Quality Americana

The opening of Ryan Dart’s “Time Stands Still” hits you like an old school tent revival.

The thumping drum and harmonica instantly puts you on a country road. It has a sing-a-long chorus and a banjo puts you in that lazy afternoon fishing vibe.

On the Road

Dart got his start as a tour manager for a young, up and coming cowboy named Ryan. 

“He was just playing himself,” Dart joked about seeing Bingham on Yellowstone. They hit the road back in 2010 just after he landed his Oscar for “The Weary Kind” and bursted on the national scene. “I’ve done a lot of touring with other people and I was always writing the whole time. I’ve been out with more rock bands than anything.”

Touring with Bingham really sparked his creative mind and helped form the sound we find on If Love Don’t Break You.

Arkansas

Dart was born in Colorado and raised in rural Arkansas. 

“I got the southern accent baked in the cake that I can’t do anything about,” Dart joked. “I grew up in western Arkansas out in the middle of absolutely nowhere.” 

In his early memories, Dart was learning covers of Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan. His mother played piano and guitar and they had a family friend that spent time writing songs in Nashville. 

“It just showed me that people could actually do it,” Dart said. “Before then I didn’t know that was a thing. You’ve gotta really want it, and it’s got to be something that you’re going to do no matter what. I think that’s the trick.” 

Now that Dart has seen the inner workings of the music business, he’s decided to bet on himself.

“This is hard, and it’s up and down, and it’s not going to just roll out like the movies but it’s just how I process the world,” Dart said. “Whatever you’re inspired to write and whatever you’re playing, somebody needs it. That’s something nobody ever really taught me, and maybe I’m delusional, but I’m going to keep believing that.”

Early Years

Dart started performing in High School, with his first performance alongside his classmates at the gym. 

“I’d try and introduce an original here and there,” Dart said. He moved back to Colorado after school and formed a few local bands. “That was the dream was to have a band, where everybody’s bought in and everybody’s shooting for the same goal, you know? I think that’s how we all grow up wanting it to play out.” 

If Love Don’t Break You

If Love Don’t Break You is Dart’s seventh album under his own name, marking fifteen years of writing and recording as a singer-songwriter. 

“This one is a lot more honest, a lot more personal,” Dart said. “I’ve just changed I think as a human. I definitely am all in, in a way that I wasn’t before. I was wearing a little bit of a mask and not wanting to get too raw with it, just playing it a little safe in some ways.” 

Dart has now experienced a major life change through heartbreak which you can hear about on the record. He’s found new love and “learned a lot of lessons the hard way.”

“Getting sober was another big piece of this record,” Dart said. “I was touring with rock bands and I was high for years straight. Even though I was tour managing and wasn’t drinking all day like some of the bands, I was smoking weed the whole time. It was fun, I wouldn’t change it, but I feel a lot better being sober. I feel a lot better just letting it all hang out and trying to write things that probably a younger version of me would have been more guarded with or embarrassed by.”

Being sober has allowed Dart to go through therapy and find a “better version of himself.” He doesn’t want to “live in regret, but it’s a reminder to just never go back.”

Time Stands Still

The Song of the Day looks at Dart’s move to Boulder and letting go of some of the material things that were lost through separation. 

“I took two years to just work on myself and after that I met this amazing woman,” Dart said. “That song really came out of this new relationship and just realizing that a healthy kind of love is kind of like music. It’s just time travel. Like time doesn’t make any sense to me when I’m deep in love. Time either stands still or it just disappears all together.”

The Wild Sea

“The Wild Sea” continues on the theme of new love. It was written while on a trip to the beach in Hawaii. 

“That was one of those that just fell out of the sky,” Dart said. His partner encouraged him to record it and the next morning Dart started the editing process.

This is How it Ends

One of the harder songs to look at focuses on loss. Dart was listening to the radio and they were discussing the tragedy of our youth taking their own lives. 

“After that I lost a few different people,” Dart said. “It’s just always so heartbreaking and you just never want people to feel so alone and so lost and so low that they can’t reach out. I’ve been trying to write something that speaks to that and I just never could do it before. It got to the point where I’m just really trying to really dig deeper with my writing now and the final thing that pushed me over the edge was hearing this story.”

The story talks about someone that nobody knew faced these thoughts of self harm, but afterwards discovered the extent of what they were going through. The lost left messages for their family that acted as a way of checking in on them from the great beyond. 

“I think that was the final push I needed to get that song out in the world,” Dart said. “I want to use that song to try and (advocate) for the people left behind or to help prevent it. It’s such a sad thing in this disconnected society that that could happen. That you get so low that you think the world is better off without you.” 

Dart described the live performances of “This is How it Ends” as emotionally overwhelming, that it “almost has to be the last song or else it’s hard to go on with the set after that.”

Support the Artist

If Love Don’t Break You was recorded by John McVey at Cinder Sound Studio. 

“He’s one that will really share with you his thoughts and be honest,” Dart said. “If a take hits him in the heart and emotionally moves him, he speaks up and he’s looking out for that.”

The album also includes Richard Bowden, who plays fiddle with Bingham and “just some super talented folks that were willing to jump in on it with me. I’m forever grateful for that. I’ve never been more proud of anything that I’ve done and released in this music space than this one.” 

Dart has a string of dates lined up in Colorado including the San Juan Songwriter Festival. More information can be found here.

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