Going It Solo

During his recent trip down under for the Stone Music Festival, Billy Joel was asked who, if anyone, does he write his songs for? “Well,” Joel began in his thick, Boston drawl, “not for me. I never write for me. Heck, I'm just a piano player at best.”

It's a philosophy Kieran Ryan can relate to well. Late last year Ryan, ex-frontman of Melbourne duo Kid Sam, decided to step out from the shadow that comes with performing under a band name and go it alone. To do that meant he would no longer be writing songs for the group, but rather for himself – something Ryan calls “scary but also liberating”. “But, I never wrote for myself anyway,” says Ryan. “I always try to create music that becomes an abstract entity on its own. So really, writing for just me was a new project, but it really was about me approaching the same core but coming at it from a different angle.”

Kid Sam (who Ryan fronted with his cousin Kishore) enjoyed moderate success. They were nominated for a J Award and the Australian Music Prize, but the group seemed destined for the underground, never really quite breaking through. Kid Sam is now over. Kaput. And Ryan is at pains to insist that the decision to branch out on his own was just a logical one. “This instance wasn't so much about me – the fact that I'm performing under my own name – it was more the fact that I didn't want to come up with a name on the spot,” stresses Ryan. “There is a lot of freeness but also a lot of limitations that come with being in a band. You have a sound that you kind of have to adhere to. But when you're just a singer, you know, on your own, then you are a lot freer to experiment, I feel.”

Experiment he did. After deciding to go it alone, Ryan, who admits to being “limited in skills” when it comes to “these recording things”, needed someone to help him navigate the electrical landscape. Enter The Panics producer and drummer Myles Wootton. The pair met 'round the musical traps and began working together on what would become Ryan's debut solo release, towards the end of 2011.

“Neither of us sort of seeked the other out,” says Ryan. “We just hung out a bunch of times. Look, I obviously knew of his work with The Panics, but at that stage you don't know if it's going to work out or not. You just have to give it a try.”

Ryan is unusually modest (too modest) about his whole involvement in the process, shoving most of the acclaim onto Wootton, who he credits with taking over and mastering the engineering intricacies that come with stepping into a studio. “I mean, look, I have limited skills – I write songs and I sing them and I can play guitar, but I'm not a recording guy and I can be pretty abstract. Myles helped with that. I was just very impressed with how incredibly stuck in he got with the whole process. I just learnt so much from him.”

The process Ryan refers to is the ability to write a song and mother it from those first few scribbled notes on scrap paper, right through to the polished sound that dances out from the speakers. “This really was a highly collaborative effort with Myles. When I say that, I don't mean we were jamming in a room with drums. We never did that. Usually, I'd turn up and Myles would've written a part and then we would go ahead and do bits of jamming and the next day usually we'd go away and think of something, then come back the next day with material. We spent most of the time in Myles' bedroom and then a few days recording in the studio.”

And just like The Piano Man, Ryan insists that the material isn't necessarily written with himself in mind. In fact, it's not written with anyone in mind. “I've done a couple of projects now,” says Ryan, “and it's always been the same – I just try to endeavour to make and create something that it a complete little entity unto itself. Like, I try and take these big grand ideas about life and try and compress them and from there bring it to life. That is the kind of song writing I admire, people like Leonard Cohen and other songwriters who can reduce expansive abstract ideas into something tangible.”

Ryan's songwriting abilities were recognised during his time at the helm with Kid Sam. 'Clever' seemed to be a word that was bandied a lot about his work, but Ryan is loathe to consider himself any kind of lyrical wunderkind, despite penning such gems as “Let's go dancin' there above the dead/Oh let's celebrate that we're not yet” on the haunting Down To The Cemetery during his time with Kid Sam. “I just try to make stuff work. I'm not writing any of this for myself. I think about how it can be sung, that's it,” he says.

Emerging from under the Kid Sam moniker, Ryan admits he hasn't even thought about the additional pressure that comes with standing alone – all alone – on that barren performing stage. “Yeah well, I hadn't actually thought about that until now. Possibly, I guess there is some added pressure. But, I've really shut myself off from it. When you're making an album, you're always one step removed from the project. I guess in this instance, having my own name out there, it could be a limiting thing, but it can also be a liberating one because I'm not under a banner of anyone or anything else.”

Kieran Ryan will be playing the following dates:

Thursday 2 May - The Loft, UTS, Broadway NSW
Friday 3 May - The Green Room Lounge, Sydney NSW