Written by Amy Wilson.
Texas isn't for cowards. Neither is it suited to musicians who cannot
hear equally well what big cities like Houston and small burgs like
Wink have to tell them. Singer-songwriter Ryan James hears all the
refrains and refines them to his purpose. He's got a way to fill a
bare-bones verse with a kind of deluxe longing that is plaintive and
respectful and pleading and pleasurable, all at the same time.
RYAN JAMES takes on traditional country strains but filters them through
the heart of a guy who realizes he isn't solving the world's problems
because it's hard enough to just talk about his own.
RYAN JAMES' story seeps through in his debut CD, Back to the Wind,
sung with a voice that bespeaks a little whiskey and a shot of slow-working
magic. "Home on the Range" is an ode to his father heroes. "Stay
With Me Awhile" was written for his beloved wife Lindsey for their
wedding day. "A Broken Heart" was poetry for a friend whose
wife had left him after only five months of marriage. "Home to
Texas" is simply a man hankering for the place that loves us best.
And "I Pray for You My Friend," which is always his closing
number whether playing honky-tonk or listening club, is a Texas hymn
written in a bluegrass key.
Back to the Wind, produced by the fresh wizards of Nashville, Walt
Wilkins and Tim Lorsch, is generating lots of spins and rave reviews.
A new favorite of radio disk jockeys, the single "How Long" spent
13 weeks among the much envied Top 15 of the Texas Music Charts. And "Goodbye
Carolina," the first track on "Back to the Wind" was
recently released as a single and is getting considerable air play.
Reared in Rosenberg, a stone's throw from Houston, Ryan had the advantage
of listening to Lyle Lovett early and knowing what real music sounds
like. Self-taught, Ryan took to the piano at four and kind of spread
out from there to drums and the guitar. By the time he was set to go
to college at Texas Tech, he was jazz scholarship material.
But college wasn't enough. So he wandered a bit only to find himself
sure of where he's home, sure of what he thinks and able to smite you
with a single lyric that will leave you alternately seduced and sentimental
and sorry you have to go home when it's over.
Homesick in North Carolina a few years ago, Ryan took himself to a
tattoo parlor and settled in for some self-inflicted pain. The next
day he had a six-inch wide Texas flag permanently affixed to his left
shoulder blade. It was not an effort to put Texas behind him. It was
meant to keep Texas, like a good angel, forever watching his back.
It also worked to keep Texas in the vicinity of his heart and dangerously
close to his voice which sometimes whispers in your ear, sometimes
tells it straight and sometimes cushions the blow. It's a voice you
want to listen to.
"I guess I don't think there are enough Texas songs," he
says, smiling. I'm working on changing that."
Somewhere back in Ryan James' family, there's some bluegrass, the
Kentucky kind, which probably explains his way with a simple song.
Somewhere, too, there's a Daddy who listened to Pink Floyd and a Mama
who listened to the Alan Parson's Project. There's a kid in Ryan who
still remembers the melody to his first church choir solo and who professes
to listening to even a bad album completely through once and something
like Buddy Miller, Jack Ingram, James Taylor, Haggard and Cash over
and over. "I draw from everything 've done and everybody I've
heard."
Maybe tha's why Nashville calls him "a little edgy." Maybe
it's also why he plays Americana even if he feels excommunicated by
it. "Kind of like when Johnny Cash covered Nine Inch Nails," he
says, "you can't be boxed in. I'd prefer if people called me 'country'
but if someone sticks a techno beat behind my tunes, I'm okay with
that."
That leaves Ryan a lot of room to appeal, inside the Lone Star's borders
- and out.
Photos of and by some friends:
'Gettin Close' video by Kevin in Houston, Tx:
'I Should've Broke Your Heart' (acoustic) - video by Kevin in New Braunfels, Tx: