Video: City Life from Matthew Ryan's Dear Lover presents the world-wide travels of "Paper Ryan"

Tennessee-by-way-of-Philadelph ia singer-songwriter Matthew Ryan has very quietly built up quite a prolific back catalog since the blue collar hard-folk of 1997's Mayday . Since then he's slipped out stark, stripped-down records, like 2001's underrated Concussion , as well as a few that dip their toes into more ethereal, modern sounds, such as 2003's Regret Over The Wires and 2007's From A Late Night High Rise . Though his gruff vocals have always seemed, to me, tailor-made for hard driving folk songs about heartache and hangovers he's never been one to rely on that [...]

A few weeks ago Matthew Ryan sent out a facebook message asking his fans to participate in his upcoming video. After e-mailing the posted address, I received a little jpg "Paper Ryan" (see left). Unfortunately for me, the color printers at home and at work were both broken, so I had to print B&W Paper Ryan. And I couldn't get any good Toronto-centric shots as it was raining and cold the entire week preceding the deadline. Regardless, two of my photos made the cut! Whoo-Hooo! The video for the song "City Life" [...]