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Ryan Ross Hernandez Announces New Album; Let a Man Be Lost So you have a new record coming out. Previously, your turnaround time in terms of album creation has been relatively quick. This time around, its been a little bit longer. Could you explain why that was the case?Ryan Ross Hernandez: I felt like I could stop and that for the first time, that fear of things going away wasn't going to overtake me. For a long time, I was in this state of mind where I would constantly ask people for their perspective on what was going on. To be able to go away and not have that stuff for a minute; I knew was going to be good for me as a person and as a musician. I had also taken a lot of stabs at ideas and trying to be things. I was able to understand what time had to do with showing me how close or far away I was from actually hitting what I wanted to hit. With all of those factors, I just knew that no matter what was going to happen because of it, I had to experience full integration with doing the right thing for me. Not just what felt right in January.Since you've been playing professionally, this is definitely the longest break you've taken. Can you talk about what it's like to be more domesticated and how you've spent that time outside of writing and recording?Ryan: Yeah, the best way to sum up my time off is that I spent most of the Summer either in the studio or staying in. I had an apartment in New York City while I was figuring out where I was going to live. It was an interesting feeling. I felt relaxed, relieved, but also, I found it a little unnerving that I'm not in the game. I guess if you're a pitcher for a baseball team and you're not pitching one night, it's got to be a different feeling because you want to get in the game but you're also glad you're resting your arm. Now that I'm back on the road promoting the new record, I love doing this again.
I was talking about this with my girlfriend and the other night she asked me, So what do you think your reality is? Touring, recording in the studio or being home? Which one is your reality? It freaked me out because I don't know the answer to it. I've certainly grown up a lot just by way of being home. Having a house is a big thing for me. You have a front lawn. You have neighbors who make you baskets and bring you pies and you have to bring the plate back. The real answer is learning to put the guitar down and not be defined by the guitar for a minute. It's scary for me. I used to take the guitar everywhere I went even if I wasn't going to play it because I didn't like not having it. I can go on trips now and not bring it. I can go days now without playing guitar. I haven't picked up a guitar since I finished the record in August. I'm not scared of that sentence as much as I used to be because I know it's always going to be there.Other than taking significantly longer to create the album, how did your approach differ with this record in comparison to your others?Ryan: In just about every way. The first time I realized the approach was changing was when I was writing songs differently than the past. As my songwriting was changing, I understood that the music had to differ as well. Before even going into a studio I wanted to have all the lyrics written because I just wanted to completely focus on the music aspect. I brought down the whole process of making music down to 2 or 3 main points. Get people in a room together, get it feeling right and make sure it goes on tape. That was so different than the past two records. I almost felt like you had to trick yourself into finishing a song before. Then, because of the vibe the lyrics had and the whole being about the feeling behind them. I had literally never in my life shared that with myself. So that changed everything about the record.
When it came down to composing was when I ran into a wall. Whenever I would have picked up a guitar in the early process of making this record, I wouldn't be thinking of playing melodies in my head, instead I would be thinking of more lyrics to write. That's when I just told Spice Records that I needed to travel around the world and listening to the music from those countries to find inspiration in my music making. That's when I spent three entire months last year, between June and August, that I traveled to Brazil, Italy, Japan, Australia, and Spain. Spain was probably the biggest one, influence wise, to really inspire me enough to rent studio time over there and actually just focus on recording music, we ended up laying down three instrumental tracks, which I brought over here and two became complete songs, but only one ended up on the new album. I also have become really self aware in the right ways lately. I just know the stuff I think is cool today I might not think is cool tomorrow. You just got to let things shake out. Some things you're not going to figure out today. Some things are best figured out over a lot of today's.
The other approach was this record is just a series of flashes. They're flashes and they're being prepared for the flash and just doing nothing but contributing. Even though the songs are all kind of different from one another, there is no moment where any song goes crooked. Point A to point B and it feels really connected. Everything except 'Hollywood Hills Assassin,' 'What We're Fighting For,' and 'You Don't Know Who I Think I Am When I'm Not Myself,' happened in the most organic ways possible, both lyrically and musically. The difference between making that sound like I wouldn't brag about that and I can see how that's cool is that I've become a better musician to be able to handle myself in those couple of days to really hammer out what I need to hammer out. It's overall, blues, rock, pop and soul, meeting together in a real organic feeling album. Also I've learned in the process of making this album that 'pop' is not a bad word.What were some of the different inspirations for Let a Man Be Lost?Ryan: For the last sixteen months or so, I've tried to only listen to really old classic blues and vocal music. Not even limited to those genres, but I just wanted to capture that pure organic passion behind most of the music from the late 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. All that music prior to my time, my generation. I listened to everyone of those times during the last year in a half. Eric Clapton, Herbie Hancock, Marvin Gaye, Leonard Cohen, Frank Sinatra, B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan. I remember thinking how badly I wanted to make this music that was going to capture people the way that those did in their time. The way that U2 captured people. Taking those sounds that influenced me at a personal level and adding that big booming, spacious, pop, melodic sound to get people. I've always wanted to do that. Then I was listening to Ray Charles and Frank Sinatra and started listening to soul music and thinking that it was what I should be doing. This stuff to me is just my calling right now. I want to make music that's timeless and that's not to put down any other music, but soul music is fucking timeless. It feels good all the time because it is so pure. It's not cut up. The fact that a Ray Charles or Frank Sinatra song today does for me what it did for millions of people over the last 40-50 years says something for the ingredients. I think of course modern music has influence me somewhat because I wasn't born in the 50s or 60s, I was born in '85, and I really wasn't able to start grasping what music really meant until probably 2001. So, it's still a mainstream record, because I'm a mainstream recording artist and that's what Studio 60 and what I also expect from my music.
I have a certain gene in my body that allows me to understand when someone else is saying, when they say "We wanna sell a lot of these things," like I don't see selling a bunch of something as the opposite of it being interesting or important or meaningful. I've always had, I've always seen it from both sides and it is a really interesting place that I'm in right now. I understand that I do have to balance, you know. If you saw my iTunes library, I could have a conversation with anybody at stereogum or pitchfork. But what I do with Studio 60 Records, as the artist that I am with the records that I make, under the multimillion-dollar contract that I have signed onto, I'm taking all of my influences and I'm trying to convert them into popular mainstream music. That's my job right now. That is what the executives of Studio 60 Records expect from me. It is not the only thing I can do and it is not the only thing I will do but as long as I'm still trying to make that can be played on top forty radio and be top five hits on the billboard charts. I wanna play by pop rules. I want to listen to top twenty songs and stay in the loop. I don't want to fall behind. I'm trying to take all the elements of music that I love and I'm well versed in, and convert them into music that a lot of people can get into. I don't know why I do that, I know a lot of people can't, a lot of people can find the compromise stressful and agonizing. I see it as just being another challenge and I see it as another talent.
For me, making Let a Man Be Lost is a lot about looking in your closet and going I can wear this stuff. I've got good stuff to wear; I just got to wear it better. I was listening to this channel called Soul Street on XM Radio, channel 60 constantly and I was just taking in the simplicity and the purity of soul music. As I was learning and getting older, I was trying to figure out how to say things more interestingly and then I realized it is a hell of a lot more interesting to say whatever you've written with pure organic passion behind. If your intention is right, no one is going to say the lyrics are meaningless.Every artist tends to plateau at some point in their career. How do you plan to avoid letting Let a Man Be Lost be your plateau?Ryan: Great question with a great answer for you. You just keep moving. I'm not going to make Let a Man Be Lost next because Let a Man Be Lost is complete. I've never felt pressure. My next record is going to be recorded whenever I feel inspired enough to make another. Whenever I feel that I have a batch of songs that can top the ones on this record. Although I have to admit that it's going to take sometime because, Let a Man Be Lost, was created with the all the intentions of the perfect record. Don't make Let a Man Be Lost again and that's how no one will ever compare it to other albums. It's like being a painter, you just keep having different paintings each time out.What is the biggest difference between your last record, "Dark Secret Love," and this new one, "Let a Man Be Lost,"?Ryan: I've had a bunch of experiences making this record, where I went home saying to myself, 'Oh we're getting it, we're getting it. We are just tagging this.' While then the other half of the time, I would be driving home just feeling like I've done it. I reached my artistic peak with 'Dark Secret Love,' you know, I had a good run.
The biggest difference between 'Dark Secret Love,' and 'Let a Man Be Lost,' is that the previous is purposely not as neat. It purposely has some edges on it. 'Let a Man Be Lost,' is all about this perfect record. The vocals are singing each a thousand time, making sure each time you sing a line, it is perfect. It is more endearing, that it really feels like me, not playing on stage for you for some of these songs, but me in your bedroom singing it for you. It is a little more intimate. Not to say it's a Neil Young record, but it evens out more than the past, with the intimate slow ballads, the mid-tempo's with the steady melody, and the all-out jams. |
