Stacey Ryan Has a Lot to Sing About

When 21 year old Canadian singer songwriter multi instrumentalist Stacey Ryan's parents told her she needed to have a backup plan in case this music thing didn't work out. Her reply was ..."I knew it had to be music or nothing else. There was never a plan B." Judging from the millions of people following her on TikTok, You Tube and other streaming services there is no need for a plan B. Coming off of successful appearances on James Corden' Late Show and Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show the young artist is off to a long and successful musical career.

All About Jazz was lucky to catch up with her just before her first EP, I Don't Know What Love Is, drops on April 7th.

All About Jazz: Hi Stacey, where are you calling from. Are you in Canada?

Stacey Ryan: Actually, I just got into Montreal today and I'm staying at my parents house. I'm currently on tour and it's a funny coincidence that I get to be home.

AAJ: You grew up in Montreal?

SR: I did, I grew up in a suburb right outside the city and just last year I moved to Los Angeles.

AAJ: That must have a been a little bit of a culture shock.

SR: I mean, it was more than that. I'm in an altogether different country, different government, taxes, and all the other boring stuff. I moved there to be closer to my team, my job and my career. It was a great decision for me to make.

AAJ: Do you have any siblings?

SR: Yes, I have an older brother and sister who live with my parents. My brother is an electrician and my sister works for a LASIK MD in a laser eye surgery company. So very different from me.

AAJ: Did the love of music come to you at a young age?

SR: I grew up around music my whole life. We have a piano that my dad still plays. He took lessons for a long time when he was younger. He would make really cool mixed tapes, he had cassettes tapes and CDs that he'd play on his stereo every night so I got introduced to lot of different types of music early on. I don't know what was in me but I just started playing songs by ear when I was really young and wanted to take lessons. Pretty much by the time I could talk I was making up songs.

AAJ: Did you have a preference as to what to listen to, jazz, blues, rock, the whole gamut?

SR: When I was younger I just listened to what was being played at home. You know, my dad was playing music every night after he got home from work and we were making dinner. I grew up loving everything he was playing, Michael Jackson, ABBA, Cat Stevens, Ella Fitzgerald. There were so many different types he would play and as I got older and started to meet new people they would introduce me to music that I had never heard. That's when I started refining my musical taste.

AAJ: Piano was your first instrument?

SR: Piano was the one, and I still think to this day, is the instrument I'm most comfortable with. If I'm trying to do vocal arrangements or thinking about theory I always envision what it would sound like on the piano. When I turned nine or ten I really started to take the piano seriously.

AAJ: Was your first language English or French?

SR: My whole family is English and I ended up going to an elementary school that was half English and half French. Then in high school and later on I started doing everything in French. I was going to French schools because I thought their music programs were just a little more suited to me. It all worked out really well because I became fluent in French.

AAJ: Was there a concentration on a certain genre of music or just music in general?

SR: In high school I was in an advanced music program so instead of having two or four music classes on a nine day schedule we had six and we had to be in an after school program and it was required that we be in the band. We had to learn a concert band instrument so I learned trumpet. That definitely gave me a different outlook because trumpet was so different from piano and guitar. Piano and guitar are more like accompanying instrument where trumpet is more loud and present and you can only play one note at a time. So it was cool to have a different perspective. Schooling in Quebec is very different than anywhere else. Before you get your bachelor's degree out of high school you get your associates degree first. It's just the way it works. We go into a program called CEGEP (It's an acronym from the French term Collège d'enseignement general et professionnel, which means General and professional teaching college. In Quebec, Canada, it's a public school that provides the first level of post-secondary education.) When I went I had the choice of either jazz interpretation or composition. I wasn't composing so much then so I went into jazz interpretation and my main instrument was my voice. Once a week I would meet with a vocal teacher, then we would do secondary instrument classes, working in a recording studio and studying the history of music from Gregorian Chants to today's pop songs. We covered a broad spectrum and I feel most of what I know about theory I learned in my three years in CEGEP. I met so many great people and for the first time in my life I played in bands in bars and small venues. I graduated in 2020 and we were supposed to have this big program where everyone's arrangements were going to be showcased but Covid shut us down. Eventually I went on to the university to get my degree in the same program I did in CEGEP—jazz interpretation—but after three semesters I decided to take a break which turned into me not going back. At the same time things began taking off for me so it was like perfect timing.

AAJ: So you're fluent in English and French and you were living in a French speaking city, did you write in English or French?

SR: It's so funny that you asked me that because the people on my crew on our tour asked me that same question yesterday. We're back in Montreal where everything is in French so they wanted to know. But I very much think and write in English because that's what I'm more comfortable in now, especially since moving to the states. Living in the states doesn't give me the opportunity to speak that much French anymore but I still would eventually like to write more in French just to utilize that part of my brain.

AAJ: Do you remember the first song you wrote?

SR: I wrote so many songs when I was about nine years old. They were just for fun and I had no idea what I was talking about but I wanted to try it. The first one I remember clearly writing was called "Invisible." I could not tell you how it goes or what the words are. My first what I call real song is called "Next to You" and that's still up on my You Tube channel. For the longest time I told myself I'm not going to write songs until I have lived through some major life experiences which I hadn't had, like waiting for a terrible heartbreak or something to be able to write about. Looking back on it now that is not entirely true because when I got to college I started meeting new people and being more open and realized there was more to write about than just relationships. That's when I really got the songwriting bug and haven't stopped.

AAJ: I'm glad you brought up age and experience. The song "Fall In Love Alone," what had you experienced to write that?

SR: Okay, so this is 2023 and I think at the end of 2020 I met someone through the internet. We had seen each other on Tik Tok then got to messaging and video calling. We had a group of friends and we were in full quarantine so we were all playing games through our computers at least once a week which was really cool because there was nothing else we could do. There was this one guy in the group who I really like but I couldn't tell him or find a way to tell him. So when I was writing "Fall In Love Alone" this whole situation had already seen the light of day and eventually I told him my feelings and he said he felt the same thing about me. Obviously, it was a long distance relationship and nothing was going to result from it. So "Fall In Love Alone" I went back to how I couldn't tell him what I was feeling. That's what I pulled from to write the song because those emotions were real to me even though we had never met in person. I think it's just awesome because we've talked about it and he knows the song is about him and it's cool that I could write about something that wasn't really happening but people could connect with.

AAJ: What comes first for you, the lyrics or the music?

SR: I like to get the music down first before I define melodies or lyrics because a lot of how I write a song comes from a vibe the music is giving. If the music is feeling a little angsty my lyrics will reflect that instead of something that is sweeter or softer. Maybe it's the musician in me that wants the music set before I start putting words to it. Sometimes I'll think of some words but I'm not near an instrument so I'll write the words on my phone and if I've moved on to something else I'll forget those lyrics and write about something else. I may remember one day that I have those lyrics then try to write music to them but that's not usually the way it happens.

AAJ: I need to tell you that you're speaking to someone who is probably older than your grandfather so I am not of the TikTok generation. What is the process of doing TikTok and how do you track who is watching?

SR: I was one of those people who was like I'm never going to download TikTok, I don't think I really would like it and I was making a statement at the time that it wasn't cool to like TikTok. But one day I was in the break room, I used to work in a grocery store, and my friend said "just download something, you'll really like it," so I did. I liked it so I started posting more and putting more effort into the videos. I would plug my guitar into my computer and have a good microphone and a mixer then add some stuff in post production. That was in the summer of 2020 when we all had plenty of time on our hands. After a while of making videos and coming up with more cool creative ideas I noticed that more and more people were watching. I would go through different periods on TikTok or I'd stick to one trend or idea because it was working so well. Eventually I'd move on to something else, I would use a specific background for a while or when I was living with my parents you would see a lot of me sitting at my desk playing my guitar. If you look at videos from the year before I had that set up I would prop up my phone on a window sill and play songs so it's kind of cool to see the progress and the evolution of my videos. It's a bit difficult now that I'm on tour, it's hard to find private time. It's hard to find time in general to make the quality of content I want. But I'm having an amazing time on tour and playing shows in different cities every two days. There are pros and cons to being on the road and also having to deal with the TikTok side of things. On one hand I want to dive in and be completely into TikTok but on the other hand I love being on tour and living in the moment.

AAJ: Are the musicians on tour with you also from TikTok?

SR: Jake Wesley Rogers, the act I open for, got discovered being on America's Got Talent. That led him to meeting Elton John and growing a fan base then he opened for Panic at the Disco and his fan base grew even bigger but I don't think he ever used TikTok or at least it wasn't his starting point like it was for me. He does have a song now that is gaining a lot of traction on TikTok. So he's posting more and getting viral moments that didn't happen at the beginning. It's just kind of cool to see how differently people use TikTok to help them start their career and helps other move up.

AAJ: I read that you have 1 1/2 million followers on TikTok.

SR: That's correct.

AAJ: The TikTok audience skews to a younger age, how will get to an older audience?

SR: I've seen a lot since I've been on TikTok and there's so many factors that goes into who TikTok shows your video to. I remember right at the beginning when I started putting more effort into my videos I used to do jazz quartet singing videos where I put my face on the screen in four positions and sing a jazz quartet arrangement of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy." Comments from older viewers came in like they never thought they'd a young girl sing that song. That video reached a lot of people who knew the song but it also reached people my age who had never heard of it and they were like this is so cool and vocally pleasing to listen to. On the other hand I'll post something and it will reach a completely different audience. A lot of times who TikTok shows your videos to is mainly out of your hands. It's all based on codes and algorithms and stuff I don't understand. There is a way you can curate your videos because what TikTok wants to do is show your videos to an audience who will appreciate it.

AAJ: Talk about "Don't Text me When You're Drunk." Did that happen to you?

SR: It really did. I was in university at the time and I was seeing this guy who I could really have feelings for but that was something he was not looking for at the time. I'm like, cool, I'm glad you can be honest with me and tell me before something happened but we're not looking for the same thing. It was all good and a couple of days later he was playing a show, he was also a musician, and he texted me that he was kind of disappointed that I ended our relationship and we were texting back and forth and he texts that he too drunk to talk about this. The next day I wrote the song. I remember I was going to a show in the city and I had some time to kill so I went to the practice room and started writing the song. I posted a snippet of it on Tiktok and before I knew it I had 100,000 views which was a lot in general but especially a lot for an original song. That was a good feeling. Right about the same time, the end of 2021, there was a girl named Sadie Jean who was a musician slash artist and she was going all around TikTok with her video which was blowing up because she was doing an open verse challenge which is when you have your song and you cut out a verse so that people can add their own lyrics either by singing, rapping, whatever you can think of to fill that empty space. My manager asked if I ever thought about doing something like that since the response to that was so huge. I told him not really, I didn't have any music that was ready to be released, "Don't Text Me When You're Drunk" wasn't finished being written yet and then the mixing had to be done, all the production. But I posted it anyway and it went super viral and a bunch of statistics showed my video had reached a quarter of the people on the platform which is around 300 million people. It doesn't even sound like a real number, it's so exorbitant. That led me to being contacted by every major label who wanted to chat, then publishing companies began calling and it was so fast and so new that they were ready to sign me after this one video just because of how many people it reached. That's the power of TikTok, one month after posting a video I could be signed with a label.

AAJ: That's a lot a pressure so fast. Are you having any problems handling it?

SR: It was and still is a lot, you're always in the limelight and have a certain personality but it's what I always wanted to do, to have a music career. I just never thought it would happen the way it did and how quickly it did. It was very overwhelming at first, I don't think it will ever not be overwhelming. I'm having 10 Zoom calls back to back with record labels that are giving the same spiel about wanting to work with you. It was a lot to navigate through but I'm very happy to have signed with Island Records which is a subdivision of Universal Music and I've experienced really really great things with them. There's a lot of travel not only to play shows but to meet with the press for promos and interviews. This was all new to me, being on planes flying all over the place, living out of suitcases, being in different hotels every night. It was difficult for me because I'm a homebody, I like to feel settled and the joke now is I chose the wrong career because I'll never be at home. I've become much more comfortable now that I know the way this works. I've learned to prioritize and cherish the time when I do get to be home. There's also the moment when I'm on tour and I'm having these once in a lifetime experiences.

AAJ: You have an EP dropping April 7th.

SR: Yes, it's called "I Don't Know What Love Is." There's six songs on it, four of them are out. Three have been out, we did it like a waterfall so "Fall In Love Alone" came out in May then "Deep End" came out in August, "Over Tonight" came out in January and we just dropped a song as a gift before the EP is released on the 7th. So there will be two songs that haven't been heard before.

AAJ: So the latest song that was released can be heard where?

SR: You can hear it on any streaming service, You Tube, Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, Amazon, everywhere.

AAJ: Any full length albums in the future?

SR: Definitely, just before we left on tour we started to track some album songs. We have a set list of songs—basically they're kind of locked in. Before I left on tour I worked on some vocal arrangements and just arrangements in general because my producers are going to work on the songs while I'm away but I wanted to get as much of my input as I could. I love watching the progression of the album but I also love this EP because it was my first writing trip in LA over a year ago. These 15 new songs for the album, I don't want to say that they're better but I just think they're elevated over what's coming out because I've learned so much, have more experience and I've found a really good core of people who understand what I want to do. I understand how long it takes to get a record out there but I'm already looking forward to putting this album out probably the first part of next year.

AAJ: Well, you've got a fan with me, I love what I've heard and can't wait for more.

SR: Thank you very much and thank you for this interview.

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