Three years ago, I released my debut album, Soft Power.

Today, I’m celebrating its anniversary by sharing various audio and visual representations of the work—a nine-track album produced between Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Brooklyn over the course of three weeks. While a few songs were written during my final days living in New York, the majority of it came together in the spring of 2020, locked down in Paris against a menacing virus.

The following winter, I flew home and crashed with Kevin Basko in a spare bedroom at his place in Philly, where we met for the first time before diving into the project together. It proved to be a fruitful and inspiring leap of faith, which I’m proud of to this day.

Since its release, I’ve also shared a full album of my home demos for each song, plus instrumental versions for the real nerds. You can listen to everything below:

Soft Power : Listen/Purchase

Soft Power (Demos) : Listen/Purchase

Soft Power (Instrumentals) : Soundcloud

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Here is a short documentary I made throughout the recording process :

For the three singles of the album, the official music videos were all directed by my friend, Hugo Cohen Sprung.

Single #1 // Weeknights

Single #2 // Alone For the Last Time

Single #3 // Soft Power

Following the release of the album, the New York band got back together with some additional players to properly celebrate it with a sold out show at Union Pool.

Watch the full concert here

Here are four live sessions also done with Hugo on a beautiful summer day at Thomas Lavernhe’s place in Paris.

Weeknights // Garden Sessions

Alone For the Last Time // Garden Sessions

Soft Power // Garden Sessions

We Do It On Purpose // Live & Stripped

What I’ve been listening to

• Penguin Café Orchestra - Self-Titled

• Charley Crockett - Welcome to Hard Times

• Willie Nelson - Red Headed Stranger

• Heartworms - Glutton For Punishment

• Yma Sumac - Mambo!

What I’ve been reading

• Bret Easton Ellis - American Psycho

Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.

Read the previous post.

Greetings from Paris,

Since the turn of the new year, I’ve been getting back onstage after a short hiatus from performing live. The experience has been humbling: ever since my move to France in 2019 and the pandemic of 2020, my gigging schedule has been steadily thinning out—a change that I’ve both welcomed and wrestled with.

For two decades, my identity has been defined by a marriage of songwriting and performance, so when I chose to step away from music altogether last year to focus on fatherhood and a new artistic project, the process was both rewarding and confusing.

In the end, things evolved as I hoped they would, and as they needed to. I found immense fulfillment in my detour from old routines, navigating new challenges, learning, growing, and eventually rediscovering the joy of making music.

Apart from my own music practice, I’ve been exploring new collaborations with musicians I respect a lot. It’s been illuminating. I’ve also now played three recent concerts in Paris, sharing the stage with great artists like DeVotchka and Mia Wray, among others. I’ve found returning to the stage to be exhilarating and stressful, battling a new performance anxiety I’m completely unfamiliar with. But that’s okay. I’m committed to learning whatever it is my body and subconscious are signaling to me, and once again happy to test out new material in front of different audiences—the best way I know to improve upon future releases.

As a thank you to those who continue to support organizing an accident with a paid subscription, you can now watch my full concert from March 9 at La Bellevilloise in Paris, featuring a set of all new music + a guest appearance from my good friend Tomer Lavie of TheLongoodBye. Scroll down for the video.

For those living in Paris, Tomer and I are throwing a free concert on Thursday, March 27 with our two projects, as well as Pampa Folks and some special guests. The event is in honor of the spring equinox and will take place at Centre Culturel (96 Bd de la Villette) with intimate performances from all three artists as well as various collaborations. I hope to see some of you there!

With love,
Ryan

What I’ve been listening to

• Flora Hibberd - Swirl

• Maxwell Farrington & Le SuperHomard - Please, Wait…

• Jesse Welles - Middle

• Kim Deal - Nobody Loves You More

• Bill Fay - Life Is People

• Gabi Hartmann - La femme aux yeux de sel

What I’ve been reading

• Byung-Chul Han - Non-Things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld

Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.

Read the previous post.

Set List

What Lovers Are For
Life in a Band
Bound to Lose
On the Run
Everything We Ever Felt
Tears in Our Eyes
Oh Boy
Tired of Love

Live @ La Bellevilloise :

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Greetings from Paris,

Today I’m happy to share a video, as evidence more than anything, that I’m back.

It may not mean much on the outside, but to me, after over a year of musical hiatus—no concerts, no songwriting, no releases—playing this concert of unreleased material last December meant the world. It has taken me a little time to reapproach music in a truly joyful way, and, well, I’ve got the bug again.

I’m happy to announce that there will be more concerts soon (in France), and that I’ve begun experimenting with a new side project, among other ideas. Can’t wait to share them with you all.

I hope you enjoy this full concert footage taken in Paris on December 13, 2024 @ Au Chat Noir.

With love,
Ryan

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Listen to “Love Exists” (demo):

This song was written on May 17, 2018

Listen to previous demos

Greetings from Paris,

I am deep in the holiday spirit lately, spending all day with Janis and Otto, celebrating his second Chrismukkah. It has also been nearly one month since I ended organizing an accident, releasing the 100th demo of the series. I’m enjoying the time off but am also a lifelong lover of the game, so I’m back with a bonus song and end-of-year picks for my favorite albums of 2024 as well as my personal reading list from the past year.

I hope the holiday break has been restful, vibrant, or whatever you need it to be. Another year is over. I’m grateful for the wonderful friends and family in my life, most notably those who help to lift up my son and show him that a world of love, meaning, and magic exists.

Bonne année,
Ryan

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PS: Here’s a nice poem I read this morning called Gratitude by Patrick Dundon.

“Love Exists” lyrics

Hold me with your two arms
Here in the middle of the road
I’ll begin when you start
Feeling our presence start to grow

Lonely in a blue car
I’ll let you drive so you will know
Not only when we’re too far
We are one among the stars

And I admit
I’m alright with this

I'm feeling a lot like love exists
It feels a lot like what this is
I’m feeling a lot like love exists
Feeling a la la la la la

Would you ever break free
Should this become unlivable
Someone's gotta come clean
It’s you and me against the world

Early when the morning’s wet
I like to have you by my side
Thirty years have come and gone
Urged me on
You are all I want

I'm feeling a lot like love exists
It feels a lot like what this is
I’m feeling a lot like love exists
Feeling a la la la la la

Figure it out by living
Together in flesh and blood
Picture it all forgiven
For you and I

I'm feeling a lot like love exists
It feels a lot like what this is
I’m feeling a lot like love exists
Feeling a la la la la la

I’m feeling a lot like love exists
Feeling a la la la la la
I’m feeling a lot like love exists
Feeling a la la la la la

These lyrics were written in May 2018.

From the Vault

2024 Favorite New Albums

• Mk.gee - Two Star & The Dream Police

• Laura Marling - Patterns in Repeat

• Jessica Pratt - Here in the Pitch

• Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Wild God

• Geordie Greep - The New Sound

• Clairo - Charm

• Delicate Steve - Sings

• MJ Lenderman - Manning Fireworks

• Kendrick Lamar - GNX

• Sam Evian - Plunge

• Cassandra Jenkins - My Light, My Destroyer

• Michael Kiwanuka - Small Changes

• Katie Bollinger - Songs From A Thousand Frames Of Mind

• Hinds - VIVA HINDS

• Cindy Lee - Diamond Jubilee

• Porches - Shirt

• Goat - Goat

• Amyl and The Sniffers - Cartoon Darkness

2024 Reading List

• John Steinbeck - Travels with Charley

• Michel Houellebecq - Submission

• Gabrielle Zevin - Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

• Christian Wiman - My Bright Abyss

• Marilynne Robinson - Housekeeping

• C.S. Lewis - A Grief Observed

• David Mamet - True and False

• David Mamet - Speed the Plow

• David Mamet - Oleanna

• Ian McEwan - Machines Like Me

• Anton Chekhov - The Greatest Short Stories

• Samuél Lopez-Barrantes - The Requisitions

• Ira Levin - Rosemary’s Baby

• Cormac McCarthy - Blood Meridian

• Cormac McCarthy - The Road

• Mary Shelley - Frankenstein

• Tom Segev - One Palestine, Complete

• Rick Rubin - The Creative Act: A Way of Being

• Stephen King - On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

• Stephen King - Misery

• George Saunders - CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

• Haruki Murakami - Norwegian Wood

• Quentin Tarantino - Reservoir Dogs (Screenplay)

• Elie Wiesel - Night

• Thomas Harris - The Silence of the Lambs

• J.D. Vance - Hillbilly Elegy

• James Pogue - Chosen Country

• F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby

• Salman Rushdie - Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

• Joseph E. Uscinski - American Conspiracy Theories

• Leonard Cohen - Let Us Compare Mythologies

• Eva Illouz - Le 8-octobre

Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.

Read the previous post.

Listen to “What Lovers Are For” (demo):

This song was written on October 19, 2022

Listen to previous demos

Greetings from Paris,

Who doesn’t love a good series finale?

Today marks my one-hundredth song with organizing an accident, a project that has been invaluable to me over the past year and a half. When I began sharing my unfinished sketches every week, I was seeking perspective and a bit of validation for my growing catalog of songs. Beyond the music I’d released on Spotify and elsewhere, I was frustrated by hoarding such a large percentage of my music like an overprotective parent, and decided I would remedy the problem through action.

What I did not know then was that creating this space would introduce me to a diverse community of people who choose long-form expression over dopamine hits, be it through prose or musical works-in-progress.

What I did not know then was that, after consecutively experiencing loss and the immense joy of becoming a father, writing here would provide a stable base for creativity when I simply could not sit down at the piano to write a song.

And most importantly, I did not know that writing weekly essays and organizing my thoughts about music life would lead me to write my first novel—a fact that I’ve kept close to the chest since finishing the first draft last spring.

Everything I sought to achieve with organizing an accident was realized in its first weeks: publicly sharing songs that had been hiding on my hard drive for too long; finding the best material to gain insight on years of songwriting; and adopting a new creative routine to develop my prose-writing muscle.

It’s hard to illustrate how much my life has changed over the past year. But by celebrating these songs every week, giving them new life, and making space to reflect on the process, I have successfully avoided losing myself in the uncharted territory I now inhabit.

And now, with one last song ‘fore I go, I’m announcing a short break from the newsletter to think about fresh ways of cultivating and evolving it. I’ll be back soon to write and share extra material with the paid community, but until then, this concludes organizing an accident series no. 1.

With love,
Ryan

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Paris! I will be performing on Friday, December 13th (my first concert in over a year) @ Au Chat Noir with my friend . It will be a solo piano set featuring all new material—you could say it’s kind of like organizing an accident live ;)

✺ Free show
✺ 8:30pm
✺ 76 Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, Paris, 75011

“What Lovers Are For” lyrics

Here’s hopin’ that I’m
About to wake up from a dream
Tape open my eyes
Let it roll, I want to see
Rome’s burnin’ tonight
There’s a light you won’t believe
But I’m right by your side
You can count on me

If we make it tomorrow
And get out of this storm
I’ll free you from the horror
‘Cause that’s what lovers are for

Shook me from a nap
“Honey fast, it’s on TV”
One night before last
Venice crashed into the sea
We’ve nothing to hide
No, we’ll die with conscience clear
When you’re up for the ride
Let’s get out of here

They’re drilling on the moon now
Ain’t much left to explore
I’ll pick you up when you’re down
‘Cause that’s what lovers are for

These lyrics were written in October 2022.

From the Vault

What I’m listening to this week

• Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Push the Sky Away

• Andrea Laszlo De Simone - Immensità

• Rogê - Curyman II

What I’ve been reading

• Ira Levin - Rosemary’s Baby

Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.

Read the previous post.

Listen to “Don’t Turn Your Back on Us” (demo):

This song was written on September 13, 2018

Listen to previous demos

Over a lifetime, the juggling act of contradictory thinking that an artist must perform is arguably the most important role they’ll ever play. To forego it is to reject the entire enterprise of art.

The artist is an astounding zealot, wielding a blind faith rarely seen beyond church walls. At the same time, the artist exists in a perpetual state of self-doubt, forever swatting away both real and imagined criticism from the institutionally inclined.

Committing to a life of uncertainty—devoid of guidelines, playbooks, or a steady paycheck—is a particular kind of madness, leaving one isolated and misunderstood by society. It demands superhuman resilience and an appetite for discomfort, a trait shared perhaps only with entrepreneurs or the philosophers of old.

Those who lack this courage, who live with the constant reality of a backup plan, will always fall back on it. Those who bet their money on the institution—opting instead to engage with art through academia or the corporate world—never truly believed to begin with. That’s fine, but they can never understand the path they chose to avert.

That path is a righteous one, and if the artist can reckon with the compounding debt accrued from years of egoism, their work might begin to serve others—striking fear in their souls, peace in their hearts, and accompanying them along the march toward death. ◍

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“It is not childish to live with uncertainty, to devote oneself to a craft rather than a career, to an idea rather than an institution. It’s courageous and requires a courage of the order that the institutionally co-opted are ill equipped to perceive. They are so unequipped to perceive it that they can only call it childish, and so excuse their exploitation of you.” - David Mamet, True and False

“Don’t Turn Your Back on Us” lyrics

Ain’t no hat in my hand
But I’d rather have it there
Than to let you disappear
With another man

Ain’t it bad how we laughed
At the sadness in the air
Underneath these burning lamps
Of our despair

Don’t turn your back on
Don’t turn your back on us
No certain fate is around the corner
Don’t turn your back on us

If you’re blue
Don’t you do anything I wouldn’t do
There are times when it’s alright
To be someone new

When you can
Call me back
I’ll be waiting on my end
With a tin can phone
And this letter unsent

Don’t turn your back on
Don’t turn your back on us
No certain fate is
Around the corner
Don’t turn your back on
Don't turn your back on us
You don't have to dress it up
To come through my woods
Don't turn your back on us
No, don't turn your back on us

These lyrics were written in September 2018.

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From the Vault

What I’m listening to this week

• Kendrick Lamar - GNX

• Michael Kiwanuka - Small Changes

• Katie Bollinger - Songs From A Thousand Frames Of Mind

What I’ve been reading

• C.S. Lewis - A Grief Observed

Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.

Read the previous post.

Listen to “Once More with Feeling” (demo):

This song was written on August 24, 2023

Listen to previous demos

Greetings from Paris,

It has been forty days and nights since we last saw the sun. Every morning, an impenetrable gray light merges with the building facades, creating the illusion that we live in a cloud. Everyone I know has been ill for weeks, and I’m putting on winter weight before December. Send help.

☁️

But now, some good news: the sun cracked through this morning, the sky is blue, and my dad is in town. Also, today is demo leak no. 98.

For organizing an accident, I’m always digging deeper into the weeds of my rough sketches and first takes, reluctant at times to share phone recordings, my cracked voice, or lyrical gibberish. But it would be a dishonest representation of the songwriting process if I were to only share the most polished, complete demos from my back catalog.

“Once More with Feeling” is a song written in the summer of 2023 and captured live from a piano bench in Normandy. The lyrics are mostly placeholder ideas that I’ve been meaning to revisit—an obligatory rewrite to provide a story deserving of the music. My intention was to address our universal experience of regret after losing someone we love—that unique opportunity for self-reflection when left all alone, our faults as glaringly painful as the heartbreak. Written like a love letter that might begin with, “Now that I know who I could’ve been without you…,” the song is a plea for forgiveness and an admission of wrongdoing.

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From the Vault

What I’m listening to this week

• Liam Benzvi - …And His Splash Band

• Juniore - Trois, Deux, Un

• Goat - Goat

What I’ve been reading

• David Mamet - True and False

Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.

Read the previous post.

Listen to “On the Phone” (demo):

This song was written on April 1, 2021

Listen to previous demos

Greetings from Paris,

It has now been one week since we learned the results of the 2024 presidential election. Like many, I am recovering from a substantially bloated media diet. It’s how I imagine Trump’s campaign team felt nightly aboard their plane—indulging in a spread of McDonald’s while gearing up for their next victory lap.

But greater than the brain fog plaguing me after a week of scrolling X is a surprising sense of optimism. Yes, optimism. While this stance could easily be struck down as dangerously naive, it’s the choice I’m making as we enter our ninth year of Trumpism, internet-as-culture downstream politics, and a genuine rightward shift across the U.S. map.

I’ve arrived at this position not due to a lack of analysis about the dangers of the forthcoming administration, but because of an overabundance of it. I know there will be no shortage of alarmist reporting to engage with in the coming months and years—and, at my weakest, I will be first in line to lap it up. But all despondency aside, I acknowledge the majority opinion of Americans: the brand of politics offered by the Democratic Party was not a strong enough counter-narrative to the much more effective voices of right-wing populism. That much is clear.

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There is no shortage of analysis circulating about this historic comeback, so I won’t add to the noise—only to say that I am rooting for my country. After nearly a decade of fearmongering and paranoia, the people have spoken. My only hope is that those of us who believe Trump is not the solution to the challenges facing America will be proven wrong. Do we prefer to be proven right? That our worst predictions come true? That he becomes another “Hitler”? I sincerely hope not.

My expectations are somewhere below sea level, but we’ll need to watch as the cabinet takes shape to get a clearer sense of how effective they might be in Washington compared to the chaotic and wildly unsuccessful first term. Perhaps that camp has failed to learn from past mistakes and will spend the next four years tripping over themselves, once again failing to achieve their grand autocratic aims.

One thing is clear: until progressives in America offer a better response to the problems facing average citizens, far-right populism will continue to fill that gap in the market. Until progressives start making their cities and states more livable and shift focus back to the working class, far-right populism will appear to be a viable alternative. Until progressives stop obsessing over identity and condescendingly speaking to and for minority groups, far-right populism will grow in popularity (even among minorities!).

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In addition to today’s demo leak no. 97, here is a song I released in 2019 called “Cruel Times” when I was feeling just a bit more hopeless. Still resonates :/

“On the Phone” lyrics

I could stay with you on the phone
But really need somebody to hold
‘Cause maybe I’m not ready to go
On my own

You could be my right hand
Man, if you could only see
Gonna heal in silence then
Command you back to me

‘Cause I see you
In a new light
Doing right by me
Yeah I need you
Through the good times
And the bad to set me free

I could stay with you on the phone
But really need somebody to hold
‘Cause maybe I’m not ready to go
On my own
I won’t let you hurt anymore
Even when it’s me on the floor
‘Cause maybe I’m not ready to go
On my own

If you need a lover
I’m still standing at the bar
If you need a brother
Let’s just end before we start

Well I see you
In a new light
Why can’t you see me
I need you
Through the good times
And the bad to set me free

I could stay with you on the phone
But really need somebody to hold
‘Cause maybe I’m not ready to go
On my own
I won’t let you hurt anymore
Even when it’s me on the floor
‘Cause maybe I’m not ready to go
On my own

I could die like this
Come inside, weightless

I could stay with you on the phone
But really need somebody to hold
‘Cause maybe I’m not ready to go
On my own
I won’t let you hurt anymore
Even when it’s me on the floor
‘Cause maybe I’m not ready to go
On my own

These lyrics were written in April 2021.

Leave a comment

What I’m listening to this week

• Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker

• Lou Reed - Growing Up in Public

• Rubber Band Gun - Role Player

What I’ve been reading

• David Mamet - True and False

Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.

Read the previous post.

Listen to “Out of the Rain” (demo):

This song was written on February 7, 2019

Listen to previous demos

Greetings from Paris,

As we round the bend of yet another tempestuous presidential election in America, the stakes are high (but higher than living through the pandemic under Trump or January 6th? TBD!), and I’m sick in bed, doing my damnedest to limit phone use, opting for books over needlessly monitoring the news.

I’m also sending today’s demo leak one day early, as I know the rest of the week will be one giant doom-scroll blackout. My only hope is that this short piece of music, albeit melancholy, can provide a little nutrition for your diet in these troubling days ahead.

🇺🇸

About the track: I rarely leave a song half-finished, preferring to edit out any mediocrity later rather than attempting to pick back up in the middle. This song, written in February 2019, might be in my hall of fame of undercooked ideas; the dark synth strings, swung drum machine loop, and particularly catchy pre-chorus—it deserved more love than I was originally able to give. Let me know what you think.

Keep your head up, turn that phone off, and RIP to the great Quincy Jones.

With love,
Ryan

Leave a comment

“Out of the Rain” lyrics

Meet me out of the rain
We should never be lonely, again
You could show me the way
You could humble me slowly

What’ll I gotta do baby
What do I gotta prove
Cause I outta learn someday
Oh I gotta earn you

What do I gotta lose, baby
What if I gotta choose
Cause I only work for ya
Oh I gotta earn you

So take me
Back to your
Back to your
Back to your heart

These lyrics were written in February 2019.

From the vault

What I’m listening to this week

• Jane Olivor - First Night

• Pampa Folks - It Starts With The End Of The World

• Peter Perrett - The Cleansing

What I’ve been reading

• Jonathan Lethem - Chronic City

• Eva Illouz - Le 8-octobre

Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.

Read the previous post.

Listen to “Feathered & Tarred w/ ALB” (demo):

This song was written on October 26, 2022

Listen to previous demos

Greetings from Paris,

When I first moved to France, it was after years of traveling there and getting to know the language, culture, and social circles of my future wife. While I was lucky to call Paris a second home, in the beginning, I had no bearings on the music scene or its participants, something I would need to remedy if I were to justify leaving behind my great band, community, and music life in New York.

During the first six months after arriving, I did just that. I met lots of musicians and industry folks, put together a band, and, alongside my friend Desmond Myers, sold out our first show together in March 2020. And then, the curtains closed.

It’s the same old story that all performers lived through during the pandemic chapter of our future memoirs. For me, the experience was marked in particular by the fact that I did not want to lose momentum after restarting my project in a new town, not to mention a new life generally.

In the months that followed, I made the most of it and ended up loving the vacation from real life. It was also during that period that I began to see more clearly that maybe performing was not my main calling, and just part of my story. It was evident that my desire to write was manifestly stronger than any need to perform the same songs over and over again.

When Paris began to re-open and we took to parks and café terraces, spring became summer, and the social part of my brain began to slowly function again. At a friend’s birthday that summer, I met (and his twin brother ), two American artists living in Paris. Until that day, I had not realized the lack of anglophone connection in my life—or any connection for that matter—until hanging out and speaking English with guys I felt like I’d grown up with.

Now some of my closest friends in town, Aaron and I have played together on a handful of occasions, as well as co-writing songs together. Today’s song (no. 95 in the organizing an accident series) is one that, if I remember correctly, we had to wrap early, leaving me to write lyrics and demo by myself back home. For this reason, I feel that it lacks some additional collaborative energy that might have benefited it, but that’s just the way it goes sometimes.

Here’s to many more songs together, Aaron.

Check out Aaron’s latest music releases here. He also has a newsletter where he shares illustrations and song demos—a bafflingly under-appreciated collection of work.

With love,
Ryan

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“Feathered & Tarred” lyrics

Stripped bare with my heart
Under the wheel turning
Got nowhere to fall
Down on my knees
And laugh for eternity

Flipped out at the bar
You left me here burning
I’m feathered and tarred
It’s humbling
Yeah, I hear you perfectly

So hang me like an ornament
Or nail me to the door
Just tell me where the story ends
So I’ll know

‘Cause I’m here left in the cold

I’m starting to see
The cloud of smoke floating
I’m trapped like a bee
The windows closed
Stung by absurdity

You sigh like a scream
Caught in your throat, moaning
So pour me a beer
Nowhere to go
Yeah, do me the courtesy

Oh maybe I’m no born again
But nail me to the door
Don’t tell me where the story ends
Oh I know

‘Cause I’m here left in the cold

These lyrics were written in October 2022.

From the vault

What I’m listening to this week

• Laura Marling - Patterns in Repeat

• Bob Dylan - Shadows in the Night

• Amyl and The Sniffers - Cartoon Darkness

• Alex Chilton - Like Flies on Sherbert

What I’ve been reading

• Jonathan Lethem - Chronic City

Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.

Read the previous post.

Listen to “Not Feeling Right” (demo):

This song was written on April 16, 2020

Listen to previous demos

Greetings from Normandy,

Today’s song was written in the midst of the initial Covid lockdowns, during that two-month period of heavy writing, weed, and global paranoia—three things that inevitably fed off one another.

From the sound of this disjointed demo, I must have been leaning into the strangeness and angst I felt while stuck inside during a particularly beautiful Parisian springtime. It was written in the same period as much of the material on my album Soft Power, but did not make the cut (nor was it in the running).

Admittedly, I adored those days. The world seemed to grant artists permission to do precisely what they had always done, yet without social obligations and feelings of FOMO hovering overhead. It was a time spent creating, cooking (well, eating in my case), hanging with Janis, and going for runs along an empty Champs-Élysées.

I wouldn’t wish for it to happen again, but I, like many others, have adopted some of those lessons learned into my life since.

With love,
Ryan

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“Not Feeling Right” lyrics

Whenever I fight
Myself through the night
I lose
I lose

It’s nothing but I
Can barely get by
On fumes
On fumes

It’s not working out
This luck of mine
I’m no good at wishful thinking

I’m not feeling right

It’s hard to get up
To keep playing dumb
It’s true
It’s true

My heart weighs a ton
But I’m feeling young
I do
I do

If I could wake up
In a place in the sun
Anew
Anew

But I’m so helpless
I can’t even try
I won’t go finding silver linings

I’m not feeling right

These lyrics were written in April 2020.

From the vault

What I’m listening to this week

• Hole - Pretty on the Inside

• Laura Marling - Semper Femina

• Yasmin Williams - Acadia

What I’ve been reading

• Jonathan Lethem - Chronic City

Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.

Read the previous post.

Listen to “It’s a Trend ft. Sam Kogon” (demo):

This song was written on June 29, 2022

Listen to previous demos

One of my favorite things about living in Paris is receiving messages from strangers, acquaintances, or more rarely, close friends, looking to hang out when they’re in town. The city is a magnet for a certain type of person often considering how they can live here part-time or permanently. It’s a fun energy/fantasy to entertain.

One such meeting resulted in today’s demo—a song written with Sam Kogon, a great artist and songwriter whom I had never met despite sharing a scene in NYC. It only took a move across the Atlantic to finally connect, and one summer afternoon in 2022, we shared coffee, music stories, and a little creative spirit.

Sam is a lovely person, and we became quick friends. The session ended with this live recording of the song—Sam on guitar and the two of us singing/screeching harmonies. It’s rough and pretty and raw, and I hope it will inspire you to check out Sam’s project afterward.

With love,
Ryan

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“It’s a Trend” lyrics

Got word from a friend
He thinks I’m mad to be back here again
It’s a trend, all we defend

Was stopped in the rain
These faces I love well they all washed away
It’s a pain, still I remain

These places that we’ve left behind
We’re always chasing in our mind
To find
Is it all worth the struggle this time

Bird on a ledge
So hard to leave what you know
In the end
Take a step, for all we regret

Just let me know
Oh you could show me my way home
Please help me cope
You give me hope

These places that we’ve left behind
We’re always chasing in our mind
To find
Is it all worth the struggle this time

These lyrics were co-written with Sam Kogon in June 2022.

From the vault

What I’m listening to this week

• Laura Nyro - New York Tendaberry

• Tom Petty - Wildflowers

• Anna Wise - Subtle Body Dawn

What I’ve been reading

• Jonathan Lethem - Chronic City

Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.

Read the previous post.

Listen to “Straight to Hell” (demo):

This song was written on February 11, 2021

Listen to previous demos

Greetings from Paris,

Few who know me or follow my work would coin me a pessimist. For all my faults, I maintain a deep-rooted and often naive hopefulness about the planet and its occupants. It makes daily life more pleasant. This, set against a backdrop of suffocating online cynicism and the wavering stability of Western democracies, has only made me dig my feet in further.

Could such optimism be thanks solely to coming of age with a means for expressing my fears, anxieties, and most dangerous thoughts? Had I not discovered the tools of songwriting and creative expression, might I also be taking to online platforms and real-world spaces to act out the ugliest of human instincts?

It's hard to say, but the result is telling. For years, I wondered if writing was enough—if repentance through song equaled genuine human connection or open dialogue. If projecting one's deepest regrets, emotions, or secrets through the prism of art could stand in for therapy. My conclusion: no.

That may seem obvious to someone who has not spent a lifetime communicating through music. Speaking in tongues. It took me years, but what I found was that by removing the pressure on the creative act to solve my problems, and more importantly, by opening myself to other modes of expression, I could break free from what was once an unsolvable puzzle.

Today’s demo is a song of acceptance, the voice of someone not seeking forgiveness but embracing their fate in standing against a corrupt world.

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“Straight to Hell” lyrics

I’m going straight to hell
In a car full of infidels
What made me think
They’d listen this time?

The forecast is warm again
Guess I’ll go along with it
Don’t need no law and order
I just want to know

Where did I go wrong?
What road did I misjudge?
Steer me through the fog
That comes rolling in the morning
We lie because we’re young
And life just turns to the nothing
So I’m closing my eyes to the world
Then I’ll know I’m alive as it turns

Where do the drifters go?
Where crooks fall like dominoes
Ripe from the vine left swinging

Will you hear the morning bell?
When it strikes the tone
You’ll come running
Take all your prized possessions
And then take my hand

Where did I go wrong?
What road did I misjudge?
Steer me through the fog
That comes rolling in the morning
We lie because we’re young
And life just turns to the nothing
So I’m closing my eyes to the world
Then I’ll know I’m alive as it turns

These lyrics were written in February 2021.

From the vault

What I’m listening to this week

• Thee Sacred Souls - Got a Story to Tell

• Geordie Greep - The New Sound

• The Smile - Cutouts

• Lou Reed - Why Don't You Smile Now: Lou Reed at Pickwick Records 1964-65

What I’ve been reading

• Leonard Cohen - Let Us Compare Mythologies

Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.

Read the previous post.

Listen to “Shoot First” (demo):

This song was written on October 7, 2021

Listen to previous demos

Greetings from Paris,

It’s gray and rainy and cold and those are a few of my least favorite things (sing with me now).

Today’s demo is a song from 2021 at a similar turn of season. At the time, I was deep in an album release cycle, running around town making music videos, taking photos, and corrupting my soul as a one-man-band-manager-marketer-publicist-et al.

Still, as this recording hopefully reflects, I made time to shelter in place away from the noise and write new songs. I look back on that period both fondly and with great reservations about ever going back to something other than writing, recording, and performing my music.

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“Shoot First” lyrics

I’m standing on your corner waiting
Humming with the traffic lanes
Past the point of restoration
I tried it, I tried it

Stop before you go and say it
I’m too proud to walk away
Not because my heart is racing
I don’t mind it, don’t mind it

There ain’t much more I can say
You can shoot first
You can shoot first

Even when love hesitates
You could do worse
You could do worse

Just because the door was open
Doesn’t make me feel at home
Sometimes we don’t even know it
But we’re hiding, we’re hiding

Give me any kind of closure
Kiss me or just let me go
Drink until the night is over
'Cause deep down I know you’ll try

There ain’t much more I can say
You can shoot first
You can shoot first

Even when love hesitates
You could do worse
You could do worse

There ain’t much more I can take
You can shoot first
You can shoot first
I know that love finds a way

These lyrics were written in October 2021.

From the vault

What I’m listening to this week

• Rufus Wainwright - Poses

• John Lennon & Yoko Ono - Double Fantasy

• Shabaka - Perceive Its Beauty, Acknowledge Its Grace

What I’ve been reading

• Jennifer Egan - A Visit from the Goon Squad

• Joseph E. Uscinski - American Conspiracy Theories

Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.

Read the previous post.

Listen to “When Luck Runs Out” (demo):

This song was written on August 31, 2023

Listen to previous demos

Greetings from rainy Paris,

Today’s demo leak is the 90th song I have shared exclusively via organizing an accident. In staying true to the project’s raison d’être, here is a rough phone recording from last August, live at the piano. It is full of the uncertainy, rawness, and devotion that any performance of a newly written song might carry.

This begins the countdown of the final ten demos of the series. Listen/read through the archives here and feel free to check out my releases on Bandcamp, Spotify, or your platform of choice.

With love,
Ryan

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“When Luck Runs Out” lyrics

I had a dream of holding flowers
At your funeral, baby
I woke up crying ’til I
Saw you lying there

I never bargained for power
Ain’t got no use these days
But we just can’t deny
This heaven for ourselves

When luck runs out
Baby you take the wheel
I’ll roll the windows down
We can work it out
There’s a one in a million chance
We won’t be better now

Hearing helicopters passing
Flying overhead
I asked if I could love you
Better than myself

Things are fallin’ out of balance
Living on the edge
I never had a chance to
Tell you how I felt

When luck runs out
Baby you take the wheel
I’ll roll the windows down
We can work it out
There’s a one in a million chance
We won’t be better now

These lyrics were written in August 2023.

From the vault

What I’m listening to this week

• Bob Dylan & The Band - The 1974 Live Recordings

• Joan As Police Woman - Lemons, Limes and Orchids

• Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Tender Prey

What I’ve been reading

• Jennifer Egan - A Visit from the Goon Squad

Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.

Read the previous post.

Listen to “A Little Time” (demo):

This song was written on July 28, 2021

Listen to previous demos

It has been one year since I wrote a new song.

Not that I couldn’t have, but that I chose not to. That might not be apparent coming from someone who sends you music every week, but it’s the truth. As I tell people over small talk at the bar, I’m working on something else at the moment or I teach music all week or I make songs for the baby sometimes—but I know it isn’t the same.

My relationship to music was forged through writing. Through experimentation, camaraderie. It’s the chase that hooked me. I never truly lost myself in singing other people’s songs or practicing scales. And so, by temporarily putting the pen aside, I cut the one rope firmly connecting me to the craft, and it’s left me feeling like no more than a hobbyist.

From the day the music stopped, an immense weight of anxiety left me. It was evident in every aspect of my life—I felt lighter, more at ease—but why should I be this much happier simply by not making music? Through the days, weeks, and months of my fast, I listened to my body. I took the cue. I quieted the inevitable identity crisis that followed and prioritized other interests, not to mention my newborn child. I read a lot, exercised hard, smoked more cigarettes. With time, music reclaimed its sacred station in my life. It came untangled from the misplaced ambitions of a younger man, wrestled free from my once-wounded ego. Music returned to serving higher purposes, namely by bringing joy into my world. Today, I play from time to time, if only for the thrill of it. I’ve grown rusty, but I’m even enjoying that part. There is a hesitation now, a fragility about my voice that makes me nervous when I sing. Like in the beginning.

One year ago today, I stood up from my piano where I’d spent the morning recording songs for a new album. My phone was ringing. It was my brother. We lost our mom that day, and I have not written a song since.

What I lost that day were the first great loves of my life. One unwillingly, and the other as a kind of sacrificial offering, like burning a tribute for the dead. What I have gained since is hard to reconcile, hard to express. In their absence, I have learned to feel them more deeply. Within the scope of my longing, they have become sanctified. Today, riven by their absence, I see how my every thought, hope, and gesture has been—and will forever be—shaped by their ghosts.

From Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson:

To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing—the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one’s hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again.

With love,
Ryan

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“A Little Time” lyrics

So we go on living it
Took all my discipline
It isn’t quite the world
I pictured as a kid
Until I’m born again
By hands of holy men
I’ll pass through life
Just like a baby shivering
Some people find it hard
To show just who they are
So many lie committing crimes
Against the heart
All dressed up for the show
They can’t seem to let it go
No making plans to pay
The ransom of the soul

When I’m looking back seeing ghosts
Oh I can’t bear the sight of it no more
When I’m looking back…

We just need to buy
A little time
Creepin’ towards the night
We let it die

Reach over the line
And say goodbye
We just need to buy
A little time

So while we scale the wall
They keep us down by law
The fearless mind can’t see
The wire or the bars
This long and painful road
It spirals like vertigo
We see our lives flash by
In fire down below
And change is imminent
But space is limited
So we’ll come early
With our tickets in our hands

Now all the days we’ve waited here
Look all the same to us

We just need to buy
A little time
Creepin’ towards the night
We let it die

Reach over the line
And say goodbye
We just need to buy
A little time

These lyrics were written in July 2021.

From the vault

What I’m listening to this week

• Hinds - VIVA HINDS

• Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Ghosteen

• Porches - Shirt

What I’ve been reading

• Jennifer Egan - A Visit from the Goon Squad

• Edith Hamilton - Mythology

Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.

Read the previous post.

Listen to “Easy On You” (demo):

This song was written on March 25, 2021

Listen to previous demos

Greetings from Breadtown,

Today’s demo is No. 88 in the organizing an accident series. While I can still be swayed, I’ve decided that I will likely change directions for the project after hitting the 100th song mark, using this space for other purposes.

But that is not for another twelve weeks, so another album’s worth of material is still coming your way.

I hope everyone is transitioning well out of summer. In my opinion, September is so much better than January for affirming new goals and resolutions. What are some of yours for the new season/year?

With love,
Ryan

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“Easy On You” lyrics

All these tears we give away
Feeling like I’m already done for
Let me go for both our sakes
‘Cause baby I can’t do it again
From where we started
I couldn’t stand
So close to love
What makes it harder
Is we could’ve been the real thing

But I just wanna go
Easy on you
‘Cause each time it gets harder to quit
And right before I fold
Easy on you
I get tied up in wondering if
It’s foolish

You treat me like a stranger now
Cuts me deeper now that I’m on my own
Day by day it evens out
But who can tell with you anymore?
Too broken-hearted
Too cold to stay
This close to us
What makes it harder
Is I’ve got no more to confess

But I just wanna go
Easy on you
‘Cause each time it gets harder to quit
And right before I fold
Easy on you
I get tied up in wondering if
It’s foolish

Ooooh
I can feel it changing between us
I don’t want to go back down
Ooooh
That road has long been broken
But I can’t look away

These lyrics were written in March 2021.

From the vault

What I’m listening to this week

• MJ Lenderman - Manning Fireworks

• Cassandra Jenkins - My Light, My Destroyer

• Gillian Welch - Woodland

What I’ve been reading

• Jennifer Egan - A Visit from the Goon Squad

• Edith Hamilton - Mythology

Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.

Read the previous post.

Listen to “Full of Light” (demo):

This song was written on May 4, 2021

Listen to previous demos

For more than half of 2024, I’ve been working privately on a new project that has put all others, namely musical ones, on the back burner.

I’m not ready to talk about it yet, other than to say that it has given my life purpose, fulfillment, and revived my creative spirit in a way I didn’t know I needed (and no, I’m not talking about fatherhood, though that has been the greatest project of all).

I’m back in Paris and therefore diving in wholeheartedly to the daily work. A combination of excitement, faith, and delusion carry me to the studio each morning and, using a few lyrical lines from today’s demo as a sort of mantra, I’ll leave it there:

“Full of Light” lyrics

I guess all along that I’ve been helpless
Or I thought it once and it came true
I get close enough 'til I can’t help
This call for you

Had a dream where I was in the ocean
And your light could guide me back to shore
Patient eyes are like a warm emotion
Cutting through

I’m full of hope
Full of time
Full of love
Full of light

In another time I might have missed it
And the two of us would not have met
Just the thought and I could count the minutes
Here with you

Take my word and all the rest will follow
Leave your worries there where I can’t go
Take that road of love and let tomorrow
Lead us through

I’m full of hope
Full of time
Full of love
Full of light

These lyrics were written in May 2021.

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From the vault

What I’m listening to this week

• Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Wild God

• Surprise Chef - All News Is Good News

• Laurie Anderson - Amelia

What I’ve been reading

• F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby

• Salman Rushdie - Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder

Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.

Read the previous post.

Listen to “Don't Leave Me Yet” (demo):

This song was written on September 9, 2021

Listen to previous demos

This week, my wife Janis and I celebrated eleven years together.

When I first met her, she was nineteen years old and studying film in New York. I was twenty-four, an elder statesman zealously pursuing Life in a Band.

At the time, I was nearing the end of my rope as a hopeless romantic turned lonesome Casanova. Upon meeting Janis, with her bunny-toothed smile, crinkled nose, and what was probably the first French accent I had ever encountered, I quickly lost all my faculties and fell belligerently in love.

Falling in love, really falling, had two immediate effects on me. The first was a fear of abandonment and indiscriminate jealousy, both of which I never allowed her to see, opting instead to exorcise my demons as quickly and quietly as possible. The second was a surge of creative energy and clarity—you might call it the muse effect—which helped transform me from a frustrated songwriter into one of purpose and consistency.

In my experience, love is a shock to the system rivaled only by grief.

Over the past eleven years, our partnership has been road-tested across five continents and dozens of countries. We have collaborated on films and music videos and photo shoots, lived between New York and Paris, made a fucking baby, and most importantly, have challenged each other to reflect on and defend our most deep-seated impulses and beliefs.

On Monday, the day of our anniversary, we went strolling with our family along the shores of Brittany, in the westernmost region of France. In the distance, strips of land reached out into frantic waters, land illuminated in pale-green light, dulled further by a golden sea mist. The precise region is called Finistère, named after the Latin phrase Finis Terrae, which appropriately translates to “the end of the earth,” and where I find myself content to be with Janis and Otto as another summer turns to fall. ◍

This song was written in September 2021 with Will Lowry, a friend and brilliant musician, when he stuck around Paris for a few weeks after our wedding. Check out his project under the pseudonym pantology.

“Don't Leave Me Yet” lyrics

It’s been haunting me for so long
That I don’t know right from wrong
We keep stalling the further we’re gone
It’s time we should move along

So baby, for once in my life
I’ll get myself out the way
We’re so close and I don’t wanna die
Before we live out our love

Don’t leave me yet
Don’t leave me yet
Don’t leave me yet
Before we begin

In this room where we first made love
Let’s try to rebuild what’s undone
You keep saying I’ll be the one
So come darling let’s just run

So baby, for once in my life
This doubt could show me the way

Don’t leave me yet
Don’t leave me yet
Don’t leave me yet
Before we begin

Music written by Ryan Egan & Will Lowry
These lyrics were written in September 2021.

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From the vault

What I’m listening to this week

• Delicate Steve - Delicate Steve Sings

• D’Angelo - Black Messiah

• Camille - Ilo Veyou

What I’ve been reading

• Marilynne Robinson - Housekeeping

Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.

Read the previous post.

Listen to “Far” (demo):

This song was written on November 2, 2017

Listen to previous demos

An excerpt from My Bright Abyss by Christian Wiman:

“If that’s what he means,” says the student to the poetry teacher, “why doesn’t he just say it?” “If God is real,” says the parishioner to the preacher, “ why doesn’t he simply storm into our lives and convince us?” The questions are vastly different in scale and relative importance, but their answers are similar. A poem, if it’s a real one, in some fundamental sense means no more and no less than the moment of its singular music and lightning insight; it is its own code to its own absolute and irreducible clarity. A god, if it’s a living one, is not outside of reality but in it, of it, though in ways it takes patience and imagination to perceive. Thus the uses and necessities of metaphor, which can flash us past our plodding resistance and habits into strange new truths. Thus the very practical effects of music, myth, and image, which tease us not out of reality, but deeper and more completely into it.

#

Beginning somewhere in my late teens—formative years spent chasséing on the edge of arrest, alcohol poisoning, and premature parenthood, years when everything is held to the flames of scrutiny, everything suspect—one of the first things to burn was my Catholic upbringing and a previously unexamined belief in the Man in the Sky.

This rejection of, in particular, the cartoonish myths of my given religion seemed a rite of passage toward adulthood (after all, who but a child could believe such things?), which I flaunted like a kind of intellectual puberty mustache. My doubt, frustration, and rebellion were all reasonable—necessary even (and not to mention en vogue with early-2000s “New Atheists” such as Hitchens and Dawkins gaining cultural cachet)—but, as with so many notches jabbed into my identity’s belt, left untended, it ceased to fit the man.

Time advanced, each year brimmed over into the next, and my passion for music grew and developed into a way of life. I gave myself over to its call, every day venturing further and further into unknowns, reaching out for something, asking unanswerable questions, and growing accustomed to living in their perpetual silence. And all the while, I never once drew a parallel between this daily ritual and prayer, never once imagined that the dimension of consciousness I’d happened upon might be, had I the language or the ability to shed my intellectual pride, what others call God.

While I still do not speak the language, I cannot help but reflect on the many years I have spent searching faithfully, blindly, muselessly through a musical no man’s land. When I do, what I find there, threaded within the thousands of entwined words and melodies, is a profound longing for which I had no target nor terminus—just a baseless tether waving distantly in a ruptured sky.

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At times, I have wrestled with my faith, by which I mean I have doubted the merit of my artistic longing. As often as the work has sparked joy, it has also isolated me from important people in my life. The more years spent living between layers of consciousness, the stronger the temptation to remain in reality has grown—and it has only intensified after having a child, whose very survival depends on it.

On the other hand, I am increasingly finding that the ability to dimension hop—to see and engage with the world in a playful, sensitive, childlike manner—is more super power than crutch, especially as it pertains to relationships, creativity, and parenting. To live a creative life is to walk a fine, almost non-existent line with escapism. At the worst of times, it has been just that, and I have felt pangs of guilt for what I perceived as reckless abandon. But at the best of times—times of deepest faith—I believe it is the most powerful vehicle I have for bettering my own life and the lives of others. “Thus the very practical effects of music, myth, and image,” writes Wiman, “which tease us not out of reality, but deeper and more completely into it.” ◍

Today’s demo is called “Far” and was made seven years ago. The lyrics below beg the question, to me at least, to whom exactly was I directing my voice?

“Far” lyrics

You and I
Captured in light
You and I
Swallowed in time
Are you certain in love?
Are you sure that’s enough?

Far but I’m closer to you
Far but our voice is in tune
Apart, nothing can keep us apart
Lost until I am where you are

I am a misread page
I cannot be reclaimed
I am your long lost contender
Trying to be led astray
Right through the eye of the maze
Time is a baseless tether

These lyrics were written in November 2017.

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From the vault

What I’m listening to this week

• Richard & Linda Thompson - I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight

• Leon Ware - Musical Massage

• Chris Stapleton - Traveller

What I’ve been reading

• Marilynne Robinson - Housekeeping

• Anton Chekhov - The Greatest Short Stories

Check out my previous demos and writing via the Substack archive + discover my official music releases on Spotify, Apple, or your platform of choice. Find me on all socials at @thisryanegan.

Read the previous post.