Chapter 5 Mari #2
“And more.” She had the faintest smile on her face when she said it.
That was Ryan—she always had me on my toes. She was earnest and self-deprecating at the same time, serious and focused and laid-back all at once. Sometimes I thought I knew what she was thinking, and then something entirely different would come out of her mouth.
I don’t . . . I don’t mean to talk about her in the past tense so much. I know why you’re here, and I wish I could help. But all I can do is tell you about the Ryan I knew and the career she had up until the end.
Ron Sanchez, Ryan’s classmate in Austin, Texas
Yep, I went to school with Ryan Holding.
We were lab partners. Even if it was only for the better part of a year, that’ll be my claim to fame until I die.
I bring it up at parties. The farther from Austin I am, the more of a reaction it gets—she ended up having a lot of random connections with people around here.
My sister-in-law’s dad was the one who rented Ryan’s parents their town house.
I think my connection is better, though. I got to actually know her.
I mean, sort of. She was real sweet even if she wasn’t around a lot.
Not the type of person you’d think would end up a billionaire.
But she did keep to herself. I always felt like I was the one doing all the talking—rambling on about some stupid sketch I saw on Saturday Night Live, describing what I had for lunch, reading off the lab instructions to her.
It was about halfway through the semester that I realized she was asking me a lot of questions and not really answering many of her own.
Like, I knew she was kind of a different duck.
We all did. A lot of people around school had parents and family that worked in the Austin music scene, but no one was actually building a career in it—especially not freshmen.
But Ryan was in and out of class a lot, and constantly did makeup work, so it was pretty obvious she was up to something.
It made for a little bit of bullying, nothing major.
One kid, David Zaminski, would sort of holler at her when she came in late to her locker—Did Ryan have a special appointment again?
Wow, so nice of you to join us, Ryan!—but for the most part, she was left alone because people didn’t see much of her.
The general story was that she was working as a backup singer on a Kidz Bop CD or something.
No one guessed that she was producing her own album, even though she was constantly scribbling in this little notebook she carried around.
David tried to grab it from her once, but she swung her backpack around so quickly that she knocked it out of his hands and ran away. I was pretty impressed.
So I asked her at lab, “What’s in that notebook you carry?”
“Just stuff.” She shrugged.
“Is it poetry?” I said.
“Sort of.”
“What do you like to do in your free time?” I kept going and dared to broach the subject. “When you’re not doing music or school stuff? What do you like?”
She glanced at me and then looked back down at our pipettes. She said, “I don’t really have free time.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “There’s gotta be something.”
She smiled. “I always thought Mario Kart would be fun.”
I was blown away. “You’ve never played Mario Kart?” When she shook her head, I said, “You’d love it. You can come over and play sometime if you want. I just got Grand Theft Auto for Christmas, too, and it’s next level.”
“That sounds cool,” she said. “I’d do that.”
It never happened, of course. She got busy again, and I brought it up once or twice, but nothing ever came of it.
That’s okay. She was still a nice person.
Skip
One thing I do wish I’d pushed harder for in those days was to have Ryan spend more time with people her own age.
We got into a routine: She got out of school at 2:45 p.m., and on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, she’d come to the studio to work until six.
I don’t know what she did most Tuesdays, Thursdays, or weekends, but judging by the pace she was cranking out songs, it was probably just more of the same.
I did tell Barb, hey, make sure she takes time off to live her life a little, yeah?
I didn’t know when Eastside held their prom, but it seemed like something she should go to—and I think she did.
I want to say I remember her writing something about it for “Eastside Blues.” Not the happiest song, so I’m not really sure what transpired, but still.
My ask wasn’t completely altruistic. You’ve got to build up real-life experiences in order to write songs about them, and I didn’t want her to be drafting lyrics as a total shut-in.
I think, though, that Ryan was reluctant to really get close to any of those other kids. She was already set apart, kind of going through school with one foot in the classroom and the other in the studio. If I was less generous, I’d say it almost gave her a kind of martyr complex.
“These kids aren’t going where I’m going,” Ryan told me once. “They don’t understand what I’m trying to do. That’s okay; they can live their normal life, and I’ll live mine.”
I had to hide my smile. It was such an angsty thing for this bright-eyed kid to say. “You don’t think you can live a normal life?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “I don’t want to.”
Ryan didn’t know just what the future held or how long she’d be at Eastside—which proved to be a fair concern, since Barb started talking about homeschooling near the end of that first year. Ryan’s schedule just needed to be more flexible than it was, especially once we started booking shows.
But it was worth it. I could tell. Ryan worked with one of the best songwriters that Andre and I had been able to poach from our old labels, Jas Jeon—or Jasmine, I should say for the official record, but I’ve only ever called her Jas or JJ—and they just refined, refined, refined together.
Jasmine Jeon, songwriter, Madcap Records
Ryan was such as sweetheart. I shouldn’t say “was,” but, well . . . it’s been a long time since any of us have seen her.
I loved working with her. I’ve written for Nickel Creek, Miranda Lambert, Darius Rucker, but honestly—Ryan was my favorite. I’ve never been able to work so closely or have as long of a tenure with any other artist.
We got a pretty good thing going, where she always had the reins and I was there to step in when she needed help.
Her understanding of songwriting back then was simple but solid.
We did a little bit of homework together; I had Ryan bring me in the lyrics of five songs she really admired.
Not just liked for their sound, but for their words and message—the kind she wanted to emulate—and we studied them together, really picked them apart and questioned why they were structured the way they were.
She had a great knack for slant rhymes. I cowrote six of the ten tracks on her debut album, but my favorite line in all of them was hers: And I believe you loved me, yes / But you don’t know what love is yet.
That’s from “Eastside Blues.” But she knew when to come in with those satisfying perfect rhymes, too, like with “Shoes on the Dash”—He’s got gospel on the radio / I’ve got my sneakers on the dash / We’re runnin’ on a gasoline dream / And a shoebox full of cash.
Just a lot of fun, unpredictable, fresh lines.
Ryan drew from a deep well of ideas. She’d come in with ten different hooks already in her head, and we’d riff on the banjo while she just talked through what happened in her day.
I understood and agreed with Skip’s desire for Ryan to keep up a regular life, a social life, outside the studio, but my reasoning behind that was—she’s a kid.
I didn’t share his concern about plumbing real-life experience for songwriting material.
A better writer than I once said that, honestly, making it through childhood is all the lived experience you need to be able to accurately convey emotion, conflict, yearning.
I mean, have you seen these teenagers? We’re not going for realism here in the music industry.
Save that for documentaries. We’re going for drama, for lyrics that make you feel something, and teenagers have it in spades.
Ryan was no different.
Skip
She had a great eclectic mix in that eponymous album, a really interesting fusion between her Massachusetts roots and the Texas flavor she was starting to pick up.
I had a mind to get her more enmeshed with the Austin music scene, but while we were working on the first album, the separation was intentional.
Don’t go to too many shows, I told her. Don’t worry about getting to know the community just yet.
Focus on your stuff first. There will be time for the rest.
And I can’t take full credit, but I think it lent her an incredibly unique sound. There are pared-back nods to New England alongside the tracks with a little more twang—a smash of Texas spice. Ryan was keen on adding more mandolin and whistle to the former, and some electric guitar to the latter.
I mean, what a cool fucking fusion. I couldn’t have asked for a better album.
The only question was whether listeners would agree with me.
We chose “Providence” and “Shoes on the Dash” to push as her first singles, the same two that bookended her album. They were just great songs. A little longing and melancholy in the first, and a feel-good summer jam in the second.
What I really wanted was to build up enough momentum to hit a glide.
I’ve never been great at analogies, but—you know when you’re cutting paper with scissors, cutting cutting cutting, and then something catches and kshhhh—the scissors are gliding effortlessly?
We hadn’t hit our stride yet, and I wanted Ryan to start feeling the benefits of all the work we were putting in.
I wanted to start feeling them too. I wanted to know that our investment would pay off.
Jasmine