There are
rare singer/songwriters whose work approaches the status of Literature.
They often transcend genre, bringing the structure of classic folk tales
to country music’s raw honesty and rock’s visceral edge. Bruce
Springsteen has the quality. Kris Kristofferson has it.
Deric Ruttan,
for whom both of those singers have been role models, displays on his
debut album that he has learned their lessons well. With Deric, he
presents a first effort that is intelligent, well crafted, and brimming
with honest emotion and drama.
Deric proves
himself to be a strong storyteller with an expressive vocal approach and
an acoustic guitar style perfectly suited to his tales. His songs target
the heart with believable, tastefully understated lyrics. He paints a
variety of rich emotional landscapes in songs like “Ashes To Asphalt,” “I
Saved Everything,” and “When You Come Around” and weaves telling
narratives in “Angelina,” a death row drama, the poignant “Love Did,” and
the moving and cinematic “Tom And Annie.” The musical settings compliment,
without ever overshadowing, the narratives.
Deric moved
to Nashville in 1994. By day he wrote songs in a series of small, low-rent
residences, including an 11 by 13 foot one-room cabin with no running
water. By night he haunted the city’s many songwriter’s nights, watching,
listening, and learning. He caught a break in 1999 when producer Steve
Bogard, to whom he had been introduced years earlier by a mutual friend,
was impressed by a tape Deric played him. Bogard introduced Deric to song
plugger Arthur Buenahora, who signed Deric to a songwriting deal at
Sony/Tree Music Publishing. They immediately began recording his first
publishing demos for Sony/Tree, with Bogard producing.
Steve played
those demos for Doug Howard at Lyric Street Records, who arranged for
Deric to do a live guitar/vocal performance for Lyric Street President,
Randy Goodman. Deric went in and played, acoustically, five songs that
laid out exactly who he was musically. Today, all five of those songs are
on the record. Deric recalls, “When I finished the last note of the last
song there was this moment of silence. Then I saw Randy steal a glance at
Doug and I knew…I knew he loved the music. That was the moment everything
changed.”
It was the
precursor to a deal and to the kind of artistic freedom new artists dream
about. “Randy and Doug really believed that Steve and I knew what we
needed to do,” he says. “They were behind the idea of Steve producing, and
of keeping the same team of musicians together to make the album as had
played on the demos, because we really had refined a sound on those
initial demos. They agreed with us that because of the kind of artist I am
and the kinds of songs I write, this thing needed to be approached as an
album -- it had to be a great record that people would sit and listen to
all the way through, not just skip around to the singles.”
One thing
that helps to set Deric Ruttan apart sonically is that Deric plays
acoustic guitar on every track. The acoustic playing, plain and
unpretentious, at times rough around the edges, is a common thread that
runs through the entire project. “That was a thought Steve and I had from
the beginning. I’m a songwriter/singer. The way I play is part of these
songs. We concentrated on making my voice and guitar a focal point in the
recording process, and then built the other instruments in around the
song.”
The result is an album where everyday dramas and profound human emotions
mix in stories and in moments that are lyrically rich and musically
compelling.
Deric’s
striking musical vision took root just outside Bracebridge, Ontario,
Canada, on land his great-grandfather had settled in the 1920’s. He and
his brothers and cousins ran barefoot through the same woods his father
and grandfather had, (woods where his great-grandfather made moonshine
during the Great Depression), grew up hearing family tales of late-night
fiddle and guitar jams, and fell asleep listening to the wind in the white
pines. His country roots are reflected in his music. His songs, much like
the land he was raised on, are pure, rugged, and honest.
He got
hooked, early, on his parents’ collection of records from the ‘60s—The
Springfields, Johnny Cash, the Beach Boys, Beatles, and, particularly,
Creedence Clearwater Revival. “As a very young child I was fascinated by
the cover of the Cosmo’s Factory album,” he says, “I felt like they knew
something I needed to know. They had a very rural sound – a gritty, earthy
sound -- that appealed to me very early on.”
He started
playing guitar at twelve, and writing songs at 14. By 16 he and his band
were gigging regularly around their hometown, rehearsing and recording in
a garage on Deric’s grandmother’s farm. In high school, when musician
friends were inspired by Metallica and Guns‘n’Roses, Deric’s songwriting
reflected his influences -- The Eagles, John Mellencamp, and Tom Petty. He
got some local media attention and validation when, at 17, he won a
nationwide songwriting contest. In his senior year, a friend lent him
Steve Earle’s Copperhead Road LP, and he became a fan during his first
listen. “He was a doorway through which I walked into country music,” he
says. “He was telling real, rural stories I could relate to.”
Deric says
that growing up he felt inspired and encouraged by the fact that another
singer/songwriter/storyteller whom he greatly admired – Gordon Lightfoot
-- had sprung from the same soil he did, growing up just 40 miles to the
south.
His major at
Fanshawe College in London, Ontario, was Music Industry Arts, where he
performed and recorded as often as possible with like-minded students.
Then, with one semester left to go, he dropped out to join a touring bar
band. “I kind of scammed my way in as a lead guitar player,” he says,
“even though I wasn’t one! I turned twenty-one in the back seat of an old
Lincoln Towncar, traveling 300 miles to a gig. How country is that!?” He
spent two and a half years on the road, with two different bands,
traveling from Thunder Bay, Ontario, to Jackson, Mississippi, in a
converted school bus (among other, less glamorous modes of
transportation), balancing the great gigs with the breakdowns, bad crowds,
and lack of appreciation that are dues-paying staples.
It was this
real-world road experience that gave him his first in-depth crash course
in country music. “When I joined the band I had to quickly learn between
forty and fifty country songs, some current, some classics.” That tour led
him through a learning process that carried him backwards through country
music history, from Garth Brooks and George Strait, to Waylon and Willie,
to Merle Haggard and George Jones. He augmented his road knowledge by
delving into records by Ernest Tubb, Patsy Cline, and the great Hank
Williams Sr. He was learning and playing, his experiences leading to only
one conclusion -- he had to move to Nashville.
So Deric
loaded up his possessions and headed for Music City. He moved into a room
in East Nashville with an air mattress, a sleeping bag, a folding table, a
lawn chair, a microwave, and a coffee pot. He immediately began writing
songs and playing the city’s plentiful songwriter nights, living off his
meager savings.
“I was like a
sponge,” he says. “I really opened myself up to what I saw people doing.
It didn’t take that long to realize what really impacts people’s hearts.
My writing changed dramatically for the better just within a few months of
being here -- it was a combination of seeing good writers, and trying to
implement that emotional connection they had.”
One of the
people he met at a writer’s night was superwriter Don Schlitz, whose
catalog includes “The Gambler,” “Forever And Ever Amen”, and a host of
other big hits.
“We talked
for a minute after a show he did,” says Deric. “I told him I was a
songwriter and he asked me my name and where I was from. Then, when I said
goodbye about half an hour later, he remembered my name and hometown, and
asked what I listened to and who I was influenced by. Then he said, ‘Would
you bring a tape to my publishing company office?’ I couldn’t believe I’d
even met this guy, let alone that he asked to hear something. I was on
cloud nine. It set a pretty high standard for me on how you should treat
people.”
Deric also
had an opportunity to meet and spend some time hanging out with another of
his songwriting influences, Steve Earle, after they were introduced by a
mutual friend.
“Steve, like
Don Schlitz, treated me like a peer. I was a nobody, but they made me feel
like I was one of them. I‘ve always been grateful for that. That kind of
affirmation from two great songwriters went a long way to encourage me to
keep my head down, work hard, and just keep doin’ what I do, especially
through the lean times.”
And there
were lean times. Deric and his girlfriend Margaret, a songwriter from
South Carolina, often struggled to make ends meet for themselves and her
five children. Their drafty, 100-year old rented farmhouse was hot in the
summer, and cold in the winter. With little money stretched in a lot of
directions, often they would come home and the telephone or power would be
turned off, and not because of faulty wiring. Deric remembers, “When you
only have so much money, you prioritize your needs – and people gotta eat.
I guess it comes down to starving in the light, or eating in the dark. We
ate in the dark.” Sometimes co-writing appointments on music row had to be
cancelled because he couldn’t afford the gas to get there. When he could
afford the gas, he had to call everyone outside to help push the truck
down the driveway so he could pop the clutch and get it started. When he
got to town he had to park facing downhill – so when he went to leave he
could start it again. “It was an ‘85 Toyota pickup I bought for $100,” he
recalls, “It had no heat or AC, the dashboard lights didn’t work, the
windshield had a huge crack in it, and it used a quart of oil a week.
Man, I loved that truck!”
It’s looking
like the lean times might be behind him. With his recording advance from
Lyric Street, Deric was able to solve the family’s transportation problem,
when he traded the ‘85 Toyota pickup for an almost-new Ford Expedition.
“There was a moment that really summed up how far we’d come,” he says.
“Margaret and I were driving into town in our new truck, and my record –
the realization of this seven-year dream we’d both shared -- was finished.
I was looking over at her, we were holding hands, and I was just
overwhelmed with emotion. How long it took to get to this place in our
lives -- how long this woman and I had struggled together -- it was a
great moment.”
Now, with
Deric Ruttan, Deric is showcasing his hard-earned musical maturity with a
first effort that promises to add a rich new chapter to the story of 21st
century country music.
