Ray Wylie Hubbard once said that good poets didn’t have good childhoods. I’m sure that was a broad commentary on how adversity can be the inspiration an artist of any kind uses to shape their work. A brilliant case in point is the upcoming album from Minneapolis singer/songwriter Clayton Ryan, entitled Ghost Town. He took the combination of a futile attempt at becoming a Los Angeleno and a toxically ended relationship as the basis for a number of songs on the record.
The tunes range from melancholy country number, No Return To Sender, to a funky, 70’s Top 40 sounding Mountain Time. In between are a number of folk and roots styled cuts poking at his time in LA and concurrent break-up. You can just feel the catharsis happening as Ryan relates stories from that era of his life.
One of those, Wild Man, showcases Ryan’s honky-tonk piano chops as well as some B3 riffs. It’s a ballad suppressing a scream about how one’s self-image of being a party animal doesn’t reconcile with the dedication to a lover. Or maybe it’s a treatise on not living up to the perception that the partner was in love with. Either way it’s a powerful message about the mental reconciliation that has to happen in a good relationship. I’ll leave it up to the listener to decide which angle they hear in the song, which we’re thrilled to premiere. Here is Wild Man.
About the author: I've actually driven from Tehatchapee to Tonopah. And I've seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night.