Mike Ryan might not be a household name, yet, but he certainly has plenty of friends in high places. The Texas singer released his latest album, Blink You’ll Miss It, late last year, which includes a song co-written by Chris Stapleton and Lee Thomas Miller.
“He’s got tons of songs,” Ryan tells PopCulture.com of Stapleton. “He’s got a massive catalog. He wrote for Sea Gayle [publishing company] for a long time, and when I started working with Sea Gayle, one of the first things I did was I dug through and listened to a bunch of his old songs. There’s a song called ‘One Way’ that we came across that I’d never heard before and we were looking at it when we were putting songs together for this record. It jumped out at me and I was excited as I could be with the chance to cut that one because I’m a huge fan of what Chris is doing. I have a lot of respect for his craft, really.”
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Another song on Blink You’ll Miss It includes the talents of Sea Gayle co-owner, Brad Paisley, who lent his guitar skills to another track on the record.
“There was a song that I’d written called ‘The Rewrite,’” says Ryan, adding that Paisley considered recording it himself. “But it wasn’t working for his record. He ended up going in when we recorded it, and he recorded that guitar solo for our record.”
Paisley also enjoyed the talents of Ryan as well, who co-wrote Paisley’s recent Top 20 single, “Last Time for Everything,” with Paisley and a few other writers.
“That’s the first song that I had any sort of involvement, physically with Brad,” recalls Ryan. “I mean, I’ve been writing under him for a while but it was cool to actually work together in that respect … It started from the popular phrase, a first time for everything, and then there’s also a last time for everything. So, we just felt like that was kind of a nice message to let people realize sometimes these experiences that we’re going through are fleeting, and we have to make sure we appreciate them while they’re here.
That song ended up being probably way better than it every would have been if I did it,” adds Ryan. “Since Brad did it, I think his touch was really cool. That song worked out great and I couldn’t have been happier, and he got David Hasselhoff to come do the music video with him, which was an even cooler part of it, too.”
Download Blink You’ll Miss It on iTunes. More information on Ryan, including upcoming tour dates, can be found on MikeRyanBand.com.
Photo Credit: MikeRyanBand.com
