Mike Ryan, San Antonio, Texas native is our Swag Spotlight this week.  You may have heard his incredible song “New Hometown” on Spotify where it has over 7 million spins but what you didn’t know about the Texas singer is he is a co-writer on one of Brad Paisley’s newest smash hits “Last Time For Everything”. We learned about where Ryan grew up during our recent chat with the singer-songwriter.

Ryan learned to play the piano from a young age as well as singing in the church choir but during his high school years he learned to play guitar and started to really get interested in singing as well.  “When I went to college I started writing, playing open mic nights and I put a band together. Sometime during college I started realizing this is what I wanted to do for a career,” Ryan explains.  His grandfather was a band director for the Texas National Guard and his father was also a performer in different theater productions. He recalls loving watching his father on stage.

His musical influences growing up range anywhere from Billy Joel, Stevie Wonder, and Elton John to Garth Brooks, Clint Black, and George Strait.  Although his parents mostly listened to classic rock when he was young, he discovered country music during the 90’s and he feels that all of the music he listened to comes out in his songwriting today. He currently resides both in Nashville and Texas, splitting his time between those two homes and being on the road promoting his new music.  His latest EP, Blink You’ll Miss It, was released late last year and debuted at #6 on the iTunes charts, Ryan being a co-writer on five of the seven songs.

As a writer for Seagayle Music, just like last week’s Swag Spotlight CJ Solar, Ryan sat down with Smith Ahnquist, Brent Anderson, Chris DuBois and started writing “Last Time For Everything”.  They did not complete the song in that one session, but the other writers brought the concept up the next day in a write with Brad Paisley. Ryan had left to join his band for a gig but got a call just a few short days later that Paisley had loved the song and the finished writing it together and right away he recorded it for his next album, Love and War.  It was Ryan’s first outside cut and Paisley ended picking the nostalgic song as one of the singles from the record.