Hiram Ring

Sitting on an uncomfortable folding chair in the middle of North Queen Street in Downtown Lancaster is not an everyday experience. But there I was, smack dab on the yellow line in the 300 block of North Queen Street in Lancaster, Pa enjoying the velvety tones of Hiram Ring's voice accompanied by his acoustic guitar. During the 300 N. Queen Block Party this past summer, I first got to meet and listen to Ring's performance courtesy of the WXPN stage, a listener-sponsored radio station based out of Philadelphia.

Despite having lived in downtown Lancaster for most of the past 5 years, I had somehow missed this striving artist making an impact on the underground Indie music scene. Grateful to a friend who introduced me to Twitter, I started following Hiram Ring's success and found it to not just be local, but also worldwide.

So worldwide in fact, that Hiram had just enough time to interview with me before jet setting off to Europe for his tour. Admittedly uninformed of Ring's background, I was anxious to hear how he worked to not only become an artist, but also a producer for other great talents.

What would you like people to know about where you came from?

I was born in Ghana, West Africa as the 6th son of parents who work for Wycliffe Bible Translators. The 12 of us (10 kids and 2 parents) sang songs together growing up - that's how I learned melody and harmony. We came back and forth to the US every few years and the last time I was there was when I was 17. I took some drum lessons in Ghana, and also wanted to learn the piano, but instead I picked up the guitar when I was 16 - my dad taught me three chords and I would listen to Simon and Garfunkle, hear their chords and picking patterns and copy them by ear. So I essentially taught myself to play guitar and picked up what I could from other musicians. Since then I've gone to college, graduated, worked in construction, and in 2006 I started playing around Lancaster at open mics and coffeeshops. That's when I started working with Tony Guyer at Forgotten Genre Productions, taking the summer off from construction and recording to help with language survey in Afghanistan.

In 2007 I started recording on my own, visited some friends in Spain for the month of September, and recorded and released a Christmas album with my friends Matthew Monticchio and David Green that got significant local radio airplay. I also began working with my friend Katie Becker to help her record an EP.

In 2008 I spent May-June in Norway working for my uncle doing some renovations, mixing my own album, and recording an album for Ove Danielsen. I returned to the US that July, continued to work with Katie on her album, worked on my album, started working on a new Christmas album with friends, and continued to play shows locally, most notably Purple Door Music Festival. At the end of the summer we released Katie's album and the Christmas album, which both did decently well - a song from the Christmas album was offered as a free download on two local radio stations.

In 2009 I released my first full-length album and spent 2 months touring the East Coast and Midwest US on my own, making friends and selling CDs. The album continues to sell and do well, and at the end of August I head out again for a month or so to continue promoting it. (Ring has just returned from Europe since we originally did the interview).

I'm now working on my second album and also working with Matthew Monticchio on a collection of sacred songs for church - in the same collaborative vein as the Christmas albums. I also plan on applying to a couple missions organizations this fall, and would like to go back overseas long-term, while continuing to write and perform music on the side. We'll see how it goes.

Do you classify your music as Christian Folk or do you not like to use labels for what classification of music you fall into?

I would put myself in the Folk/Gospel genre. Classifying music is always tricky for the person making the music. In one sense you want to be accessible to as many people as possible, but in another you have to fit into a system of classification in order for people to find and listen to your music. So I've learned that your audience will largely determine how you are classified. The reality is that I have a deep faith in God and his work of redemption through the person of Jesus Christ - his death and resurrection. This belief molds and shapes how I look at the world, and I create music influenced by this understanding. Incidentally, so does most traditional Folk/Gospel music. The difference with my music is that it uses metaphors and deeper language, which is more common to rock music, to talk about spiritual mysteries.

You have a strong Christian influence within your life-do you find that it hinders or help you expand your musical horizons?

Having Jesus at the center of my life continues to grow me deeper and make me more complete as a person. I see music as one aspect of my life, as one of the gifts that God has given me to use for blessing others. It is humbling to have the example of Jesus to aspire to and freeing to know that nothing I can do will separate me from the love of God. It has definitely helped to ground me in reality and to take things in stride, understanding that what happens on the business side is not the be-all end-all. And it has enabled me to take risks that I might not otherwise have taken.

Musically, I am blessed by a church community where there are a lot of other musicians. I learn a lot about music of different kinds (rock, funk, soul, jazz, metal, folk, classical, gospel, experimental) from the people I interact with and we have the opportunity to create music in various genres for the congregation. I think having the example of Christ allows me to stand back from myself, to learn from others, and to accept criticism, which ultimately refines my own musical expression.

What has pushed you to travel to some of the more undesirable parts of the world with your music?

Because I see music as one aspect of my life, and not as the be-all end-all, it really frees me to do other things and have adventures. In college my degree was Intercultural Studies, which includes the study of culture and language. I am fascinated by how people organize and understand the world around them, and growing up in Ghana has given me the ability to travel easily - to adjust to difficult and different situations without having them affect me super-negatively. So I love to travel, and I'm always looking for the next adventure - something that will stretch me and grow me, where I'm a little bit uncomfortable and can be changed by the situation. What I've found is that wherever I go, my music comes with me, and I have been able to use it in various contexts to encourage those who have committed their lives to serve others in that part of the world.

You not only record, but you also have started a music label, Ring Records. What drew you to do it all yourself? What are the benefits and what are the disadvantages?

To quote Napoleon Dynamite: "I love technology..." Since I was pretty young I was fascinated by computers/machines and how they work - maybe I get this from my dad, who is something of a 'renaissance man'. We would play with Legos as kids and set traps for animals, and growing up in Ghana we had to make up our own games and use our imaginations. Recording my own music wasn't my intention when I first decided I wanted to make a CD. I started out recording through the microphone on my PC, but I wasn't happy with the sound, so started looking around for other options.

Tony Guyer was a friend of my older brothers whose parents work for the same organization as my parents - Wycliffe Bible Translators. I heard from his parents that he had moved back into the area after working as a road manager for Christian bands out of Nashville like Sixpence None The Richer and The Waiting. They said he knew something about recording, and so I met with Tony to talk about it and after our first meeting we started recording. The kind of sound we got was a thousand times better than anything I had done on my computer, much closer to the studio sound I was looking for, and the price was right (I was working in construction at the time, so completely self-funded).

After working for a bit with Tony (we produced a 4-song EP), I started to get familiar with the process and to teach myself the computer program we were using. When Tony informed me that for personal reasons he couldn't continue recording, it was a pretty big blow, but I was able to purchase the equipment from him (computer and microphones) and continue on my own. This was a pretty steep learning curve, yet things began to happen. I began to get familiar with the equipment, talked to other local musicians who record their own music (Don Peris, from The Innocence Mission, and Denison Witmer were very encouraging) and began to work on getting songs into a listenable digital format.

So it really just sort of happened, all because I wanted to give a copy of my music to people, and I wanted it to be superior quality - something they could listen to alongside their other favorite (pop) music. I continue to learn about recording and the other aspects of the music business, and I've found the advantages and disadvantages to be two sides of the same coin - that it's just me. Because it's just me, I have a lot of creative control. I can make decisions about look, feel, sound, and create what I want to create without having to compromise. I can choose who I collaborate with and what the final product will look like. However, this also means that what I create is completely dependent on my own ability - which I know is not comprehensive or deep enough in all things. I can get other people to do certain things, but when it comes to something like booking shows, finding musicians, mastering, etc... like any other small business it is completely dependent on how hard I work at it. It is incredibly rewarding when things are completed, but sometimes they take longer than they would otherwise.

With your record label, what types of talent do you look at signing? What are you goals for the label?

In order to sign talent and to make them successful, you need lots of money and lots of connections. At the moment I don't have either. What I DO have are production skills and some connections. So the talent I look for are friends that also want to get their music in a quality format to a larger audience. My goal for the label is simply that it would make a name for itself in quality recordings and musical depth.

Do you write all/most of your music? What inspires you? Do you like to stick to mainline topics or do you also like to stretch the mind to look at new things with your music? Do you want it to speak to others not just in generalities, but also in specifics?

I do write all my own music and lyrics. I ask others to critique the songs, and often when I'm recording other instruments we'll try a few different things until I or the other musician comes up with a specific sound or instrumental line. Sometimes I collaborate with others on music or words, but I'm involved in both processes. I'm inspired by personal experiences, by the world around me, by writings, by other people, and by realizations of truth. I try to look at life and these experiences from a different perspective, and I use metaphors to express and tell stories. I want the words and the music to work together, to combine forces so that the song is a powerful expression of thought and emotion. Some of my songs do that better than others. I write for myself, but also so that people can apply the song to their own lives, can connect with it and be encouraged. Recent reviews of my album Breathe Deep mention the way that it is infused with hope. I want to communicate hope to people - something they can hold on to in tough times.

What has been your biggest letdown/disappointment and how did you recover from it? What pulled you out of it?

It was probably when I found out from Tony that he couldn't continue recording my music. That had me down for a couple weeks. The reasons for his exit were extremely valid and I think it was a wise move, but it was hard to stop working with him after investing so much together. I think what pulled me out was realizing that I could continue to use the equipment and that this was an opportunity for me to learn, a chance to take complete creative control and see what I could do with it. What also encouraged me was reading up on the history of recorded music and realizing that back in the 20s when music first began to be recorded, the people doing the recordings largely didn't know what they were doing. They didn't have computers, they didn't understand how sound waves worked, they had huge reels and bad microphones, and yet they were able to capture some really great music. So that encouraged me to think that I could do it on my own - that I didn't need extensive training, but that I could continue to learn as I went.

What do you hope people "get" from you music? What is your typical listening crowd like?

I hope people 'get' that life doesn't have to be dismal, and that if you find life dismal you might need to stop, step outside of yourself, and reconsider the path you are on. I view life as a journey, where the choices you make impact you and the people around you and affect which path you take. And I hope people understand that all of life is interconnected, that once we understand how our choices affect us and others we can begin to make better choices. And of course this is not something we can do on our own, but we need other people, and ultimately we need to fill ourselves with truth and base our lives on a reality that exists outside of ourselves.

Most of my listeners are in their 20s to 50s. Kind of a broad range, I know. Little kids like my music too. And people in other cultures. Maybe I have too broad of an appeal. You can listen to my music and connect with it from a large range of backgrounds. The songs are simple stories on one level, and deeply meaningful on another. A lot of people have told me I sound like another pop/folk singer-songwriter named Jack Johnson, who plays guitar in a very percussive manner, similar to how I taught myself to play. One of my friends said "Hiram, your music is something the whole family can enjoy!"

Ring is not just a Christian Folk Artist, he overrides that label with a passion for life and learning and to convey messages of hope, inspiration, and character. If you are interested in learning more about Ring and his upcoming album, or his tour, visit http://www.hiramring.com.
Hiram Ring will be playing locally to Lancaster, Pennsylvania at the Wheatland Presbyterian Church (http://www.wheatlandpca.org) on Friday, October 9, 2009 at 7 p.m.at 1125 Columbia Ave.