Ryan David Orr’s upcoming album, Kaden Hollow, is a concept album based around characters who live and interact with each other in a small rural are of Tennessee.
In this interview spotlight, I chat with Ryan about the album, its inspiration, his challenges, technology and more.
Full Q&A along with links and music below.
Where are you from and what style of music do you create? (In your own words, not necessarily in marketing terms or by popular genre classifications.)
I am originally from Oregon, but I reside in the mountains of Arizona. The type of music I create varies from album to album. I generally say something like “indie-folk” or “indie-rock”, or something that begins in “indie” simply because I identify with the independent approach to artistic projects. When I first called what I was doing “indie”, it wasn’t cool yet to be indie. It just meant you didn’t have any labels or representation. That was around the year 2000. It has since become more of a hip thing to be, and is even associated with a specific sound and genre. I still sort of generally mean that I am independent when I use the term. To me, independent music is just music that doesn’t have to follow the prescribed rules of songwriting in a certain genre, or tailor its production to be easily digested by the masses. So I tend to write things in the folk/rock/alt-country genres, but I also dabble in electronica, hard rock, and hip-hop. My most recent work is mainly in the folk/alt-country/Americana realm.
What led you down this path of music and what motivates you to keep going?
I had very artistic parents. My mother was a singer-songwriter and my father was a photographer and painter. My passions have always been in the arts. I started out in music playing violin and singing in choirs when I was 7 or 8 years old. Because my parents had an affinity for the arts, there was always good art and music around. By the time I was 13 or 14, I decided I wanted to create original music and I started writing songs and focusing on guitar. I think I dreamed of being a big rock star, just like most teenagers with instruments, but I was always creating the songs for the sake of being art that I loved to hear. I wanted to make things that hadn’t already happened. So as time went on and I didn’t get signed by any major labels, I still passionately wrote and performed songs because I was in it for the creative work. Honestly, it can be hard to stay motivated. It takes a lot of work, time, money, and energy to be an independent artist. If you don’t have the million-dollar marketing budgets that many artists are promoted with, there are a lot more obstacles. If you are passionate and proactive about your art, it is not difficult to create and write records, the hard part is getting people to hear them in a world full of so much static and media overload; people don’t often take the time to hear things if those things aren’t flashing across a screen fifty times a day. What motivates me, beside my love of creating art, are those moments when someone is really moved by my music, or someone truly appreciates my lyrics or compositions.
I’m a fan of concept albums. Can you explain the story behind your new record? What inspired this idea?
I am a fan of concept albums, too. This record came together after a number of years writing and exploring the concept. These songs actually coincide with a novel I have been working on about the characters in a small, rural Tennessee town. the writing process has been slow because I keep re-writing the novel. I tried writing it as a screenplay, then as a series of short stories, then in first-person, then blah blah blah. I just keep starting over. The last time I re-wrote it, I was about 45,000 words in when I quit it and started over. Anyway, the characters in this town cross each other’s paths and affect each other in various ways. When I was 13, my mother moved us to rural middle Tennessee to be closer to Nashville as a singer-songwriter. I had grown up in Oregon and California, so the move to the south was a major culture shock. But there was something magical and mysterious about the south, too. Lots of history with roots that sometimes crawled back to Europe and Africa and South America. Lots of religion and superstition, belief in things that are outside the realm of physical reality. On top of that, moving to the south for the purposes of being close to the music scene was very informative for me as a musical artist. From a young age, I loved literature and poetry, and there was so much of that on the east coast and in the south. The concept of this album for me has a lot to do with that magic and history. It also has to do with lore and storytelling, and deals with a sad nostalgia that those things leave us with. The characters these songs are about have connections to each other and have a very unique dynamic in how their lives intersect and alter one another.
Name one or two challenges you face as an indie musician in this oversaturated, digital music age? How has technology helped you (since we know it does help)?
I mentioned this in an earlier question, but one of the main obstacles as an independent is getting people to hear my creations. Not to toot my own horn, but in many cases I find that people who take the time to really listen to my music end up appreciating it. But people are bombarded with media, ads, tech stimulation, outside distractions, etc., and it’s often too much to ask to have them pause for a moment, breathe, and really listen. Generally, in the current “music industry”, whoever has the most money devoted to marketing has the most listeners or followers, and it really has nothing to do with the quality or integrity of the art. So that can be frustrating and a little disheartening at times. I think also that, demographically, much of the audience for folk/Americana/alt-country music doesn’t spend a lot of time on social media platforms, so the very viable marketing opportunities that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Soundcloud, etc. provide are sometimes moot for that population segment. And that makes sense: people who opt for the acoustic/organic/heart based works of art don’t spend a lot of time in front of screens. On the flip side, technology has also allowed indies the opportunity to create from home. I recorded my first album, Bagdaddio, on a stripped down version of Cakewalk home studio in 2001 with one SM48 microphone. I thought that was great then, but that’s nothing compared to the setup I have now, and the setups that many musicians have been able to build in their homes. The simple, affordable chance to create our own studios, paired with a world of online presentation platforms, makes for a complete paradigm shift in music as an art form.
What was the last song you listened to?
It was either “Empty-handed” the latest single from the British electro-pop band Empathy Test, or something from the new album by The National.
Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?
Vinyl is my favorite. I began collecting records in the 90s when I was about 15. I like how involved the vinyl process is: the record is huge as an object and has to be taken care of, you have to flip it half way through, the artwork is large and there is often a lot to see. To listen to vinyl really requires that you spend time with the medium. My new album is being printed on 180g vinyl for this very reason. It’s mostly for me, but some people out there will appreciate that.
How about this one…. Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?
I don’t have a major preference here, but out of convenience I end up listening on Bandcamp, Spotify, and ReverbNation the most, if I’m listening online. My music is on all of those, and other platforms as well. A lot of musicians get mad at Spotify for making music virtually free and paying musicians a fraction of a cent per play. But really, it’s not the streaming platforms that musicians or artists should be upset with, it’s the listeners. It’s like large chain retail stores putting small, local stores out of business: consumers are often willing to sacrifice supporting culture for getting things free or cheap, never mind the hundreds of hours of writing, performing, recording, and producing, and huge amounts of money that artists put into their work. It truly makes a difference when people buy the artists’ wares, but as long as it’s there anyway, Spotify is pretty convenient.
Where is the best place to connect with you online and discover more music?
The best spot to connect is at www.ryandavidorr.com. You can sign up for the email newsletter there and get more info about me and my music. The “blog” page of my site has lyrics and explanations of songs. I also have a Patreon page that is pretty new and I will be putting a lot of my efforts into focusing on that page and my website for future releases and activity. There are links to that on my website as well. You can also find me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Soundcloud, YouTube, and most other social spots.
Anything else before we sign off?
It’s an odd time we live in; lots of disconnection and struggle, some greed, some fear. I think it’s important to find the parts of the world, nature, the arts, music, each other, that we find beautiful, and lift those things up. Maybe we’ll see each other out there in it sometime.
