songs with partners?
No, I think that writing should be a solitary experience. Some good things can happen sometimes if you have chemistry with people, or you're in a band with somebody. But just getting together with somebody? That's bad news. I mean, I've seen the sheets that come into the publishing companies, wanting this or that type of song. They always refer to a previous hit by somebody, and then people sit there and try to do it. There's a very important respect in Nashville for the ideal of songwriting; I just wish that it was expressed more in the music and the industry itself, and held more in regard, not just in some fake statement about the song but in some actual support.
Who is doing good work, despite this oppressive climate?
Joe Henry is making some great country records; Trampoline is a great country record. And that record that Emmylou Harris did with Daniel Lanois …
Wrecking Ball.
That should have dictated where country music went. They don't realize that country music can do that. Wrecking Ball sounds earthier to me than that fuckin' Clay Walker.
You could follow that complex Lanois approach, or you could take the bare-bones path that Rick Rubin used with Johnny Cash.
Oh, man, those Cash records were great. I love Johnny Cash's take on "Southern Accents" [from Unchained]. Like Tom Petty has said, it's the best Heartbreakers record. What an honor!
Is songwriting something you think about, or do you just do it?
I think I understand the craft of it, because I've listened to enough music. But I try to let it be as accidental an experience as possible, because that's the truest.
If you start reading books about how to do it, would that interrupt the process?
I think it would. The best guitar players are self-taught, and the best writers are self-taught. Listening to other people's records is a way of studying, but it's your own process. It's not like taking a lesson from a teacher.
As you listened to music as a kid, were you listening with the writing process in mind?
When you're a kid, you have a whole different expectation for music. One of my favorite records when I was really little was the Star Wars soundtrack, and that was a very different experience with music than what I got later. It probably wasn't until my mid-teens that I really started to listen. I was ten or eleven when … [Ryan abruptly stops and looks outside, where an unexpected rainstorm has suddenly begun flooding the streets.] Wow. We just missed that.
Let me stop you for a second. We're looking at people running for cover through rivulets washing down the street. The landscape has changed. As you're taking this in, does it somehow push a songwriting button in your imagination?
Yeah, actually. When I looked at this, I thought of a Blue Nile song called "Tinseltown is in the Rain." Immediately, you know? So that gets filed away, possibly. It's like a physical thing.
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