Songwriter and artist Mike Ryan recently released his newest album, Longcut, and is about to make his Grand Ole Opry debut on November 8th. They both represent the culmination of an already fairly long road of assiduous songwriting, collaboration, live performance, and releasing singles and albums. Ryan’s versatility and openness to collaboration are already well-known but are particularly evident on this album where you’ll see many co-writes and also several songs written by other artists for the first time.
Recorded before the pandemic, Longcut is a project that Ryan also had time to continue to refine for the first time in his history of releasing music. Like many artists have found, that time was useful in crystallizing what he wanted to say on the record and how he wanted his music presented. That’s something that grew from live play experience with several of these songs, so you’re hearing more than just a studio version on Longcut, rather a culmination of work for each of these individual tracks. Ryan continues to lean into storytelling on these new songs, bringing in an added warmth and texture through detail, while allowing the audience to take part and bring their own associations into the mix. I spoke with Mike Ryan about playing his first arena show at a home stadium, looking forward to performing at the Grand Ole Opry, and how he approaches detailed songwriting.
Hannah Means-Shannon: I heard that you played your first arena show recently at a local venue, Globe Life Field.
Mike Ryan: We actually did that one with Morgan Wallen and Jake Worthington. That was a big night! It’s the first time that I’ve ever played in a stadium, but I’ve been to that stadium a bunch of times seeing Rangers games up there. The old stadium was right next door to it. Playing the home of the Rangers was a really big deal for me. I was super proud to be a part of that.
HMS: That must be a pretty crazy to be down near the ground in a stadium and be looking up for the first time.
MR: It was pretty amazing. The stage was set up in centerfield looking towards home plate, so seeing all the stands filled with people who would normally be watching baseball looking at me was pretty cool. It was a unique perspective for someone who’s been there so many times seeing it from a fan’s perspective.
HMS: Did you play songs from Longcut?
MR: It was a 45 minute set, so that was just enough for the hits, but we did “Die Runnin’” and “Longcut”. I didn’t want to overload the set since people hadn’t had a chance to listen yet. It felt good, though.
HMS: What can you share about the Grand Ole Opry performance coming up
MR: I’m bringing a couple of my band members with me. It depends on how many songs we’ll get to decide what we’ll be playing. I’m just looking forward to the whole deal and a bunch of my family are coming. Lots of people who I haven’t talked to in a long time are going to come and see me. It’s cool they are taking their time to see us under the big lights at the Opry.
HMS: That’s really sweet that people are coming out. Regarding this album, I get the general feeling that you spent a lot of time on it, and you didn’t rush yourselves when it came to each particular song. Is that true?
MR: Yes, that’s the main difference about this album compared to anything else I’ve done before. We had a pandemic to deal with. We were originally planning on putting out a project in 2020 and had to shelve it. We released several songs as singles but held off on the full project. Because of that, some of these songs have been recorded for a while and I’ve been able to spend some time with them. We’ve gone back and tweaked here and there and made changes. That’s something I’ve never really had a chance to do before. Every other time, as soon as it was done, we put it out. This time I was able to spend time and make sure that it what was what we wanted to do.
HMS: That’s a lot of patience. It’s kind of like buying your kids a bunch of Christmas presents and then not being able to give them the presents for a year or two.
MR: That’s actually a really good analogy! I feel like several of these songs have been written, and we’ve been playing them for years. We didn’t play them every show live, but there are a couple that I’m so pumped that they are finally going to be out. It’s a really exciting time. This album is definitely leading the charge on that.
HMS: From playing those songs, do you have a sense of the impact that they have on audiences?
MR: Even in a limited focus group of the people, these are songs they are getting excited about and moving around to the first time they are hearing them. Now everybody’s gonna get a chance to really listen and dive in. They can get familiar then come see us at a live show and sing along.
HMS: There’s also a lot of collaboration on the album, from song to song, with different people co-writing and contributing. When you were creating these songs, were you open to collaborating on each one, and then later started planning an album?
MR: Pretty much. I’ve been writing for ten or fifteen years now, so there was a bunch of stuff that I pulled from. There were lots of things that I’d written, but I was also able to collaborate on a bunch of stuff with other writers. With this album, in particular, we also got pitched a bunch of songs. With most of my releases before, I haven’t taken on too many outside songs because I had projects in mind with certain things I wanted to talk about on the record.
With this album, when we went back and looked, we saw these pitches and couldn’t believe what heaters they were. Some of these people are just fantastic writers. I feel really lucky to have the opportunity to record these songs, and it was even more fun in the studio to make these songs my own and put my spin on them. That was a really cool thing to do this time.
HMS: Were you looking for the ones that hit you emotionally and spoke to your life right now in order to make song choices?
MR: There were a couple things I was thinking of. On first listen, “Loser” was one where the demo version I’d heard was really stripped. The vocal sold it, and the song’s message is deep and is something that spoke to me. I played football in high school and I’d had those emotions, having my heart smashed into pieces a few times. That grabbed me instantly. Working in the studio, Bart [Butler] pulled this group of musicians together and I felt like his arrangement came up with a final version that blew me away as it was happening. Even though I didn’t write that song, I felt it fit right in with the things that I’ve done.
HMS: It’s great to hear your journey as a performer on these other songs, too. I heard that your vocal approach has changed a little between this album and your last one. Did that affect recording, or did it mainly affect live performance?
MR: It’s mainly a live thing, but I definitely used some of that knowledge in the studio. The main problem that I was having as we were playing was that we do 120 or so shows a year and it affected me. With my lifestyle at home, with a couple of kids, I haven’t been getting as much sleep, and that affects your ability to heal from working out. The main thing I was having a problem with was my stamina. I felt like I was running out of gas.
So I started seeing a vocal coach and it turns out that I wasn’t really warming up properly and there were a few things that I was doing lifestyle-wise, like late-night eating and drinking, that took a little bit of coaching. I made a few little changes, but it’s made a tremendous difference in what I can do and how long I can do. I don’t worry nearly as much as I used to. Now that I’ve taken control of it, it doesn’t seem to let me down as much.
HMS: A lot of people have been re-thinking health aspects of performance during the pandemic.
MR: I kind of thought that I needed to take better care of it, but you put one foot in front of the other. Sometimes if you don’t plan ahead, it doesn’t work out for you on the backend. That’s what I realized. I was going to have to make some changes, but it turns out that they weren’t as hard as I thought they’d be.
HMS: The title track, “Longcut”, also makes a great title for an album. It kind of goes in with what we were talking about, having a bit more time to look at things on the album. That goes with the idea of not racing to a conclusion.
MR: Exactly. That was the main reason that this song got the title track. I didn’t do it on purpose that way, but since we did take our time with this album, it made it that much more fitting. That song has always been a cool one and I’ve always appreciated backroads, and driving with the windows down, not being in a hurry to get somewhere.
There are some songs where you don’t get to talk about the backstory of the characters, but for this one, I like to think that this guy is a professional driver. He knows the best route to get anywhere in town. He can get there faster than anybody and that’s what he does. But as soon as he gets his girl with him, he realizes, “There’s no reason to go fast. Let’s slow down a little and appreciate the company.” I really like that song. As soon as I got the first mix back on that song, I was sure there was something about it. It feels like it’s going to move the needle for whatever reason. I’ve always had a little bubbly sensation about this song. [Laughs]
HMS: It has a definite heft to it and a substantial feeling to it. One of the reasons for that may be that you take the time to put in a lot of detail without overloading the song. This is not a sparse song. There are geographical references that makes the audience feel like they can be there in the song.
MR: It doesn’t work out this way in every song, but one of my approaches to writing songs is to try to put it in movie form. I try to describe a scene. You can’t get too hung up on it because then you lose too much of the song, but there are colorful things I try to use to put the listener in the position of the character in the song or make them feel it’s someone they know. Those things are interesting to me, even as a consumer, so when I go to write songs, I try to put in as much as I can.
HMS: Some songs take an opposite strategy to depersonalize things, and some of them do well, but I respond to a lot of detail, so I appreciate that you take that strategy. It’s the opposite of writing a machine-like song.
MR: I appreciate that and your appreciation for those type of songs. I don’t want to be too on the surface in songs, but I also have to be careful not to go too deep into things.
HMS: I think one of the songs that has a great balance is “All My Songs.” That feels personal and undoubtedly draws on your perspective in life, since it’s a songwriter, but it also includes a lot of imagery that people can relate to, like the newspaper, like the imagery of train tracks. Were you concerned to try to make sure it wasn’t too internal for audiences?
MR: This is one that I did with Jeb Gipson and Lynn Hutton, two of my favorite guys. Jeb came in with a groove, a rhythm of the guitar part that created the feeling of the song. He was frustrated with this idea of writing songs every day and realizing that everything that you do eventually starts to sound the same. I get that too, feeling that the songs that I’m coming up with are garbage and that I’ve been writing the same songs for a year.
We thought of a few different ideas for talking about that. We wanted to pull the curtain back a little bit and let the audience know, “We’re writing a song right now. We’re singing a song about writing a song.” This was letting people know what I’m feeling. In the chorus, the lines are all song titles, hypothetical titles. They all have the same kind of feel to them. I don’t think that this song sounds like anything I’ve done before, honestly. It has a different feel.
HMS: That just proves that you can fit an entire short story into a song if you really try. That’s a lot of data and information that you fitted into that song in the details.
MR: It really is! Songwriting can be so frustrating at times. Sometimes, you want to fit interesting details into a line that can only hold five words. You have four seconds and five words to provide some details, so make it interesting. Oh, and you have to make it rhyme also! [Laughs] It can be tricky at times, but we certainly enjoy it. When you stumble on a line that actually works, and other people get to be moved by something you wrote, you realize, “Wow, you feel the same way that I feel! We’re all doing this together.”
