Serena Ryder
Words & Music magazine
Spring 2007
Serena Ryder is a casebook intuitive. She trusts her feelings and her gut, and tries always to put heart before head. Case in point: She recently acquired an iPod attachment that allows her to record song fragments on the fly. Having digitally captured a dozen useful ideas, she somehow managed to erase every last one. Panic stations? Not for this wise-beyond-her-years 24 year-old from central Ontario. “Everything happens for a reason,” she says with a philosophic shrug. Besides, her memory serves her well. “Your ideas never disappear. The best ones stick around even if you think you’ve lost them forever.”
A gifted songwriter but best known to date for her visceral, profoundly emotive voice, Ryder has launched her major-label career with If Your Memory Serves You Well, a bookend of sorts to k.d. lang’s Hymns of the 49th Parallel that finds her covering classic Canadiana. (Released by EMI in Canada and Australia late last year, the album is slated for an April release in the US. via EMI-subsidiary Manhattan Records). The repertoire dates back almost a century, but much of it is from the 1960s and written by singer-songwriters the same age as Ryder is now – Rick Danko, Bonnie Dobson, Zal Yanovsky and Sylvia Fricker (now Tyson) included. Leonard Cohen’s “Sisters of Mercy” is the theme-setting opening cut since it “taps into the timeless ether of wisdom, beauty and truth – which is what that song and this record is kind of all about for me.”
Pruning through nearly 500 long-listed options assembled by veteran publisher Frank Davies and then recording the dozen consensus tracks favored by Ryder, Davies and producer Steve Mackinnon amounted to a Songwriting 101 crash course. “It’s been a blessing for my process in learning and growing as a songwriter,” she explains. And while Ryder makes the material very much her own as a performer, she found it fascinating “to mould myself into the shoes of other writers and see things from a different perspective.”
When she sits down with a guitar to write nowadays, melodic themes are foremost in her mind. “I’m starting with the melody and just mumbling gibberish over top of it until, eventually, the gibberish morphs into actual lyrics. I really enjoy how a certain vocal sounds resonate with certain notes. It feels more like painting than songwriting this way.” The approach plays to the strengths of a self-taught musician who learns her material by heart rather than notation. “I don’t really know how to write music. I don’t have perfect pitch. It’s all sense memory for me. My body and my voice remember.”
While she’s no stranger to interpreting other writers (John Prine’s “Illegal Smile” and Oasis’s “Wonderwall” were staples of her first live shows), Ryder is committed to her own muse. Her writing was showcased on 2004’s critically acclaimed Unlikely Emergency. She’s co-written with Jenn O’Brien, Randy Bachman, Ron Sexsmith and Damhnait Doyle. And, while she’s not yet met him, she’s treating a certain Montreal-born, Judaeo-Buddhist icon as a role model. “He works so hard at what he does. It does not come effortlessly. It’s just so inspiring to me to realize that Leonard Cohen is human.”
DISCOGRAPHY
If Your Memory Serves You Well (EMI, 2006)
Live In Oz (independent, 2005)
Unlikely Emergency (Isadora, 2004)
Serena Ryder Live (independent, 2002)
A Day in the Studio (independent, 2002)
Live At Market Hall (independent, 2000)
TRACK RECORD
* Raised in Millbrook, Ont. just outside Peterborough, Ryder first began singing along to AM radio as a kid while seated in the frontseat of her dad’s pick-up truck (which was nicknamed Bertha).
* Ryder’s discovery at age 13 of her mum’s discarded LP collection was a primary influence and inspiration. Major finds included John Prine, Linda Ronstadt, Kris Kristofferson, The Beatles and Ella Fitzgerald.
* Publicist and #1 fan Richard Flohil introduced her to agent John Sinclair, who has booked her on Australian tours eight times and counting. “Serena always delivers live,” says Flohil. “She’s developed into one of the strongest female vocalists I’ve ever heard.”
Words & Music magazine
Spring 2007
Serena Ryder is a casebook intuitive. She trusts her feelings and her gut, and tries always to put heart before head. Case in point: She recently acquired an iPod attachment that allows her to record song fragments on the fly. Having digitally captured a dozen useful ideas, she somehow managed to erase every last one. Panic stations? Not for this wise-beyond-her-years 24 year-old from central Ontario. “Everything happens for a reason,” she says with a philosophic shrug. Besides, her memory serves her well. “Your ideas never disappear. The best ones stick around even if you think you’ve lost them forever.”
A gifted songwriter but best known to date for her visceral, profoundly emotive voice, Ryder has launched her major-label career with If Your Memory Serves You Well, a bookend of sorts to k.d. lang’s Hymns of the 49th Parallel that finds her covering classic Canadiana. (Released by EMI in Canada and Australia late last year, the album is slated for an April release in the US. via EMI-subsidiary Manhattan Records). The repertoire dates back almost a century, but much of it is from the 1960s and written by singer-songwriters the same age as Ryder is now – Rick Danko, Bonnie Dobson, Zal Yanovsky and Sylvia Fricker (now Tyson) included. Leonard Cohen’s “Sisters of Mercy” is the theme-setting opening cut since it “taps into the timeless ether of wisdom, beauty and truth – which is what that song and this record is kind of all about for me.”
Pruning through nearly 500 long-listed options assembled by veteran publisher Frank Davies and then recording the dozen consensus tracks favored by Ryder, Davies and producer Steve Mackinnon amounted to a Songwriting 101 crash course. “It’s been a blessing for my process in learning and growing as a songwriter,” she explains. And while Ryder makes the material very much her own as a performer, she found it fascinating “to mould myself into the shoes of other writers and see things from a different perspective.”
When she sits down with a guitar to write nowadays, melodic themes are foremost in her mind. “I’m starting with the melody and just mumbling gibberish over top of it until, eventually, the gibberish morphs into actual lyrics. I really enjoy how a certain vocal sounds resonate with certain notes. It feels more like painting than songwriting this way.” The approach plays to the strengths of a self-taught musician who learns her material by heart rather than notation. “I don’t really know how to write music. I don’t have perfect pitch. It’s all sense memory for me. My body and my voice remember.”
While she’s no stranger to interpreting other writers (John Prine’s “Illegal Smile” and Oasis’s “Wonderwall” were staples of her first live shows), Ryder is committed to her own muse. Her writing was showcased on 2004’s critically acclaimed Unlikely Emergency. She’s co-written with Jenn O’Brien, Randy Bachman, Ron Sexsmith and Damhnait Doyle. And, while she’s not yet met him, she’s treating a certain Montreal-born, Judaeo-Buddhist icon as a role model. “He works so hard at what he does. It does not come effortlessly. It’s just so inspiring to me to realize that Leonard Cohen is human.”
DISCOGRAPHY
If Your Memory Serves You Well (EMI, 2006)
Live In Oz (independent, 2005)
Unlikely Emergency (Isadora, 2004)
Serena Ryder Live (independent, 2002)
A Day in the Studio (independent, 2002)
Live At Market Hall (independent, 2000)
TRACK RECORD
* Raised in Millbrook, Ont. just outside Peterborough, Ryder first began singing along to AM radio as a kid while seated in the frontseat of her dad’s pick-up truck (which was nicknamed Bertha).
* Ryder’s discovery at age 13 of her mum’s discarded LP collection was a primary influence and inspiration. Major finds included John Prine, Linda Ronstadt, Kris Kristofferson, The Beatles and Ella Fitzgerald.
* Publicist and #1 fan Richard Flohil introduced her to agent John Sinclair, who has booked her on Australian tours eight times and counting. “Serena always delivers live,” says Flohil. “She’s developed into one of the strongest female vocalists I’ve ever heard.”
