Twenty-Six

If I stood still, the Earth would still turn…

Yesterday was my twenty-sixth birthday. While it was the first time I’ve turned 26, I seemed to manage it alright without any prior experience. I slept in for the first time in a long time, and spent the rest of my day with family.

I’m now as old as my father was when I was born, making me half his age. I’m twice the age that I was when I moved to Tennessee, meaning I’ve spent half my life here. And when I started recording my album, I was twenty-four.

Two-thousand Twelve was a year filled with distractions. Having a full time job and recording a solo project seemed like no big deal until I tried to do it. Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months as I tried to balance two separate lives, be two separate people. Words like perseverance and stamina could have easily been overtaken by despair and self-loathing.

But they weren’t, and neither was I. One of my favorite sayings is “Know Thyself,” and I’ve found a deeper meaning of this to by “Love Thyself.” To know that you are who you are, that who you are is good enough, and to give it all you’ve got. Or, as the lyrics of my friend Banks Nelson would say, “you only have so much to give, and what you gave was good.”

So strange, the path a journey takes. So often when I’m writing a song, it isn’t until I have it finished that I can look at it and understand myself, understand how I feel. It’s very therapeutic and revealing. I had no idea that making this album would do the same thing, on such a grander scale. Thirteen songs of revelations, thirteen songs of self-discovery.

And here I am. 26 years in the making, with no regrets of the past, knowing that the better is very close, and the best is yet to come.

 

Making The Most Of It

Everywhere you look, there is something to see…

I’m in the middle of a stretch at work that has me there for two weeks without a day off. I’m quite grateful for the overtime, actually, and while I wish I were sitting on my bed and playing my guitar, there is still a lot that I can do for the album even now.

I’ve been listening to as much music as I possibly can for days. Lyle Lovett, Franky Perez, John Mayer. Anything I can get my hands on (ears on?). I’m listening to the scratchy way Lyle approaches the vocals on I Will Rise Up, and the way the telecasters chunk on Franky’s Cecilia. With these sounds in my ears, I’m seventeen again, a kid in a musical candy store soaking in the sweets of the song.

It’s reasons like this why I love music. Even when I can’t get my hands around the guitar, I’m growing. Any one who is great at something got to be that way by treating their craft as a lifestyle and not as something to be checked off. It’s like working out only on the days you are going to be at the beach – you’re not going to get the results you want. And, while I feel myself slipping when I can’t just spend the whole day playing, hearing these songs throughout the day is like sitting in a lecture hall with a great professor. All I have to do is listen, and I learn.

I suppose what I’m trying to get at is the idea of making the most of a situation. We all have dreams, we would all rather be doing more of one thing and less of another. Fortunately, the world isn’t always black and white. It isn’t all or nothing. I’m just trying to appreciate the time that I do have, and take advantage of it. If I can live these dreams a little bit everyday, I’ll have done a whole lot of dreaming by the end.

 

In the Middle

I am like a tree who has grown tall, but I am not the earth.

I’ve been experimenting with reverb and compression on a Cello track tonight. As if I could make an instrument that is so beautiful into something even better. No, what I’m really trying to do is to fit it inside a small box with a lot of other instruments. I’m trying to make an orchestra fit in my car, fit in someone’s iPod.

My coffee keeps getting cold, and I keep putting it in the microwave. I’m not ready to finish it. I just want to sip on it a little while longer. So many things are in front of me, and I’m trying to control them all. Sometimes, it’s best to know when to let something happen, and stop trying to make it.

We’re so close. So close. But this album won’t finish itself. There is work to do, and my supporters from Rockethub are awaiting the things that I have promised them. Oh, if only they could be in this room and hear what I hear coming out of these two speakers. I remember seeing in a documentary about Sgt. Pepper that the press had begun to think that The Beatles were done, it had been too long since an album had been released, that one wasn’t ever going to come. Paul said just you wait, just you wait and see what we have in store for you!

Of course, I am not Paul McCartney. I have no expectation of my album changing the world. One thing I do know, however, is that I’m in the middle of the greatest thing I have ever done as a musician, and for that I am so very excited. So grateful. So humbled.

Thank you God for giving me this opportunity. Thank you Rockethub supporters, thank you fellow musicians. You have given me a great gift with this project, and I can’t wait to share it with you in just a few short months!

 

Fueled

I reached the plateau and felt a gentle, momentary peace. Then, with the deepest of breaths, I looked up to survey the climb that was to come.

Yesterday was a good day. I went in to work, like any other day, and stood at the service counter of the Nashville Mac Authority. In the dead spells, when all of my work is caught up and no customers are waiting in line, I have time to check my email and wander the wonderous world wide web.

In the morning, I got my first bit of good news. My Rockethub project, the way we’ve found to finance my first solo album, had notified me that my account had been fueled. I checked the link, and my good friend Jordan Bennett and his wife Jessica had put in some money for me. They weren’t the only ones, either! Deanie Mullins, a woman I met in Arkansas on a gig with country artist Royal Wade Kimes, had also made a contribution.

At this point in the day, I was getting quite excited! We are so close, we’re going to make our goal! 

After a short while, I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket. A quick glance – it was my cousin Joel. I’ll call him back on my lunch break. When is my lunch break? What is that scent coming from the other room… chicken? Fries? God, I’m getting hungry…

Quickly, another thought came into my head. Joel and I are notorious for our phone tagging skills (cause that’s how we roll, dawg), and having been at his wedding a mere month ago, it seemed odd that he’d be calling me now. Following my suspicions, I checked on the status of my Rockethub campaign.

103% fueled.

Standing there, at the service counter at work, I put my hands on my head and allowed myself to be overwhelmed. So many feelings ran through my tiny brain…. relief, excitement, gratitude, hunger… well, maybe the hunger was still in my stomach, that’s up for debate among top men. Top    Men.

After a few phone calls, text messages, and chicken sandwiches, I began to think about how when one chapter ends, another begins. The fundraising campaign may have come to a close, but its purpose was to charge me with adventure.

Now begins the real work, the work of making an album. The work of defining myself as a new artist.

I feel like I’ve been waiting for this my whole life, I feel ready. The kicker is, because of this successful Rockethub Campaign, because of the generosity of my friends and family and the grace of God, I know that I have the strength and support to do it.

Stay tuned for updates as the album unfolds! Our first official day of tracking is November 19th.

 

Valience Music in the Pulse

Hey everyone! I promise I will post a real and complete blog soon. In the meantime, check out the article on Valience Music that was in the Murfreesboro Pulse!

 

http://boropulse.com/2011/10/talkin-about-connections-valience-music/

 

An Interview with Rocket Hub

Hey everyone! As you probably know, I’m doing a crowfunding campaign through Rocket Hub and they’ve recently given me an interview. You can check it out here: http://blog.rockethub.com/tennessee-talent-ryan-crowley-makes-a-record

Thanks for reading, and feel free to share the link!

 

What’s in a Les Paul?

For a guitar player, the instrument isn’t just a tool, it’s a part of you.

Some players call on their guitar like an old lover, whispering gently with their fingers into the fretboard, and to that I can certainly relate. Still, it’s more than that. The guitar is my right hand and my left, I would be lost without it.

I think that getting a new guitar is like going to the gym. All of a sudden, there’s this new muscle that you’ve never quite used before, and even if you don’t know what you’re going to use it for, you feel limitless in your new possibilities.

For those very reasons, I dreamed of owning a Les Paul. My Dad has a 1982 Standard, though there’s nothing standard about it. The pickups are customized, knobs originals. Even the bone nut was changed out for brass, which in Spinal Tap language, made it famous for it’s sustain. There was a music store in Maine, “Marty’s Music,” that my school bus would pass by everyday. I would sit, nosed pressed against the bus glass, just drooling over the Paul in the display window, knowing that someday, “It will be mine!”

Two years. Two years of saving every penny I found, every lawn I mowed, every Christmas card and birthday card. I wish I was that good with money now, where did I lose focus? At any rate, the day came. It was around my 15th birthday, and Dad took me out to every music store in town, looking for the perfect one. “I want a Black Custom, but I don’t want gold hardware. Do they make the customs with Chrome?” Dad said they were rare, but not impossible to find. He then convinced me that the color wasn’t nearly as important as the guitar, but I was DETERMINED that I could have my cake and eat it too.

We played one guitar after another, and were so disappointed! None of them matched up to Dad’s, which besides being a great guitar, was Excalibur in my young mind. Towards the end of the day, we strolled into Rock Block in Nashville. Two steps in the door and I saw it. Black Les Paul Custom. Chrome Hardware. I literally gasped, something people rarely do in the real world, and Dad made a cue for me to keep my cool.

It was like butter in my hands, smooth and wonderful. I couldn’t believe it, after playing every guitar in town, I had found it. I had found it, and I couldn’t afford it.

Being a consignment instrument, the store couldn’t budge on the price without the approval of the instrument’s owner. He wanted fifteen hundred, and I only had twelve. Now, here’s the part that nearly killed me: Dad said we were leaving without it. We did.

I was terrified. What if someone buys it before we go back? What if I never find another guitar in the world that I like this much? 

We went back the next weekend, and still no budge on the price. We left the store empty-handed again. Devastation doubled? You better believe.

Week three comes around, and we make one more effort to get the guitar. My Dad tells the clerk Chris (who was really fighting for me to get this guitar, actually), “We’ve been coming back once a week to check on this guitar, and I got a feeling we’re the only bite. Call the owner and tell him we have $1200. We’re either leaving with the money or the guitar, but we won’t be coming back.”

That phone call lasted minutes. Hours. Years as far as I was concerned, and finally Chris came around the corner with a grim look on his face. My heart stopped. I waited.

Finally, he said, “Well…. I’ve talked him down to twelve-fifty, but he says that’s the lowest he can go.”

My Dad looked at me and said, “We’ll take it.” WOO HOO!!! I felt like doing five hundred cartwheels. It’s happening… it’s for real…

I propped the case up on my bookshelf that night, and every few minutes I would wake up and see that Gibson logo staring back at me. It’s amazing, for a guitar that was made in 1980, it didn’t have a scratch on it. Now, there are wear marks all along the back of the neck, especially around the fifth fret (We did a lot of tunes in A…). I love the wear marks. I sat in on a session in Nashville a few years back, and when the musicians took their lunch break, the guitar player let me play through his gear. He had a cherry sunburst Paul, and the finish was gone entirely from the back of the neck. I remember smiling, thinking that someday my guitar will look just like this. Progress, that’s what that is.