We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ryan Brisotti a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Ryan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?
The overwhelming majority of the time I’m very happy working in music, but there are definitely moments where I wonder what it would be like to do something a little more “normal”. Working in music means you really have to live your life a few weeks at a time because your schedule, amount of work, income, and even what city you’ll be in can vary so wildly from month to month. Personally, I get bored very easily so I usually tend to thrive off of that unpredictability. But I do occasionally wish my life could be a little more consistent. It took me a really long time to be able to fully support myself doing what I want to do, but now that I can, it always feels really fragile. As if at any moment it could all just disappear and drop me off exactly where I started. I think what has really made me think about this a lot recently is a lot of my friends with “normal’ jobs are hitting the “buy a house, have kids, take a yearly family vacation, etc” stage of life, which I’m not saying you can’t do as a creative, but it feels really foreign to me in this career at the moment. Almost like the foundation in my field isn’t sturdy enough to put that much weight on it. But that being said, any time I’m in a new city playing to an electric crowd and an enthusiastic group of strangers insist on buying the whole band shots, or I’m working on a track I’m excited about on a Tuesday afternoon while most people with regular jobs are counting down until 5 o’clock, or I’m writing a song with a group of friends that we can’t wait for the world to hear, it all feels worth it. I always say with this job any day could be “the day”. The day you find out a new track you worked on is having a viral moment, or that you’re going on tour somewhere you’ve never been before, or that a huge artists is cutting a song you wrote. So to me it’s still worth it, and maybe someday my foundation will feel just as solid as anybody else’s. Or maybe it won’t. I think I’m ok with that too.
Ryan, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Ryan Brisotti and I am a songwriter, producer and musician living and working in Nashville, TN. I moved here from Long Island, NY about 6 years ago and have been working in music full time for a little over 2 years now. Most of my days are spent writing songs with various artists, working on both demos and records and playing gigs both in and outside of Nashville. I think what sets me apart from others in my field is that I really try hard to get into the heads of the artists I work with and push them to say what they want to say, in a way they would naturally say it. I really believe the more authentic they are, the better the songs will be and the more their audience will relate to them. I think fans love specific artists because they almost feel like they know them, so I feel like every song should say something about the person singing it. I also definitely consider myself a songwriter first and foremost, but because I do produce and play live, it does help me to see a song from beginning to end and think about how the composition will inspire production choices or where we can add parts for cool live moments. I’m most proud that a lot of the projects I’ve worked on that have done well have really been completed bootstrapped, in the sense that everyone who worked on them from cowriters, coproducers, musicians, photographers and the marketing team have just been a driven group of self starters who wouldn’t stop until we had something we were all really proud of. I think that speaks to the power of assembling a good team and that you can create music, art, media, clothes, food or whatever that really resonates with people if you really develop your skills and strengths and find talented people to cover your weaknesses.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
The most rewarding aspect of being a creative for me is the ability to spend most of my time doing something that is truly fulfilling. I love the fact that my days almost never feel wasted because I spent them doing something that is important to me. Not to mention the feeling of having created something, especially something you’re particularly proud of, is like no other. And when you see other people resonating with what you made, it just takes that feeling to a whole new level. When I write or cowrite a song and then see strangers commenting about how much they love it or what it means to them, it’s almost like a unique sense of community. In my mind, songwriting works because most peoples lives are overwhelmingly similar and that’s actually a good thing. I think everyone wants to feel like they belong, and when your write something that illustrates an aspect of your life that’s important to you and then see other people relate to it because they’ve experienced the same thing, it makes you feel closer to other people in general. I really think being creative can honestly make you a more empathetic and understanding person.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
I wouldn’t say I have a particular goal necessarily, but my mission is to definitely do this as long as I want to. I’ve always said if I wake up one day and decide “I don’t want to do this anymore”, I’d sit with that feeling for a few months. But if it doesn’t go away and I determine that I mean it, I’m going to walk away, regardless of where I am in my career. I think being creative, whether it’s your job or not, is only worth doing if it’s something you truly want to do. Obviously inspiration can ebb and flow, but if you’re just not feeling fulfilled in your work, you should stop doing it. Maybe this means being creative in a different way or maybe it means doing something completely different. But either way you shouldn’t force yourself to be an artist, or musician, or whatever if the love for it is really gone. I think it’s important to be bold enough to walk away from what’s familiar to find something that truly makes you feel happy again. So my mission is to just keep doing music as long as it makes me happy. So far, so good!
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryan_brisotti/
Image Credits
Kayla Eileen, Adazia McDonald