It's hardly fair to call
Ryan Stevenson a new artist. The pop/rock singer-songwriter has been crafting tunes for more than a decade, getting his start in Eugene, Oregon, with the likes of
Paul Wright and
Shawn McDonald.
After a stint as a paramedic in the Boise area, Stevenson took a different route, switching his full-time lifesaving from ambulances to concert venues as he decided to pursue music full-time. Going from indie to signed, to unsigned, and now to
tobyMac's Gotee Records, it's been a wild ride for Ryan.
And although he's not even close to a new artist, scores of people are just now becoming acquainted with the Idahoan's worshipful, yet culturally accessible songs as he releases his
Holding Nothing Back EP. Ryan took some time to sit down with me after a recent performance.
You've been signed to Gotee, so in a sense you're a new artist, but you've been around a long time. For those that don't know you, briefly take us through your musical history.
I started about eight years ago. I started 10 years ago playing in a band with a guy named Paul Wright in Eugene, Oregon. That's where I'm from. We played together for several years in college. Paul actually signed with Gotee 10 years ago and did a solo thing. I went back into teaching. I just got a normal job for a few years and then I became a paramedic.
I worked for a paramedic in Boise for eight years. While I was working as a paramedic, I just started playing acoustic coffee shops on the side around Boise, around the Northwest and that grew and grew and grew to the point where I really started feeling like something could legitimately come of this. I felt like God was going to use it and I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but I just stayed faithful.
When I was working as a medic, I only worked two days a week. The other five days I would just hit the ground playing music. I kind of just cultivated my own little independent music thing over the course of seven or eight years.
How many albums did you release in that time?
I just did two or three little in home bedroom-type projects of just songs I had written.
And I discovered one of those back in the day, Running to You. Musically, how would you say you've developed over the years?
I went through a little bit of a journey, but I've always wanted to stay true to pop rhythmic music. Growing up on pop music and Michael Jackson and that kind of stuff. I know that's who I am. It's in my DNA.
When I learned to play acoustic guitar, I learned how to do all kinds of other stuff. Playing the acoustic guitar kind of brought out just different experiments in folk or whatever it might be. I'm always coming back to pop music. Now I'm infusing my acoustic vibe over pop-driven tracks and stuff.
So you've just released your Holding Nothing Back EP. For those who haven't heard it, what can listeners expect musically and thematically? Pop, obviously.
I would say if you were to take Maroon 5 and OneRepublic and tobyMac and just mix that all up, that's kind of where my music sits, but for me I love the writing part. I love being able to just say things very blatant. I guess that's what I want people to know about my songs most of all is it's just raw, gut-wrenching honesty and blatant truth because I think that's what always connects with people is truth and raw honesty. If you just speak that out in a really relatable, tangible way, it connects with people.
What's your testimony right now? You've been saved a while. What's God growing and stretching in you now? What's the current story?
It's constant. Being a kid growing up in the church you get in a mode of being a church kid. I've seen how God is always taking us through seasons all the time and I think it'll be like that until we go home to meet Him. We never arrive.
The end goal is not arriving somewhere. It's the journey and the process of God making us pure and holy and for me, it's like every year I don't want to say that I'm always going through trials. I just think we're not immune to it and we're going to go through stuff and God uses that stuff every single day and every single season in our life so that we can minister to the brokenness in others.
That's just my testimony now. Just been through crazy stuff over the last several years from death to miscarriages to being dropped from labels to being dropped from management—literally feeling completely overlooked, disappearing from the scene. Heavy, heavy stuff going on in my life to God saying, "Now that you've got that experience under your belt, speak about it because other people are going through that right now." That's where I'm at.
Is there a song on the new album that has a special place in your current testimony?
I think there are two. One is called "Holding Nothing Back," which is my single out right now. It's just literally, honestly saying and proclaiming a personal cry out to God. It doesn't matter what I have to go through, God. I have to know you. I want everybody that I know to be able to say that. That's what we should all be saying.
Another song on there is called "The Human Side," and it's about abuse. It's about things that happen to you when you're young, when you're little. Those things get written on your heart and they cut you. They don't just go away because you graduate from high school or because you graduate from college or you get a career job or you get married. Those things affect you for a long time.
"The Human Side" just talks about that, and our hope in that is because the Bible says because He was fully human, He understands. He knows exactly what we feel like, what it's like to be in this flesh, how miserable it can be at some times. As Psalm 103 says, as far as the east is from the west, so far as He removed our sins and as high as the heavens are above the Earth, so great is His love. That just gives me a lot of hope.
What inspires you these days? What's getting you excited? Where's your passion?
My family inspires me. My little boys inspire me, just watching them grow, watching them change. Just seeing God's faithfulness is changing my life every day. Seeing God do things in my life and my family's life and just all around me. Seeing God do things I would have only dreamed of, I would never have thought in a million years. Doing things right now that I know in my heart of hearts I never could have made happen. They're happening and developing and unveiling before my eyes and I'm literally doing nothing other than just every day I just want to get up and say, "Jesus, I'm yours. I'm sold out for you today no matter what that looks like. I want to lay down my flesh and just do what you have for me today." That inspires me.
