Ryan Rado: Being Willing to Fail and Somehow Not Failing | Morse Code Podcast #211

Happy New Beginning!

One quick important creative announcement: I have new music coming! Meet Me at the End of the World was written by me, live on a series I do called the East Nashville Songwriting Workshop, where I write a song live on the internet, start to finish. Usually it’s a co-write, but this particular time the scheduled guest didn’t show up so I was left by myself. Not ideal but the show must go on so I thrashed around in front of God and everybody and after 3 hours I’d made a song. The bigger surprise was that the song rang true and I really loved it and have wanted to share it ever since. It’s a love song filled with wild emotion and exploding asteroids and an oblique reference to Melville (Moby Dick) and Steinbeck (The Pearl), shot through with bottomless thirst I equate with the feeling of being in love. The track was produced by Morse Code Podcast alum Anthony DaCosta and we’re shooting a very ambitious music video for it directed by another podcast alum, Mila Vilaplana. Powerhouse Randa Newman is producing it while somehow nursing Baby Zuzu to the delightfully chunky condition we find her in today (Zuzu not Randa).

Meet Me at the End of the World drops February 14 and I’m playing a full-band release show Feb 15 at the 5 Spot in East Nashville. More info in the coming weeks. It’s been a while since I put some new music out. Cue feelings of excitement, and nervousness. Which is an appropriate segue to introduce this very special guest:

Ryan Rado is a painter, musician, ontological coach, and host of the Make it Perfect Podcast.

Don’t worry about it. I also had to look up what an ontological coach was. And to be honest, I didn’t do that until after taping our conversation, because I was moved by this conversation and wanted to know more about Ryan and his life and work. The way he was in the room, how he shared so freely, not only his creative philosophy but his battle — that might not be the right word — maybe relationship is better — with Tourette’s syndrome, made me want to dig into what he’s doing and why. Just how damn vulnerable he was and yet, firm. Is that the word? Enigmatic things are hard to put words to.

I met Ryan at a screening of the Morse Code Pilot this summer. It was brief, but let me see if I can convey a little of the piquant nature of that exchange: see, I opened the evening by playing a few songs in the theater, just, totally acoustic no mics or PA. Which is my favorite way to perform or witness live music (there just aren’t many situations where it can work).

I played a couple of of my songs — one of them, Northern Lights, got an audible sigh from somewhere on the left side of the room, a couple rows back. Hearing that gratified me like a baby on the boob. All I ever wanted to do was make somebody sigh okay?

Not only did I take the compliment, but I noted that a grown ass man was publicly responding — audibly — to another grown ass man sharing his heart. Unusual. Also indicative of an integrated being.

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I filed that nanosecond feeling away, and retrieved it the moment I opened an email from Ryan asking if I’d be interested in swapping guest tapings. I checked out his art and CV and it was clear this guy was exactly the kind of person I’m looking for in a guest — a person whose commitment to self-expression extends well beyond the act itsel