Ryan Harvey, Interviewed by Spencer Denk
October 2020
Spencer: Hello everyone I’m here with Ryan Harvey, A talented musician, song-writer, activist from Baltimore, Maryland.
Ryan: How’s it going y’all? Thanks for having me.
Spencer: First off, what is your background, where did you grow up? What was the area like for people unaware?
Ryan: I grew up in Towson, Maryland, many of you can relate to that. But yeah I grew up in the suburbs both of my parents come from different working backgrounds. My mother comes from a working-class background. I got both ends of privileges of the work ethics that I get from my parents but overall my parents had decent jobs. I live in Baltimore City now and I've been living here for the last decade-and-a-half.
Spencer: Is that where you plan to reside? In Baltimore city?
Ryan: Yes and no, it's just where I ended up. I tried to live in a few other places, but Baltimore is affordable and I live around the people I grew up with.
Spencer: Growing up, did you know you wanted to pursue music?
Ryan: I got into music early in my life. I was exposed to punk rock early on and punk rock exposed me to politics which led me to activism. I got involved in political activism -- not becoming a politician or anything, but I was doing punk rock music with friends and it wasn't going anywhere. And then I heard early American folk music, and I was really interested in that, so then I started writing songs. I always played or created music for fun. I started writing folk music and I started to get notoriety from people then I started to take it a little bit more seriously.
Spencer: Aside from being a musician, you’ve lectured at many universities, did you see yourself doing this at an early age?
Ryan: It's funny because I dropped out of high school and every time I speak in front of a class I think wow this is so cool. In a way yeah, I'm an activist, I'm a leader, I was always the person igniting the things that were happening. I was often speaking to groups so it comes natural to me. I would have never thought at a young age I would be doing this. I never really gave it too much thought, I never really had a career in mind in school. I wasn't lost and I was never too worried about my future and what it held for me. I did construction for a decade. Things just fall in my lap as life goes on.
Spencer: Relating to speaking in front of people, do you often get nervous before speaking, in relation to getting nervous before performing a song?
Ryan: To be honest when I'm speaking or playing music in front of people the bigger the crowd the more comfortable I am. I feel confident in that position. Maybe if it was something that I didn't understand it would be different. But the reason I ended up in those positions was because I studied the topic, I became an expert in the things I talked about and the way that I covered them. I'm not pretending to be a definitive expert upon a topic, but professors have always loved my presentations because it's very natural to me I always feel comfortable and confident. I have been the kid in the class who didn't care, so it's easy for me to connect to the students.
Spencer: That’s something always to think about, If you had to give a speech in front of the class, It's hard speaking about something you’re not passionate about.
Ryan: I get excited to see people paying attention and that relates to my music as well. I don't have my eyes closed when performing. I like to see people looking at me as it builds my energy and that lets me know that I broke through. And to see that I broke through the audience, that lets me know the audience members trust me and they open up towards me.
Spencer: Going off your work, can we talk about your Podcast “Hope Dies Last” which is a great name by the way, can you tell us more about this podcast?
Ryan: So the general theme of the podcast is International politics. I go different places with it, like I have an episode about soccer in England, but mostly I interview activists and I try to sit down with people. I like to call participant experts -- not people who have a PhD in that topic who are top notch -- someone who is not authority to subject but someone who was involved in the issue and can relate to it fairly well. I don't expect people to listen to my podcast to learn the A to Z of an issue but I want them to listen and be like, wow that taught me a lot. I have a vague idea of how I can play a role and can participate and solve it. In general the podcast is building a better understanding of things happening around the world and why they're happening and what people are doing in response.
Spencer: Yes very interesting and where can we find the podcast? Is there a schedule of the podcast?
Ryan: So I try to release a podcast every two weeks on every Tuesday. The pandemic has changed that a little bit, it's just a little bit harder to schedule the interviews. I used to do the interviews in person to capture the nuance of the interview, but often times, the interviews get delayed because they don't have a good mic, etc. But typically every two weeks on Tuesday you can find my podcasts available anywhere you can typically find a podcast. Find it on Apple and Spotify.
Spencer: Going back to what you said earlier about you listening to music at an early age, did this inspire you to start making music? And did you have any role models you looked up to as a kid?
Ryan: Yes definitely, I got into the local punk scene in Towson, the political punk band called Chaotix. The guys in that band were people that I looked up to and I was in communication with as well. As with any music scene, the people that are actually your heroes are people that you know and that you can talk to and you could be part of their circle -- they're not larger-than-life figures. But then there's also this songwriter/singer Phil Ochs from the 1960s. I would listen to his music and then the next day I went to go buy an acoustic guitar and then I started writing folk music
Spencer: Did you teach yourself to play the acoustic guitar ?
Ryan: I learned how to play the bass at school when I was younger and stuff but I learned how to play acoustic guitar by using the internet. That's very unique because it was the early 2000s and there are only a small selection of videos on YouTube because it was just becoming a "thing." I was learning chord formations online, but there were no chord videos online. There were just chord formations that I just learned and followed that taught me how to play certain songs and generally taught me how to play the acoustic guitar.
Spencer: That’s amazing, I remember when I was in high school and I tried to teach myself how to play guitar and I tried using YouTube instead of expensive guitar lessons and I failed miserably.
Due to Covid-19, I would say that it's hard scheduling and performing in front of the usual crowd your used to performing in front of, so what kind of adjustments have you made? Are you partaking in social media performances?
Ryan: I have done two social media performances because I was invited to them, but in general I haven't been performing much overall. I haven't been writing a lot because there's so much other stuff that's happening, there's so much other art out there. I don't have the burning need to release projects right now. The projects I've created recently were generally sad and I didn't want to release that to the people. I felt like I didn't even want to record these right now. I want to create something that will inspire people and point them in a good direction. I don't want to sing a song and make them feel like everything is bad. That's not what the people need. But I started this podcast. That was a medium in which that I could actually express my thoughts. There was a time in my life where I couldn't write songs for a while. 'Man what's going on,' I thought to myself. And then I found a drum-set at a party and started jamming, formed a punk band with my friends and I wrote like a whole album in a month. I had all this material that didn't fit into the folk music. It was like a good outlet that I needed. With the podcast, I was out of material but the podcast presented a whole different genre where I can put ideas and express a format where people can listen. I was planning an online concert, I have some nice equipment I can use to enhance the experience but I haven't been feeling super motivated to do that.
Spencer: I feel like you strive for the audiences reaction when you’re performing, and when performing over social media you can’t get that.
Ryan: I feel like if I did do a social media concert it would be different from what my in person concerts consist of. Like it wouldn't be the same type of performance you would get from an in-person concert. If I'm on tour and I'm doing 20 shows a month, each night I'm doing different songs and it's an entirely different show, different songs in different orders. I develop all of that once I'm in the room and it depends what city I’m in, depends what happened in the news that day. So you can follow me for 3 days and you could expect something different each and every night. But if I did it over zoom, I wouldn't have the intimacy I have with the people and it wouldn't be as unique as what's going on with the news that day, as the older songs I would have played based on the audience.
Spencer: Going off the pandemic, do you have any plans such as music videos or anything you want to achieve once the pandemic is over?
Ryan: Something that's a blessing in disguise about the pandemic is that I was touring a lot. Touring is very taxing and cost a lot of money and now I'm dying to get back on tour once the pandemic is over. I plan to go back on tour and I think it will be good for me because listeners would want to hear live performances and see that Ryan is back. It was almost an excuse to put that life on hold for a while. My life is a little different now than what it was four years ago so my touring will look different too.
Spencer: Do you think the pandemic has helped your career in anyway possible? For example the pandemic has helped me school wise, because without the pandemic I would be commuting every day from work to school. Has the pandemic helped you in any way or form?
Ryan: I wouldn't say that it's helped my career. If you want to talk about the prospects of me making money through the art I would say that it definitely hurt it, you know obviously I can't go on tour, people aren't buying music as much because they are not working. My podcast listenership has dropped partly because I was making a 40 to 50 minute podcast and that's not your average commuter podcast you know. I'm not listening to a 50 minute podcast on the 20-minute train ride. So part what I've done in response is shortening the episodes. But being able to stay home for a long time and get the ability to hang out with my wife and myself and the do my own thing -- it's been good for me in that sense -- but I think for a lot of musicians, if you did not know, musicians don't make money from you buying their album or their music. They make money by going on tour and they make money by selling merchandise. You make more money by selling merchandise than you do by writing songs. Artists who are at home right now producing music are not making any money by iTunes or Spotify or anything like that. And who knows when this will end. So this makes a lot of independent artists question their future of being an artist, as far as how you can make a living off of it. I could barely go on tour and come back with a profit. I would work jobs construction making good money then go on tour then come home broke. It was great but it was also difficult. Going to Europe and playing shows and people knowing the lyrics and everything -- I still wasn't making a living off of it.
Spencer: Were you by yourself on the road, did your wife come with you?
Ryan: Ideally in the future she would, But I have a trio of people I tour with, especially when I tour in Europe. But usually I would tour alone or with one other musician, to maximize resources and minimize tension on the road. The less people you travel with the less likely you'll argue with one another on where you want to eat.
Spencer: In reference towards your music, what do you hope to achieve with your music.
Ryan: There's a few things generally, I do my music as a voluntary thing as a benefit to the people who listen. I put all my music online for free and if anybody emails me looking for my old music I would gladly email them, send it to them, I don’t care. The political intention is that I want music to help people understand and rationalize activism and getting involved in and trying to improve the world. And then there's the Intercultural part of it, as being part of this tradition and I'm carrying forward this piece of culture as the political protest folk music. I have a role to play and in about fifty years my name will be on a list of folk musicians who carry traditions. I definitely feel motivated by that and have a connection. There's my personal reasons for doing it, too, and I need an outlet for sharing what I'm thinking about and how I process information and give it to other people. We are young people, we understand music as the music industry. But there was a time where music wasn't a profession that you made a living from, you just did it. And you did for other people, for most of human history you couldn't even record music. So it was particularly a live thing, touring bands is a recent phenomenon. I’m not necessarily sad about how music is changing as a result of internet technology and the pandemic. ..
Spencer: Lastly, Do you have any upcoming projects you can tell us about? Any exclusive information you can give us?
Ryan: Nothing really, hopefully I’ll be expanding my podcast in the near future, As I wanted to add a live element in the podcast of me streaming and providing a video version of the podcast, interviewing people on video and stuff like that. I have been focusing on journalism and I have a few articles I have been working on and one I should be coming out with the next month or so.
Spencer: That’s what you’ve been working on recently?
Ryan: Yes, actually I’ve been working on articles for the past two years, Just been doing a lot of investment in journalism.
Spencer: That’s all the questions, I have for you today. Thank you so Much Ryan for taking time out your day to talk to me.