Local musician aiming to make Top 10 in national music competition

Michael S. Ryan has been keeping pretty busy during the pandemic.

After all, not only has one half of the well-established Halifax alternative rock duo The Town Heroes written at least twelve songs in 2020 but Ryan recorded and released each of those songs on the first day of every month of the year.

“I’m always trying to be as busy and active as I possibly can so I wanted to kind of expand in a different direction that could create different opportunities,” says Ryan. “I just wanted do something where it was just a slow release of all the music so I just thought a monthly release made sense.”

Those songs would eventually be compiled together and released as a full-length debut solo album entitled From the Bottoms of Our Murky Hearts, available now on Ryan’s website on a pay-what-you-can basis. As he outlines on the website, “money shouldn’t be an obstacle in experiencing and enjoying art.”

“A few years back Radiohead did that, and obviously I’m not at the same level as Radiohead, but I thought that was just a neat way to approach pricing an album because not everybody has 10 dollars to spare,” says Ryan. “At the end of the day, I do find that it balances out — I had someone pay me $200 for an album.”

As if promoting a brand new release wasn’t enough to keep Ryan busy, he has also been selected among the Top 100 contestants in CBC Music’s current Searchlight competition.

The annual “hunt for Canada’s next undiscovered talent” may seem like an unusual platform for a 12-year professional musician who has released five albums with The Town Heroes, toured the world and earned numerous East Coast Music Awards and other accolades, but Ryan still considers himself young in world of music.

“I’m fairly new as a solo artist and I don’t have that much under my belt just as Michael S. Ryan so I thought this would be a good opportunity to try to expand that,” admits the Stillwater Lake songwriter, who says he is also concurrently working on a new Town Heroes album.

From CBC Searchlight’s Top 100 songs and artists, the pool will be narrowed down to a Top 10 through a combination of seven jury selections as well as the remaining three finalists being selected by the public through online votes. 

“Just seeing that the support is there would mean a lot,” says Ryan of the possibility of being one of the Top 10 finalists. “It means a lot just being in the Top 100, it’s amazing to see the people who have wrote me messages or turned out in various different ways and it’s just a great supportive community out there.”

Online votes for artists close on June 8 at 4 p.m. AT on the CBC Searchlight website but regardless of whether or not Ryan makes it into the Top 10 for that competition, he insists he will continue to be a busy man in the near future.

After all, from his Tantallon home studio, he has been releasing two live performance videos every week on YouTube since the start of 2021. Every Monday, he uploads an original song while he caps the week off with his version of a cover song in what he calls, ‘Friday, I’ve Got You Covered.’

“Again, I’m always trying to push things and push the envelope on all my ideas and expand any way I can,” says Ryan. “Someone just might hear a cover song on a Friday and look into who I am and buy an album (but) having the two videos is just a challenge to myself at the same time and having that output just creates potential opportunities.”

For more information on Michael S. Ryan's various projects, visit his website.