Even back when Ryan Broshear was a kid, there was no doubt in his mind that he wanted to be a country music artist when he grew up. Ryan asked for a guitar when he was 12 years old and from that moment on, he had been dead set on a career in country music. Luckily for Broshear, not only is he passionate about singing and songwriting, but the Ohio native turned out to be pretty talented as well. After earning a spot on Billboard Magazine’s Top 10 Country Artists to Watch list in 2014, Ryan knew that he had to be at the top of his game with his new music. He put everything he had into his second studio album, ‘Paint It Red,’ and Broshear recently released ‘Spin Me,’ the lead single off the new EP. With the launch of his new single and EP, Ryan is making his lifelong dream come true.
Since the release of his first album in November of 2011, Broshear has grown as an artist and as a person, his sound naturally evolving with him. “My tastes and what I like to do has changed a little bit,” said Ryan. “Not that anything off that first album I don’t still love because I felt really great about that album and still do,” he clarified. But this time around, Broshear wanted to push himself to explore new sounds and take more risks. “We wanted to be a little more edgy with my sound, a little more fresh. I’m a traditional sounding artist but we wanted to take that traditional feel but move it into modern country,” Ryan explained. “That’s what our goal was and that’s, with my new single, what we were able to achieve.” Broshear undoubtedly has a classical country tone to his voice, so playing around with more contemporary beats gives him a unique sound that will hopefully draw in a lot of new fans.
Ryan’s EP, ‘Paint It Red,’ is extra special for him and his fans because without them, it may have never happened. The record was brought to life through an online Kickstarter campaign where Broshear’s fans raised over $21,000 to get the album funded. “I wanted to get new music out within a couple years after releasing my first album, but we’d been on the road touring and having extra money to pay for a complete studio album is tough,” he explained. Ultimately, Ryan had to bite the bullet on this one. “I had heard about crowdfunding. I was a little nervous about it,” the singer admitted. “I had always been the kind of person that wants to do things for myself the best that I can but we needed some help.” The campaign was more successful than he could’ve imagined and Broshear was blown away with the response. “Over 200 people came out of their pocket, their hard earned money, to make it happen. That is incredible. I mean, there’s a lot of things you can spend money on and without any guarantees of anything they were just passionate enough and believed in me enough to do that and I’ll always be grateful for that.” Ryan’s fans made it possible for him to take his new material from a notepad to the recording studio and he poured his heart and soul into the project.
When the time came to send his new music off into the world, ‘Spin Me’ was a natural choice as the lead single off this EP. “It had a great energy to it. It showcased my voice well and it had a message I think people can relate to and I felt that it was a song that would play well to a new audience,” he said. “It’s a song about that first feeling of love and not being able to get her out of your head. It keeps playing over and over in your mind like a song.” Broshear bounced the track off some of his friends, who happen to be radio programmers and got the nod of approval. “Plus, even the title,” he added, “to radio stations who are going to check out a new artist like me who they’ve maybe never heard of, it might be something that they say, ‘Hmm, ‘Spin Me,’ let me give this a listen.’” Ryan expressed how thrilled he was with how the song came out and he’s hoping that a lot of people feel the same way, “It just felt really good and felt like a song that needed to be heard on the radio.”
‘Spin Me’ is a song that Ryan felt a connection to from the get-go. While putting the record together, Broshear knew he wanted the chance to co-write with his producer, Daniel Agee. “I wanted to write a song about being young and being in love and kind of that first feeling you get when you’re in love,” he explained. At the time, Broshear didn’t have anything prepared to go into the writing session with, but Agee was already working on something that fit the singer’s vision perfectly. “He played a bit of a song that he had started and had me sing along with the lyric sheet while he played the music. It was just instantly like, ‘Man, this feels really good!’ and we were able to finish that song. I was able to help him finish it and write the back half of it and the bridge,” Broshear said. Not only was ‘Spin Me’ a product of that writing session, but Broshear and Agee we’re able to get two other songs out of it which also made the record.
Broshear has been doing his fair share of songwriting and had a hand in writing five out of the six songs on the EP, something he takes a lot of pride in. “Every song is different and I don’t normally go into writing a song with a goal in mind of what type of song it’s going to be. It normally just… something pops into my head, a feeling, and I write from that feeling,” Ryan explained, describing his songwriting process. “I will just start with a line and just get a certain feel and create a melody and I’ll record it in my phone and start growing it. Sometimes I’ll text it to my wife and she’ll build on it.” His wife, Amie, co-wrote a lot for Broshear’s first album and has lent her hand to a couple of tracks on ‘Paint It Red’ as well. Although Ryan doesn’t usually start writing with a specific topic in mind, he expressed how he’s never too worried about making music that all sounds the same or writing the same song twice. “I think by me staying in my head and writing something fresh from my heart and writing it from that emotion I think it tends to steer clear of other songs,” he said, adding, “I’m a big Merle Haggard fan, and he said once that everything in a country song has already been written about but how you write about it is what makes the difference.” So for Ryan, it’s not necessarily about finding different or new topics to write about, but finding a unique delivery of those subjects that we can all relate to.
Broshear had made it pretty obvious that Merle is one of his biggest influences, but it was actually Garth Brooks that inspired him to pick up a guitar. “The entertainment aspect and the energy that he had was something that just looked like a whole lotta fun,” he said. “But artists like George Strait – for a man to be able to stand there with his guitar and sing a song and be so popular for such a huge duration of time, and even be able to make hits after he retired, he’s a legend. They call him King George for a reason,” said Ryan. Broshear has taken those elements that he loves from his favorite entertainers and incorporates them into his own performances. When Ryan takes the stage, fans can expect a combination of high-energy hits, drinkin’ and partyin’ songs, and some heartfelt ballads that really connect Broshear to the audience. “Above all, I think they expect that I’m gonna be there for them. This show is all for them and my heart is going to be poured out on that stage for them,” he said. Being on stage and performing is one of Ryan’s favorite parts of the job, but what he treasures most is being able to meet fans at the shows. “Getting to meet people and talk to them, and meeting people who have kind of knew of the music prior to coming to the show and tell me the story about what it means to them, I love that part. The personal relationship with the fans is one of the reasons why I keep doing what I’m doing,” he said.
Ryan plans on getting out on the road a lot more in the upcoming year. “I have a show with The Swon Brothers in February,” he said, adding, “We’ll be doing some touring all over the country. We’ve got a lot of fans in a lot of places and we look for every way we can get out and see them and play for them. Anywhere we can go we’re going to go.” But one place Broshear hasn’t been yet is here in New England. “The closest I’ve come is New York,” he said. “I would love to come up to New England and do some playing, just hit a bunch of areas up there and meet a bunch of new people. That would be awesome.” We couldn’t agree more. We can’t wait for the opportunity to show Ryan what New England fans are all about. We’ll certainly be keeping an eye out and we hope the singer can make a trip up here sooner than later. Until then, though, we’ll just keep spinning his new record as we see what 2016 has in store for Ryan.