But it became clear that we got very different things out of playing. It’s fun for me, relaxing; if I have a hectic day with North Shore, I’ll come home and just play for an hour or two in the evening. I get a lot of comfort from it.
Ryan, on the other hand ... I don’t know. That banjo was like a tool for her, a way to work out all this noise that I gradually realized was constantly in her head. Her face when she played—it’s hard to describe. I sometimes thought of it as her and the instrument locked in a wrestling match, with Ryan working the strings harder and harder to see if they could measure up to the song only she could hear, and the strings in turn testing the limits of her skill. Shewantedsomething out of it, something big, and she was never completely satisfied by what she got.
Ryan improved scary fast. I think even Frank was a little unnerved by it.
Frank
Boy, she was flying. Within a year or two of our lessons, I started to think—at this rate, this kid will outpace me by Christmas. And youknow, younger musicians always have that elasticity on their side; their brains are better wired to pick up a skill, and do so quickly. But Ryan was a special case even with that in mind, and I knew she’d soon outgrow my dusty little studio and need a better way to challenge herself.
I had a bulletin board in the back of the shop, just a place where local musicians could tack their business cards or band flyers or notices about instruments for sale. Ryan often lingered by it, I saw. She’d been so fired up to play with Mari, but I know that sort of petered out—I don’t blame Mari. It seemed like everyone in Hamilton was having a tough time keeping up with Ryan. What she wanted was to be part of a musical community.
So I was poking around for opportunities to help make that happen for her.
And one afternoon, I opened my mail to find a very interesting brochure.
And I got an idea.
Two
Hollywood Report Magazine, “In Her Own Words” profile, November 2012
Ryan Holding
I think I was just thirteen when I went on what I like to call my “first tour.” Before then, I’d played in my bedroom, for my friends, for my teacher. And there was something very special about that. I had room to experiment, to be bad; I bounced a million awful and unoriginal ideas off my little circle, and I’m lucky they still supported me through that.
Honestly, I once wrote a song about feeling like a frog stuck in the mud. I mean, sure, in the right hands it could’ve worked—if Three Dog Night did it, maybe. But not me. One of the lyrics was something like “My legs are meant to swim, but I can’t move an inch”—like, whew! It’s a good thing I got that out of my system.
But that’s what you need to do as a creative, right? You have to have the freedom and support to let things be “good” or “bad” so you can find the voice that’s really yours. And it’s going to sound really strange and unfamiliar at first—because you’ve never heard anything exactly like it before.
At the same time ... you can’t work in a vacuum. I hear so many of these really tough, singular artists being all,I work alone. No one understands me. My sound is so unique.
Okay, sure. Except everything we make is informed by all the musical traditions that came before us; our music exists in conversation with other artists. You’re not special, buddy.
Bluegrass made me understand this more than any other genre would have. Hazel Dickens, Doc Watson, Elizabeth Cotten, Flatt and Scruggs—and Arnold Shultz even before them, who developed the thumb-style picking we still use today. They’re all building off this old American music and then off each other. They pay tribute to each other’s sound. And it grows and grows: Singers like Dolly Parton and Olivia Newton-John built careers off bluegrass and folk. It lends itself to community with others and these incredible cross-genre opportunities.
It’s an amazing thing, it really is. It’s very close to my heart.
But back then, like I say, I didn’t have any of that community. I have my first teacher to thank for changing that. And my parents. And my friends.
The whole bluegrass community, in fact—I’m a lucky gal.
Mari
So, I want to be clear. Everyone who talks about Ryan’s privilege, her silver-spoon upbringing, the chances she got that no one else had—I mean, I’m not here to go on record and tell you that they’rewrong.
I think, in a lot of ways, that’s the point of most famous people. That’s why they call it a “lucky break.” Anyone who’s successful in life, in any field, has arrived there because they had the skills to do socombinedwith opportunities that weren’t available to others. It’s natureandnurture. There are also plenty of people in the world who have opportunities that aren’t available to others, and they donothingwith them.
Ryan took the opportunities presented to her. And one lot in life in which she was extremely lucky was the fact that she had supportive, open-minded parents.
I was actually having dinner with Ryan and her family the night that Frank called about the River Rocks festival. She and I were setting the table while Barb made spaghetti, and it was John who answered the phone.
“How are you, Frank?” he asked, which was our cue to start listening—the call was definitely about Ryan, and possibly me, if Frank was on the other end.
I remember him saying something like “Oh. Well, that sounds—you just mean to attend, right?” He’d frowned into the phone and then said “Oh” again, glanced back at us. We pretended we weren’t paying any attention.
“Well, I don’t know,” he said at last. “We’ll have to have a talk about it and let you know ... All right ... All right ... You too.”
Ryan and I shared a glance and hurried to sit down at the table as fast as we could. John looked perturbed as Barb dished out the spaghetti and joined us.
