Meet Ryan Murphy

We were lucky to catch up with Ryan Murphy recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ryan, so happy to have you with us today. You are such a creative person, but have you ever head any sort of creativity block along the way? If so, can you talk to us about how you overcame or beat it?

Whenever I find myself experiencing writers block, I go do something that is outside of my normal routine of experiences. It doesn’t have to be some elaborate trip abroad or something extreme like skydiving. Just something that can jog the brain into firing off some of the parts that may be in cruise control temporarily.

For me personally, that is usually some kind of experience with nature that I don’t often frequent. It could be a walk in the woods down a trail I’ve never been to where I can just let my mind wander, taking my dog for a walk down a different route than normal, or visiting a beach I haven’t been to before. I know everyone doesn’t have access to these same things, but everyone is different and has different routines they can temporarily shake up. Maybe it’s trying out a new coffee house with a notebook in hand or a getting a new dish from a restaurant that you frequent and always get the same thing. Or going to a mall and just watching how other people are going about their day.

You never know what is going to inspire you! The key is to change things up ever so slightly and get your mind on something new to see if that sparks some newfound creativity!

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I write, record, and perform music under the name Honest Horse. Music has always been my greatest passion and my favorite way to express myself. I’ve been playing and writing music for over 25 years now, and releasing music under the name Honest Horse for 14 years.

I have been very fortunate to have an audience that enjoys connecting with what I put out there, and am grateful every single day for that support. I feel like the last two years have been the hardest I’ve ever worked on my craft and not just improving my musical abilities, but also my entire approach to how I go about making my art and sharing it.

At this point in time, my focus has been on creating the most genuine and vulnerable music that I am capable of with the intention of the end result being music that I would want to listen to over and over again. With the approach of catering to that audience of one, I’ve found myself on the receiving end of the best response my music has ever had with others.

For me, sharing music feels like a form of magic. Whether it is my own music or someone else’s, the way sharing music brings people together is so powerful and important and I feel so lucky that I can put something so personal into the world and have others connect with it in their own special way. Imagine taking your private journal, turning the deepest most personal feelings you have ever written about in it, and sharing the story with the world and finding out a bunch of strangers can relate to the experiences you held so close and it has helped them feel something on a deeper level with themselves.

I did just that with the EP I released earlier this year, Up In The Air, which was my way of processing a lot of feelings I had about a relationship that just wasn’t in the cards in the end. The response to the release has been truly overwhelming and I am motivated more than ever to keep following my heart and writing about where it takes me. I’m already working on the next release and plan to start putting music out as much as possible now! For context, prior to the end of 2023 I had not put out new music for several years and every release had years in between them and now I have two releases out within 7 months of each other, and it feels amazing!

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

In terms of writing and releasing music, I think the following three things have been the most impactful for me:

1. Write something that is meaningful to you, don’t spend too much time worrying how others are going to interpret it. The act of being genuine to yourself allows so much more room for others to connect with that realness while finding their own meaningful connection to it.

2. Be open to trying something different with every new project you start. Maybe it’s mixing in some inspiration from a genre far removed from what you are known for or into, while finding a way to keep your core identity intact. Variety is the spice of life, allow yourself to experience it fully in your creative pursuits! You never know what new trend or idea you could end up stumbling upon, but regardless you are making something that is uniquely yours that is constantly evolving just like you are.

3. Collaborate with people close to you! From the perspective of a musician, that doesn’t have to mean only work on a new song with a friend that is also a musician. Get your non-musician friends and family involved during the writing process and ask them what they think of the project you are working on. People that know you are going to be the first to connect deeply with something if you are being true to yourself in your writing, and they are going to offer valuable feedback whether they are experienced in music or not. That support and feedback loop is going to motivate you to think outside the box and keep pushing towards the finish line with confidence.

What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?

Teach me what unconditional love feels like. I am so incredibly fortunate to have grown up with parents that did everything possible to provide me with a good upbringing and have always shown me love, honesty, and support with everything I have done in my life. Whether it was letting me dye my hair blue as a teenager because I was trying to figure out how to express my individuality or when I decided I wanted to move over 2,000 miles away to California from Indiana, they knew it was important to me and have always shown respect to my decisions even if they wouldn’t have made the same choice. Whether we completely agree with certain choices or not they hear me out, share their thoughts, and support me doing what I think is right because they know even if they would have done it differently that I am going to learn more from the results of my own decisions in the end. I am beyond grateful and so lucky to have had such great parents supporting me through everything.

My sisters might kill me if I don’t also say that my parents having given me two great younger sisters to grow up with may have been the most impactful thing they’ve ever done for me, so I better highlight that too.

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Image Credits

Joel Martin Del Campo
Ashley Garin

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