Before Ryan Griffin released his new Name on It EP, he knew he needed to have a conversation with his father. The singer says he’s vulnerable like never before across the six new songs, but one track in particular needing some framing.
“I watch my brothers and my daddy / And I learned what not to do,” Griffin sings to begin “All Over Again,” a piano-led love song from the just released project.
“It’s a song about love and how it’s not always easy,” the married father of two says, “but when it’s real, it’s worth having and worth fighting for.”
Growing up in Florida, Griffin says he was the kind of kid who soaked up everything. Two older brothers (one four years his senior, the other seven) competed for their parents’ attention, but Griffin was watching. A new music video visualizes the internal struggle between doing what’s familiar and perhaps wrong, and working hard to be the best man you can be. Find Griffin tormented in an empty room as he performs the song.
“I have an incredible family, and I have a dad that taught me how to be a good man and how to love a woman more than anybody,” Griffin says. “So I called him and I explained it to him. It was like, ‘Pops, this isn’t a dig on you. You’ve been an incredible man and father figure, but this is the truth. I learned the good and bad from you and my older brothers.'”
Griffin’s new EP is several years in the making and includes one of two songs (“Right Here Right Now”) that helped him secure a record deal with Warner Music Nashville. Songwriter and producer Busbee isn’t credited as a writer or producer of any of the songs, but his fingerprints are all over the project. The two worked closely together to pick songs before Busbee’s September 2019 death, and Griffin says he feels fortunate enough to have been in the 43-year-old’s inner circle.
“He poured into the people that he was really creative with,” the singer recalls of a man who succumbed to brain cancer much quicker than anyone anticipated. “Anytime he’d call or I’d call he’d always start with, ‘How are you doing, buddy? How is your family?’ And it was never this passive, check-the-box question … He literally wanted to listen and wanted to be a friend. That was the thing that made Bus special, is he kind of burst into your life and loved you with everything he had.”
It was Busbee who suggested Mark Trussell produce the Name on It EP. Additionally, Trussell co-wrote three of the six songs on the EP, a project Griffin thinks of as a collection of reminders.
“”Right Here Right Now” is a reminder to be present and to soak in life and to not let the little things soak through the cracks,” Griffin says, referring to the attention grabbing, pop-friendly EP opener. “”One Prayer Left” is about just being thankful. This whole quarantine process — that’s one of the things it inspired, is not getting my wants mixed up with my needs and truly being thankful for the things that I have.
“I just hope people get to know who I am as a human being and as an artist and can relate to it,” he adds.
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