Matthew Ryan – HuffPost 5.21.10

Mike Ragogna: What’s your advice for new or up-and-coming artists that are trying to find their way?

Matthew Ryan: I’d say when you start out, you’re going to be naïve. And that’s beautiful. More than likely, you’re not going to be the exception, so you’re going to get challenged. That can be beautiful too. Then you’re going to have a choice. Give up or be brave. And you should be brave. That’s what I would say. Because that’s really the way it is, you know? You have to decide how much you really want it, ’cause it’s changed so much, and it ‘s going to continue to change. So hopefully what happens is the artists persevere

So my goal has been to acknowledge my influences and hopefully over time, create my own dialect. Early on, I was aware of where I was coming from. Maybe part of me felt bad about it. Maybe part of me felt like I was stealing. Maybe part of me felt like I wanted to make great music, but I didn’t feel like I was making great music yet. And so I think as far as whyDear Lover is on my own label? It’s because I believe that I’m getting better, ’cause I’ve been approached by several labels over the years, large and small, and it always comes down to the same thing: “Oh you sold less records than we thought.” You know, and the case for artist development kind of…

Mike: …fell by the wayside.

Matthew: So I became determined to do my own artist development.

Mike: Like Lucinda Williams.

Matthew: Yeah, yeah. And I’m not saying that I fully bloomed, but I believe that I’m starting to find my own language in this. Where that’s going to lead takes a lot of faith, and it takes a lot of heartbreak at times. I fail as often as I feel that I succeed, but I’m just trying to do the best work that I can do. And if I stop feeling that I’m getting better, then I won’t do it anymore. I’ll have to find something else. Because I couldn’t imagine being that frustrated, you know?

Mike: Is the art of making the record or the art of writing the song, or a combination most important to you?

Matthew: It really is all of it. Something very cool, lately I’ve been getting a lot of students and professors asking to feature my work in their literature classes and then asking me questions. I just had a student send me a bunch of questions for a thesis she’s working on about this very same kind of thing, and she asked the same question. It is the entire experience from birth to release, like allowing a song to leave the studio and kind of go have its life. You know, I feel a great amount of honor to be part of people’s lives like that. That you can be part of the cinema in each person’s life is complex, and all the things that we go through, and for somebody to say, “That song says exactly how I feel” or “That says exactly what that event meant to me.” You know, that’s powerful stuff. You know in some ways it’s like the process of writing for me can be a number of things. It can be frustrating. It can be beautiful. It can come quick. It can take forever. But the whole process, trying to nail it down, make the music feel like the lyrics sound.

Mike: With the way that culture has gone or is going, do you feel like there’s less and less opportunity for intelligent lyrics in pop music? What do you think has happened to pop culture as it relates to an artist’s work?

Matthew: First of all, as far as where a writer comes from and how a listener receives something, there is no such thing as chaos, Mike. There are only a limited number of things that happen in our lives. The names change and the scenery changes, but within what we experience as human beings, there’s really only a limited number of things that can happen. So when you tell the truth about these things that happen, or at least you try, you know, I mean that’s what the arts for. To try and be as honest as you can, more honest than a father can be to a son. More honest than a mother can be to a daughter. More honest than friends that say, “Yeah, that was beautiful.” “That was s**tty.” I don’t feel that I’m imposing my story on others.

What I’m really trying to do is try and communicate in what is an essential conflict, I think in being human, regardless of the time that we live in, you know? The big questions. The big challenges. I’m not trying to make my work more meaningful by talking like that. It’s just what I believe. Otherwise, I couldn’t say what I said if I thought it was a diary ’cause that’s ultimately, I think, useless stuff. I don’t like diary writing. But speaking my belief, without sounding like a curmudgeonly critic, I think what’s happened is what was once a passion for the arts has become entertainment, somewhere along the line, and no one person makes this decision.

It may be partly influenced by capitalism. So you start to shape it, I mean somebody like Lucinda is not going to give you want you want. Hopefully, she’s going to give you what you need. That’s the difference between art and entertainment. Entertainment gives you what you want. The arts give you what you need. Now whether you’re willing to receive that is a whole other issue. So I think we’ve reached a point where we like to think, we…I’m just going to say ‘I’…I used to think that culture was this weird constant. But it’s amorphous, and everything that we do creates reactions, you know? The way the marketing really took over in the eighties. Start with Christmas in the twenties, in the early last century, the way marketing just took over. It’s changed the way people perceived the world. So, in some ways, I look at it as though you have this constant need that you can’t define because you’re told that you want this. I think that the arts suffer under that. But because the arts still exist in the way that they do–and by nature it’s subversive–I think people will eventually respond and start looking beyond Justin Bieber. I’m sorry, I mean, I wish him all happiness in the world, but I’m just tired of, you know…what is he,12?

Mike: The marketing of a product. American Idol and Disney do the same thing. Miley Cyrus. She’s talented, but does she deserve a kind of Madonna status?

Matthew: That’s a whole other issue, man. They way that they market the children as adults in this country, we should be ashamed of ourselves because marketers know what they’re doing. They’re playing on the guilt money. You have children, and you’re working your ass off, and you’re doing everything you can to keep a decent roof in a decent school district, and God willing, you can afford private schools… you don’t have the time to be a father or a mother. So what do you do? You buy them things. So what do marketers do? They target you for guilt money. They target the kids. And then the kids get it from you.

Remember that orca whale that killed the trainer? You hear all these people trying to say why the orca did it. It was against his nature to be an aquarium for 15 years or however long it was. The great irony is that we create an aquarium around us where there is all this frustration that we can’t define because we’re not living within our nature. I’m not saying l want to live and eat berries out in the forrest, but we’ve created a lot of invisible masters that we’re serving, and I think there’s a step back where we can still be modern, and we can have these things. But we’re not the proverbial rat in a maze.

Mike: There was an outcry to kill the orca. It made it more valuable.

Matthew: My guess, it was an accident. But that’s neither here nor there. I feel horrible for the woman. I don’t mean to use her as some innocent bystander in my metaphor you know. But it’s what we do. It’s like we consume, we consume, we consume, but we don’t really digest.

Mike: Then, if the arts are going to survive, who do you think are the patrons of the arts that are going to get us through?

Matthew: It’s a responsibility of artists and listeners. With the way that corporations are dissolving…I think what’s going to happen, ultimately, is that our lives are going to get more centralized, more localized, but our commerce is going to go worldwide. Because you can basically get anything in a heartbeat, but all your essential needs will happen in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, Nashville, Tennessee. Everything else will operate worldwide, which will make for an interesting economy. We haven’t adjusted yet, particularly here in the States.