Meet Johnny Ritchie

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Johnny Ritchie. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Johnny, we’re so appreciative of you taking the time to share your nuggets of wisdom with our community. One of the topics we think is most important for folks looking to level up their lives is building up their self-confidence and self-esteem. Can you share how you developed your confidence?

I think I’ve always been fairly comfortable in my own skin, being who I am. However, when I would perform in grade school I would always walk away from the performance thinking about everything I could have done better, everything that went wrong, and everything I need to work on in my next practice – which sometimes would literally be right after that performance. It wasn’t until I moved to Montana in the beginning of the pandemic that I really started to develop my confidence. My parents had recently relocated to a small town in Montana in a huge valley just on the eastern edge of the foothills to the Rocky Mountains. In March of 2020 I went through a really bad break up with my high school/college girlfriend of 7 years. The very next day the country started issuing shelter in place warnings and my college went to virtual learning, my mom called me and suggested I try to find a flight to Montana sooner rather than later. So I found a flight for the next day and was in Montana that evening. Two weeks later, my grandma passed away from lung cancer, and I was fortunate enough to be in the room with her when it happened. It wouldn’t have been that way had I not gone to Montana because of the pandemic, I’m thankful for those choices. So, there I was in the middle of god-damn-nowhere Montana, no friends or people I knew in the area. I was doing online school and living in my parents’ basement, which I was thankful for at the time. Montana actually turned out to be the greatest blessing on my life. I was afforded space away from people so I could avoid getting sick. I was in a beautiful area with a ton of outdoor recreational activities, I took up biking and running, and eventually found my way to the mountains where I started hiking alone, and eventually camping alone. I started working at a church on the music team which allowed me to keep up with music while making some money, and I started gigging as well. I also got a job as a cook at a restaurant. Eventually, my child hood dog passed away, we knew each other for 13 years and grew up together. I spent the last night of her life on the floor cuddled up with her, she could barely lift her head, as we just laid there all night. I didn’t get much sleep, I was trying to prepare myself for the following day when we had decided to put her down. She had developed cancer all over her body, something she was struggling with off and on for a few years at that point. That night she seemed to understand. The drive to the vet was extremely surreal, my dad and I were silent, mom stayed home. I laid in the back of the with the pup, Sophie was her name. Black lab with a long hair gene, looked like a black golfer retriever. I can still hear the gasping of air and gurgling she was making, panting from exhaustion. The same noise my grandmother made when she passed, oddly enough almost a year to the day. Over the course of a year I lost three very important women: my high school best friend/girlfriend, my grandmother, and my childhood dog. These relationships in my life would eventually lead me to choosing the path I’m on today, and would gently and sometimes a little painfully, into the confidence I have today. My high school girlfriend breaking up with me led me to the mountains for solace and healing in isolation. My grandmother dying led me to strive and be healthy and in shape, exercising regularly. Those two paths convened with a third when my dog died. My dad and I had some of her food left, we took it to the shelter to donate. Out of curiosity we took a look at the dogs. None of them were really tugging at me. I really hadn’t thought much about looking at other dogs because we still had a dog at home (Sophie had a wheat allergy so she had to have a special diet which is why we were donating the food). Anyway, the dog in the last kennel was about to burst her way through my heart. Another black lab but mixed with border collie. Shortly after we brought her home, we met a friend at the dog park. His wife was in the air force and they had recently moved to town because there was a base there. We started hanging out and quickly became great friends, and to this day I consider him one of my absolute best friends- and neither of us live in Montana anymore. Miles was his name, and we quickly grew tired of the city and started camping and hiking together. He was really into training dogs and had a way with his energy and confidence that any dog would listen to him, and this proved to be beneficial to me and my relationship with my new pup Finley because she was a wild dog. Finley had so much energy because she was a dog bred for work, so we found ourselves going on day long hikes at times and she would be running around at night still. I had been holding onto a lot of anger from my high school relationship and Miles was able to help me deal with that anger in a healthy way and be disciplined and have the mindset it took to train Finley to be calm, respectful, and trusting of me. After a while, things just clicked. I noticed I wasn’t anxious much anymore, I was still depressed but I wasn’t angry and I was getting a good control on my relationship with pretty much everyone in my life; I was starting to be more confident in my day to day actions and eventually that became a habit. Around this time I started to notice that my music was also improving in skill and I was learning so much more about piano, and trying to learn really complex and challenging pieces. I started to really enjoy every gig I played and after each performance I actually started to feel good about what I had brought to the table. The best lesson for me was that all emotions require a reaction of energy if we address them and let them be felt. But, we can feel them with a mindset of awareness and instead of reacting, we can choose to be calm and confident and deal with it or let it go. This lesson was learned over many years and many trips to the woods, many miles put on my boots and my bike pedals, and many scratches and bites and falls and burns. But I began to love myself because the healing I chose led me to a place of confidence and forgiveness. And it was all filled with love in every form in every type of relationship along the way.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I’ve been a musician all my life, since the time I could hold something in my hands and bang it on another object I was playing rhythm. I originally really wanted to learn the drums, but we didn’t have drums at home. We did however have a piano, this was because the previous owners left it in the house my parents lived in when I was born. My parents said that if I took 2 years of piano lessons then I could sign up for drum lessons. So I did it, which I’m glad I did because I fell in love with the piano. Eventually after 2 years I started learning drums as well. Flash forward to 18 years old and I decided to pursue music full time in college. While studying, I picked up crucial skills that helped flourish my song-writing, performance, understanding, and confidence in music. Now I teach music privately full time, I currently have 50 students. I regularly play music as part of the praise team at Whitworth Church in Spokane, WA and also gig around Spokane, WA and the surrounding area. I have a writing/recording project with friends from school called “Spokuncle” we recently released our first EP that was self-recorded in a garage in Spokane, WA during the pandemic. In addition to Spokuncle, I also write and produce my own original music under my own name. It’s got a jazz-funk-psychedelic-hip-hop-I am a fanatic about classical piano music and am always trying to challenge myself to do better. I recently just performed a solo classical piano recital in April 2024 where I played works by Rachmaninov, Beethoven, Debussy, and Brahms. My plans are to pursue a master’s degree in piano performance/pedagogy in a few years, with the end goal of teaching music at the collegiate level, specifically piano, and to be performing regularly wherever I am. Currently, I am recording my 3rd solo EP which I plan to release in the fall of 2024, as well as multiple collaboration projects in the works with some very great friends and extremely talented musicians.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

1. Improvisation is the key to life. 2. Failure and struggle will refine, not define. 3. Your circle matters.

One of the first things I learned when I arrived at college was music theory, which was definitely an instrumental skill in my understanding of music. But, what music theory led to was a much more spiritual and philosophical area of music- improvisation. there’s a book by Victor Wooten called “The Music Lesson” which I read was I was a sophomore in college. This book changed my entire understanding of music. I used to think that playing music was a type of re-creation. In the classical realm you learn how to read the sheet music and how to articulate it into music, but you aren’t taught or encouraged much to improvise and have fun. there are certain guidelines that can help improve improvising, but for the most part I like to view it as a very raw emotive therapy, a type of spiritual connection that you can only find in very few forms. Creating music from the soul, from the heart- that’s the magical part of being a human.

Before therapy and spirituality though, there’s got to be some struggle that leads you to those practices. For me, there were many times in school that I felt like I was getting my ass chewed for very simple mistakes or slip-ups. While I think gentle growth and encouragement is a really great way to teach, after being a teacher I now understand that sometimes that “tough love” style of teaching is appropriate. Having experienced this somewhat cut-throat teaching, it ignited a fire inside of me. I had always wanted to do better and be better, but now I was determined to be better and grow every day. That type of discipline is what helps me today with keeping a busy schedule of a free-lance gigging musician and private teacher.

This brings me to the final area, who you surround yourself with- or your circle. I’m a firm believer that you can never learn everything there is to know about music. It’s simply too nuanced, faceted, and is quickly evolving all the time, even more so now with streamlined technology. However, many musicians think that once they achieve a goal of theirs’ that the work is done, they have “mastered” their craft and the learning is over. And sometimes that’s all you need to have. But, if you are looking for a spiritual and philosophical connection with music, if you’re looking for a personal relationship with your music growth, then the learning never stops. If you surround yourself with people you look up to, people who inspire you and motivate you to work harder and be better I promise you will grow like never before. Your environment matters, where you plant your roots matters. And which roots you tend to watering matters. Find people better than you in every regard- musicianship, knowledge, character, integrity, kindness, loyalty, love. These people will enrich your soil, they will encourage growth not just in your music, but in your entire life. Be a life-long learner, strive to be better always.

Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?

I am always looking for people to collaborate with. My style is always evolving and changing, mixing many genres and techniques together. So I’m interested in collaborating with people who are also trying to improve and expand their sound. I like to work together with people, I always find that I create something I’m much more proud of than if I just did it myself. If anyone wants to collaborate with me just shoot me a DM on instagram or email me at [email protected]

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/johnnyritchiemusic
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnnyritchie_music/
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCNfYbtuj2OrF1rbuCaVN3IQ
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4PL6a5LYJdZQFAehDchfmf?si=VfqMgx7YQJCOy4kj20sdtg

Image Credits

Whitworth Church