Ryder touring to preview U.S. debut CD
Written by Vicki L. Kroll | | news@toledofreepress.comSerena Ryder uses music to make connections.
“There are so many different ways of being and writing and relating that I think what makes a song good is if you can be as truthful and honest and heartfelt and in the moment,” she said. “It’s something that you can connect and relate; I feel that a good song brings people together.”
Her fellow Canadians are listening — and agree. Ryder won the 2008 Juno Award (Canada’s version of the Grammy Award) for best new artist for her album, “If Your Memory Serves You Well.” This year, she took home a Juno for adult alternative album of the year for “Is It OK,” which is available at the Web site www.serenaryder.com and will be released in the states Sept. 15.
Elle magazine has compared the 25-year-old to Aretha Franklin, and O, The Oprah Magazine, likened her to Melissa Etheridge.
Serena Ryder
“It’s honoring; it’s very humbling as well,” Ryder said of the comparisons. “I get really excited that people believe that I have even a little bit of the potential of those kinds of legends. Then I feel really inspired to keep going and to work on my craft even more.”
The Millbrook, Ontario, native performed her first gig at age 8. Five years later, she got a guitar.
“I was always singing other people’s songs and when I got my guitar, it was around the same time I started pulling up records from my parent’s basement, and I started listening to a lot of John Prine, a lot of great singer-songwriters, Kris Kristofferson, Leonard Cohen, a lot of Neil Young,” she said from a tour stop in Spokane, Wash. “I ended up locking myself in my room and saying if these people are singing and playing guitar and writing their own songs — I was absolutely inspired by that.”
Two singles from “Is It OK,” “Little Bit of Red” and “All for Love,” are receiving airplay on 93.9 FM The River out of Detroit and Windsor, Ontario.
“I’d start just jamming on the guitar and playing different melodies, something I thought was personally beautiful, and then starting to make sounds and noises and finding the words inside of them. I’m just following my feelings,” Ryder said about writing for the disc.
“I was going through a lot. … it was kind of the beginning of touring pretty much nonstop. I had also recently just gotten out of a relationship that I was in. Also one of my dearest friends had just passed away,” she said. “So what I was doing was just trying to almost relate to myself … some of those songs are pretty cathartic for me.”
Ryder will play a free show at 8 p.m. July 17 at Ann Arbor’s South University Art Fair on the 107one Main Stage at the corner of Church and Willard streets. Matt Hires will open at 6:30 p.m.
