Chapter 6 NBC10 Boston News, Aired February 7, 2006 #3
“Yeah, I model with Marco Barbieri, so I was able to get tickets through them,” I said. “I was surprised at how hard it was to get backstage; usually that’s pretty easy for me. I don’t know what I was expecting, but . . . it wasn’t this.”
I widened my eyes a little and raised my eyebrows. I was trying to be mean.
But Ryan’s own eyes got big and she gushed, “Oh wow, Marco Barbieri? That’s amazing! Wait—I totally recognize you! I think I’ve seen your picture at Kohl’s?”
I mean, no. I never modeled for Kohl’s. But between looking at her quizzically and saying, “Um, yeah, I guess,” and her going on about how cool it was that I came, I realized—oh, you’re just like this. You’re just genuinely nice and normal, and not at all used to fame.
So I knew I had to take her under my wing.
Jasmine
I don’t mean this to sound patronizing; Ryan was an extremely talented young woman at the time and didn’t need my approval.
Or anyone’s, for that matter—she was coming into her own.
But listen, I’ve never had kids, and I felt very protective of her, and .
. . I don’t know. I was just very proud of her, especially at the start.
Like she was my daughter or niece or something.
She didn’t have a lot of experience with fame, no.
But that gave her the freedom to sort of do whatever the hell she felt like doing without being wrapped up in what the “right” way to act was.
She wanted pizza and ice cream in her VIP lounge, she did it.
She wanted to make Valentines with her fans during the February shows, have at it.
Ryan did things in her own unconventional way, and it only brought people closer and closer to her.
Skip
I had to be careful to stay levelheaded as record sales rose and Ryan’s shows began to sell out. It’s a good sign, I told myself. We’ve got a good thing going, and we’re going to stay the course.
Ryan and Jas were beginning to work on her second album, too, and I didn’t want us to get ahead of ourselves. I wanted her sound to stay raw and hungry and uninhibited. No time to rest on laurels.
But when I got the call that she was nominated for New Artist of the Year by the Country Music Association, I gave the whole studio the day off and took us out for ice cream.
Mari
Ryan was scary calm the whole afternoon leading up to the CMA Awards.
I’d flown into Nashville a few days before, and we went to the zoo, the Johnny Cash Museum, the Parthenon.
She seemed glad to have some time off and asked a lot about what was new with me.
I told her that I would get my license in January, and she said, “Oh my god, I forgot.”
“Forgot what?” I said.
“Forgot to learn how to drive.”
I laughed, but she looked totally bewildered. “There’s plenty of time, isn’t there?” I said. “You’ve been busy.”
“Yeah,” she said.
“But you’re having fun, right?” I said. Something in the way she said Yeah made me ask. “Because . . . it should be fun, right?”
She shrugged. “It’s work. It’s not always going to be fun. It’s a lot of pressure.”
“I bet.” I hadn’t understood how she could get onstage in front of a hundred people, much less the thousands who were attending her shows now and would be in the Gaylord Entertainment Center tomorrow night. That couldn’t be me.
“But it’s what I wanted,” she continued.
“And you still want it, right?”
“Of course.”
But she said it too quickly. I narrowed my eyes at her, and after avoiding my gaze for a minute, she sighed.
“Have you ever taken a spin class?” Ryan asked.
“What? No.” I frowned. “Like with the bicycles?”
“Yeah,” Ryan said. “Kylie made me come with her to one. It’s not like a regular bicycle.
It’s got this super heavy weighted wheel on the front, and they strap your feet into the pedals so you can’t slip off.
Then you pedal faster and faster until the heavy wheel is going a million miles an hour and pulling your feet along with it, and you feel like if you stop, it’s going to break your legs. ”
“That sounds awful,” I said. “Why does Kylie do that?”
Ryan shrugged. “All the model girls do. It’s good exercise.”
“I’ll stick to jogging.”
Ryan was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Sometimes my career feels like that. Not always, but sometimes. And I wonder if I made the right choice strapping in, way back at the beginning.”
“Your legs won’t break, though, right?” I said. I was stuck on that. “It can’t really be dangerous, or they wouldn’t let you do it, right?”
“Maybe.” She looked ahead down the park path. “It’s really hard to get your brain to believe it, though.”
I didn’t understand what she meant by it.
I do, now, but at the time I left it at that.
In fact, all throughout my Nashville trip, she seemed to want to talk about my life more than anything, rather than her own.
I couldn’t tell if she was just that interested in learning permits and harp recitals, if she wanted an escape from her day-to-day, or if she was worried about coming off as self-absorbed.
Maybe it was a combination of the three.
It got better, later on, when we started to work together.
Ryan had this whole after-party lined up with industry contacts and Madcap people and “friends” I’d barely heard of—it would be the first time I met Kylie Cameron and the entourage of girls who were starting to follow Ryan around—but she wanted to get ready with me.
It wasn’t quite the same as when we’d hung out together before her album-release party; the makeup team who worked with Ryan for all her shows came to the hotel where we were both staying and got us both ready.
I was stunned when I looked in the mirror.
Like, stunned—I looked at least three years older, and they’d done all this complicated stuff to my hair that somehow made it look completely natural, just . . . fluffier and softer.
We still blasted music and popped popcorn and ate Fruit by the Foot while Barb ran around fretting about her crow’s-feet.
I was kind of surprised—Ryan was listening to a lot more Top 40 by then and not nearly as much bluegrass.
I mean, I didn’t mind, it’s what I listened to too.
But it was kind of funny to sing along to Christina Aguilera and Fergie with her instead of the Stanley Brothers.
Listen, I don’t want it to sound like I was upset with her for changing, and I don’t want it to sound like all I did in between my visits to Ryan was to pine for her.
I had my own life back in Hamilton. I had a boyfriend and a soccer team and plenty of things to do.
And I’d had a pretty honest conversation with myself when she first moved away that things probably wouldn’t be the same again.
She was still the Ryan I knew, just . . . capital R Ryan now. It was an interesting change to observe.
And I had an inkling that if she won that night, she’d see yet another transformation.
Jasmine
Well, you already know what happened. Our girl got what she deserved! And she called all of us onstage with her, the sweetheart. I thought that was a real class act.
CMA Awards, ABC broadcast footage, aired November 2006
Ryan: Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh . . . I seriously can’t believe this.
Wow, it’s heavier than I thought. This is an incredible thing to hold.
Thank you—thank you, from the bottom of my heart, I really am stunned.
But I don’t deserve this by myself—Skip, Jas, Andre, come up here!
Yes, come up! I would not be a new artist of any kind if it wasn’t for this amazing team, all the folks at Madcap, Mari, Mom, Dad, Frank, and of course a million other people I’m forgetting.
I didn’t even prepare because I thought there was no way I would win this. Thank you, thank you, I’m more honored than I can say.
Justin
Call me delusional, but I guess I counted myself in the “million other people” she forgot. It would have been nice to be mentioned, though.