Ryan David Orr is an indie-folk and Americana artist. He has been writing and performing original works for a couple decades and has traveled across the U.S. and abroad to share music with the masses. He recently released his 10th studio album, New Imperials, which contains elements of folk, rock, and pop, and is centered on engaging lyrics and infectious melodies. Often compared to Cat Stevens, Gordon Lightfoot, and Eddie Vedder, Orr’s music is reminiscent of the folk movement of the 1960s and 70s, yet has a foot firmly planted in modern production styles and craftsmanship. Currently, Orr has an EP in production with Nashville-based studio Cartoon Moon, owned and operated by Ken Coomer, drummer and founding member of the band Wilco. The album will feature performances by some of Nashville’s top studio musicians who over the years have added to popular albums by artists such as John Prine, Bonnie Raitt, Kesha, and Deer Tick. In early 2023, Orr also released a novel entitled Whisper, which is a work of fiction that ties loosely to his 2019 indie-folk concept album Kaden Hollow. Orr resides in the mountains of northeastern Arizona where he gardens with his wife, writes and records in his small cabin studio, teaches English composition at a junior college, and spends as much time in the woods as possible.
Thank you for agreeing to catch up with Occhi Magazine. For readers unfamiliar with you and your background, what drew you to a career in the arts?
My mother was a folk singer, so from the time I was born there were guitars and songbooks laying around the house. Where most children might have had bed-time stories, I had folk songs. She would sit on the edge of the bed and let me pick 3 songs that she would play to me before I went to sleep. Obviously, this had a lasting effect, and I developed an early affinity for music. My father used to tell me a story about a time that he took me to a performance as a child. The performers were from Africa and played several traditional African instruments in an ensemble (djembe, mbira, etc.). After their performance, I ran up to the leader of the group and started asking questions about how to play the instruments and how everything worked. The man turned to my father and told him “In my village, these are the children to whom we teach music.”
I began playing violin when I was 7 years old and joined a choir. This gave me a decent foundation in music theory, which is not entirely necessary to be a musician but is helpful in understanding the language of music. I played violin until I was about 13 years old, then I fell in love with rock music and started playing guitar. I loved the Seattle rock scene, so my walls were full of posters of Kurt Cobain, Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell, and other rock artists of the 90s.
I wrote my first original material when I was about 14 years old, but it was terrible, and it took me a year or two of constantly writing before I ended up with anything I liked. I had recorded backing vocals in the studio for one of my mother’s albums, and many of her friends were studio musicians and engineers, so when I finally got into a studio at age 15 to record some of my own stuff, it didn’t feel like I was miles away from where I had already been. Fast forward a couple decades, many relocations, several different bands, and hundreds of songs written, and I have found a nice groove in which I can write, record, and release music, and have music as an artistic outlet and income stream.
Who were your early influences and how did they impact your career?
I had many influences at a young age. My mother and father, both artists, had very different and nuanced musical tastes. Everything from 70s American rock to 50s jazz to country crossover to hip-hop to industrial could be found somewhere in their listening collection. One genre of music that contained many influential artists for me was the realm of alt-country and folk music. One of my favorite artists of my formative years was Richard Buckner, whose haphazard use of words made me rethink what was possible in writing a song. I was also a huge Tori Amos fan. Her music and her voice have a haunting quality that feel surreal as if her performances exist solely in some romantic castle overlooking the ocean. Pearl Jam had a very big impact on me, and when I was 16 years old, I saw them for the first time in an arena in South Carolina. The show was mayhem, with audience members packed like sardines into general admission. I would say that show, along with my first time seeing Tool and a super-charged 2 night fling of Radiohead at Madison Square Garden were some of the most influential live music experiences I’ve had.
Once when I was in high school and commonly went to shows at a small tavern in Black Mountain, North Carolina, I saw a Native American artist named Bill Miller perform. He was a Warner Brothers recording artist and mixed Americana musical styles with rock and roll and traditional Native instruments such as ceremonial drums, chanting, and flute. At the time, I worked weekends as a dishwasher in a restaurant, and he came in the morning after his show. I snuck up to him just to tell him the show was great and to talk to him for a minute. I said that I thought it was cool that he played in our modest little town in such a small venue. He mentioned that the size of the crowd didn’t really matter and that he would play the same to 3 people as he would to 3,000. That stuck with me. I realized that the important thing wasn’t the number of people paying attention, but that any performance is an opportunity to affect people. That got me thinking – how did I want to affect people?
Another encounter with an influential artist came around the same time but within a different medium. I was visiting my father in Eugene, Oregon one summer, and there was a yearly event taking place called Art in the Vineyard. There were musicians and artists and writers everywhere, and one of the “headliners” was Ken Kesey, author of literary works such as One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion. I was first in line to have him sign my copy of “One Flew”, and when the crowds began to dissipate after a while, I went back to where he was sitting and started talking to him. I told him that my friends and I were reading a lot of his work along with Tom Wolf and Hunter S. Thompson, lots of counter-culture stuff. I also asked him what he had to say to my generation, and to all the teenagers in the 1990s who saw something magical in the idealism of the Merry Pranksters. In a sort of disjointed sagely way, he answered in anecdotes. He said he sees art and the industry of art as being a mixture of celebrities whose work had meaning and substance, and those whose work was somewhat trivial. He called it the “sh#% floats – cream rises” scenario. For example, he explained, Madonna is sh#% floats, and Joan Baez is cream rises. Then he said, Tom Wolf is sh#% floats and Hunter S. Thompson is cream rises. Hunter was there living the dream, he said, but Tom Wolf was a bystander, famous mostly for being in proximity to artists. Now, I like Madonna, and I have also liked Tom Wolf books, so I don’t know if I totally agree with him about those, but the concept was not lost on me. The point was that the substance of our creations has a viable life force, an energy that only comes from experience and passion, rather than from some superficial presentation or how it gets sold to the world. I feel like his words stuck with me and have become increasingly meaningful as humanity seems to drift away from things that are real and have substance. The more we focus on those superficialities, the less we recognize the beauty and the subtlety in being human.
Which three traits define you?
I think I am positive most of the time, at least outwardly. I am somewhat experimental – in my music that translates to experimenting with various music genres. And I think that I have integrity.
Please tell us about your latest projects
So, I have several projects that are happening now. First, I released a new album in the second half of 2022, so I have been promoting that with live performances. The album is called New Imperials and it was released for digital, CD, and 180g Vinyl. I have also been working with London-based production studio The Animal Farm on a handful of songs for which I did the recording and their studio did the mixing and mastering. We will be releasing a new single in June called Driving in Silence. I also released a new novel in February that sort of accompanies my 2019 indie-folk album Kaden Hollow.
What other projects are in the pipeline?
I currently have an EP in production with Cartoon Moon Studio in Nashville, TN that I’m super excited about. The owner and producer there is a founding member of the band Wilco, and he plays drums on this project. The EP will be released at a later date and will be part of a new indie-folk/Americana band I am billing as The Secret Trails. Release dates on this are up in the air, but you can follow on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook for updates.
Where can our readers find out more about you?
My favorite way to share about my music is through my monthly newsletter. I only send it out once a month, and I include upcoming show dates, new music alerts, vlog updates, and sometimes fun stuff like recipes or B-sides. People can sign up for that at www.RyanDavidOrr.com.
Then, I am active on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
You can find me on Spotify, Apple Music, or pretty much wherever you stream music, and you can see some live stuff and official music videos on my YouTube channel.
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