Country newcomer Ryan Broshear received a little bit of good news recently, as he was named as one of The 615’s “10 Artists To Watch” for 2014. “I was completely surprised,” he said of the news. “We were coming back from New York, and we were meeting with some people. We got an email and we immediately checked it out. I was just blown away and very excited to get that recognition.”
One of the things that appealed to us about the Ohio native is his back-to-basics traditional style, which he attributes to his three biggest influences. “That’s how I developed my voice when I started singing, and it’s the type of music I enjoyed listening to growing up. As I grew up, I had three main influences – Garth Brooks, when it comes to the performance factor. I saw the energy and passion he had on stage, and that drove me to want to do that. Then, I saw artists like George Strait, who could sing effortlessly and had this long and storied career with hit after hit.”
There was another legend that had a key influence on Broshear. “I was always drawn to the old school country, and Merle Haggard was probably my favorite artist of that realm. I always enjoyed his delivery, and how he would inflect the tones. That was something that really influenced me a lot, and made me want to model themselves after.”
Broshear has been promoting his newest release, “Make Each Moment Last,” to radio recently, and he says he treasures his developing relationship with programmers.
“The radio tour has been very enjoyable. I’ve dreamed of every aspect of this business my whole life. We did the first radio tour last year, and have done the second one for the single and to get out on the road and see parts of the country I’ve never seen before, and to go meet people and play them the music is something I’ve dreamed about my entire life, so to be able to meet them, shake their hand, and play on the air, is such an incredible experience.”
He’s also proud of his self-titled debut release, which he admits was very much hands-on. “I wrote all the songs on the record. That was a goal of mine coming out of the gates. I had ten years of working in the industry without a record that I wanted to encompass in the writing. I first moved to Nashville in 2000, and the writing was based on experiences I had gone through over the past ten years – with the exception of ‘Make Each Moment Last,’ which I had written before then.”
He also received some help from an old friend behind the booth. “We were able to hook up with a great producer that I went to high school with named Daniel Agee. He plays for Joe Nichols, and brought all of Joe’s band on board, and brought the music to life in the studio. We were able to stay true to what I believe in with the authentic country sound. I’m very proud of it, and am glad to share it with the world.”
Broshear plans to take his music to the masses in a major way in 2014, and he’s excited about what he has up his sleeve. “We’ve got some songs written that we are very excited about, and we want to get in the studio and cut them. We’re looking to get in the studio in the early part of this year and record those, and have been meeting with some business execs who are thinking about backing us on touring, so we’ve got that in the works. We’re going to hit the road hard this year, and go out and play for people. Hopefully, with a little bit of luck and what we’ve done, we can get picked up on a big tour that will let us get out in front of a lot of people and show them how we do country music.”