Ryan Herrick has today released his new album titled ‘Watercolors’. I love it when an artist pairs their voice with a stripped-down accompaniment in such a way that it highlights the songwriting. This is a songwriter’s album from start to finish.
Multiple tunings and styles permeate ‘Watercolors’, giving a solid meaning to the album’s title. An almost mystic level soundscape that takes the listener on a solitary journey through lessons learned, love lost, and life lived, all in a span that is shorter than it seems. ‘Watercolors’ is an album to get lost in. Taking each piece of music and blurring the lines of the track changes into a lucid meld into the mind through one’s heart. This is sonic endearment.
About Ryan Herrick
Spiritual seeker and humanitarian, Ryan Herrick has sojourned guitar-in-hand from the mountains of Vermont to the foothills of Chicago’s skyscrapers and beyond. The guitar, his main accomplice, serves as the brush with which to paint his experiences as an inner journeyman, a wayward son who left home in search of himself.
His deep awareness of past life memories and ancient ways stokes the creative fires of his soul, inspiring him to express art through sound. Intricately weaving his passion for mysticism with musical improvisation, there is a deep meditative quality in his songwriting and compositions. Fusing music with his meditation work, Herrick released three concept-based acoustic guitar instrumental EPs: Of Land, Of Sea, and Sky throughout much of the early 2020s.
With Watercolors, Ryan teams up with Grammy-nominated producer Duane Lundy (Ringo Starr, The Lumineers/Daniel Rodriguez, Sturgill Simpson, Jim James, Ben Sollee) to create a sonic journey that bridges his work as an instrumental guitarist and singer-songwriter, with an album that features instrumental pieces as well as songs with lyrics. Artistically, he draws on his influences, from the late 1960s Laurel Canyon heavy-hitters such as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Joni Mitchell, and James Taylor to more contemporary artists such as the entrancing open-tuning fingerstyle guitar work of Michael Hedges, the oceanic slide guitar sounds of Daniel Lanois, and the indie folk sensibilities of Hozier.
“I wanted to make a record that could serve as a bridge between my work as an acoustic guitar player with a love for alternate tunings, an electric Weissenborn slide guitarist with an affinity for creating ambient soundscapes and textures, and a singer-songwriter with something to say,” Ryan notes. “Duane and I aligned early on through the pandemic with similar influences and a performance-based approach to recording. We decided to work together in creating an album that paints with all of the colors.”
The title track, Watercolors, is an overlay of three unedited stream-of-consciousness performances. Ryan’s fingerstyle acoustic guitar performance lays the bed of the song while the soaring and soulful pedal steel work of Lexington, KY-based J. Tom Hatnow floats along a river of sound.
“As an ‘album’ guy, I wanted to weave something together that flowed conceptually and sonically while providing a space where, as a listener, you could be transported to an introspective place for thirty minutes or so… a space and time where you can connect or feel something. In this day and age, our attention spans are so small, and it is getting more and more difficult to find space and depth in art in the way that the vinyl listening experience used to generate in the masses,” Ryan further adds.
LINKS:
http://ryanherrick.com
http://facebook.com/ryanherrickmusic
http://instagram.com/ryanherrickmusic