BART RYAN - Key Persons

Bart Ryan is an LA-born/Nashville-based session guitarist and award-winning singer-songwriter who's honed his performance chops across the U.S., Europe, and Japan. His experiences inform Starlight and Tall Tales, an ambitious album that moves confidently from soul-infused power to stark intimacy, unified by Ryan's gritty vocals and soaring guitar and lap steel. You'll certainly hear twangy and bluesy songs that showcase his fierce riffs and solos, but Ryan prefers to describe his fifth full solo album as "stories told over a bottle of wine under the stars." "I feel like this is a pretty intimate album," he says. Starlight and Tall Tales opens gloriously with two horn-driven R&B songs, "Wanna Be," and "I'd Be a Fool," which were inspired by "Stevie Wonder, James Brown, and a complicated love life." On "Evil," Ryan offers his thoughts on the current political leadership, while "Nobody" reflects upon a particularly rough patch in his life: "I had a couple of people in my corner," he says, "and I wanted to write about that feeling of being connected to something when it gets bad." For Ryan, who also has produced music for movies like the Oscar-winner The Descendants, writing songs is about a great story, groove, dynamics, and a good lyrical twist. "I always loved the fire and melancholy of the blues, but didn't want to get stuck with simplistic songwriting," he says. "I spent a lot of time studying poets and lyricists, like Emily Dickinson, Tom Waits, Paul Simon, and Chrissie Hynde. And even if I can't sing like Jeff Buckley, I can try to be as honest."