“Do you think I can?”
“I do,” I said. “But you’ve already broken your own record, and that’s pretty damn good in my book.”
It ended up being just before the Austin show that we got the news. I told Ryan just before she went on, and I swear she had tears in her eyes.
When she finished “Neon Dreams,” the first number, she indicated that the band should continue to vamp, and she went to the edge of the stage.
“Austin,” she said. “You know what I found out just before I walked out here?”
A roar went up.
“I just found out thatFirebirdbroke the record for thelongest-runningfemale country album at the top of theBillboard200! That is because ofyou! You are my heart and my everything!”
She brought the house down that night. She’d made it.
Part II
Nine
Jasmine
Istill count theFirebirdtour as one of Ryan’s best, hands down. I didn’t come along on all of it, but when I did, the energy was electric.
There’s a sweet spot an artist hits when they’re growing fast but not quite mainstream, an exclusivity and hype that can’t be manufactured or bought.
And Skip wanted us to harness that as best we could.
Skip
Andre and I had been talking about expanding operations out to Los Angeles for some time, and Ryan became the impetus to do that.
I think we all saw it coming before she did—the inevitable identity crisis she was about to have.
Look, I’ll say it bluntly: Ryan was outgrowing bluegrass.
There’s nothing wrong with the genre. It was her home. It was where she was comfortable, and I think she felt she owed a lot to Frank, to the musicians on the festival circuits, to bluegrass fans—and rightly so.
But I could tell, and Jas even more so, that Ryan wanted to experiment. She wanted to push those boundaries. Hell, press the mute button whenyou’re watching theFirebirdtrilogy and you’d never know they’re supposed to be music videos for bluegrass songs. The cinematography, the styling of those videos, was all Old Hollywood in my opinion. And Serge agreed.
There was a natural separation that was becoming clear: Andre had our older mainstays in his portfolio, I had Ryan and our other young eclectics. LA would not only help them grow, but it’d double our entry points for discovering new talent. The cost of doing business in California was higher, obviously, but Ryan had earned us the means and the money, and it was worth a shot.
I talked through it with Ryan and her parents over dinner. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted it to be everyone’s decision, not just mine. If Ryan wanted to stay in Austin, so be it.
But as I suspected, she liked the idea. LA would open us up to a wider range of resources—particularly film. It was decided that she and Barb would find an apartment out there, and John would stay behind in Austin to maintain the house and property, keep working. Their marriage by that point was, well ... Ryan didn’t talk about it much. But this decision was telling to me.
By the time we set up the Madcap offices in Los Angeles, we were starting to look a little more like the major labels Andre and I had left all those years ago. We didn’t sell out, I’m not saying that. But I mean, we gotinterns, man. We got Ryan a proper tour bus and, most importantly, a more permanent band. We trimmed the fat of the backup musicians who just weren’t cutting it and held auditions for the ones who could really jell with Ryan.
It was another step toward an expanded, versatile sound for her. This was no longer your bluegrass jug band; not to be pejorative, but—you know. These were professionals who had longtime experience as backing musicians. That crew was razor sharp. We managed to poach Kelly Clarkson’s bassist Jared Angel, and we had CelineWilliams on electric fiddle, Elliott McNeal on drums, Chris Murano on keyboard, just to name a few.
Oh, and Wilder. Of course.
Mari
It really was a happy coincidence that I ended up at UCLA. Honestly, the closest place to home that I even applied was Duke, and even that was pretty half-hearted. It’s funny that I ended up back here because, at that point in my life, I wanted out.
It wasn’t that I disliked Hamilton and the East Coast—I love it, obviously. But seeing everything that Ryan was doing made me want to leave home too. To be at least a plane ride away.
I wanted to be far-flung, and of all the colleges I went for on the West Coast, I got the best scholarship from UCLA. When Ryan told me she’d be there, too, it was like the stars had aligned.
