Introducing… Ryan Hurd: Part 2
"It’s kind of fun to wake up one day and look back and realize, man, we’ve been doing this awhile and it’s really paid off," said Hurd.
When Ryan Hurd first packed his bags and made his way from Kalamazoo, MI to Nashville, TN, he had his sights set on school. It wasn’t until he graduated that he realized how deeply music flowed through his veins and knew he had to pursue a career in country music.
He then set his sights on a new goal of becoming a hit songwriter and never saw himself as an artist himself. It wasn’t until he started getting cuts and writing hit songs, like the Grammy-nominated “Lonely Tonight,” recorded by Blake Shelton and Ashley Monroe, that his vision changed again.
“People would ask if I was interested in being an artist in Nashville and I would say no, I want to be a songwriter,” Hurd told Sounds Like Nashville in Belcourt Taps, a small venue he used to play during his college years. “I want to write hit songs for other people. And that was true for a long time. I just want to get really good at writing songs and I love that life. There’s always been this little thing where I’ve thought about it, thought about being an artist, and thought about what it would be like to make a set list for every night and if I cut a record, what songs would I put on it. I always kind of had that in the back of my mind and the short story with all of that is sometimes things change and you have to allow yourself to want something that maybe you said you didn’t want before.”
Once deciding to pursue a career as a solo artist, Hurd dove straight in, giving it his all.
“I really did like throw everything I had into it once I decided that this is what I want to do,” he explained. “You just sort of figure it out and keep writing songs and you keep not listening to people who say it’s never gonna happen. It’s kind of fun to wake up one day and look back and realize, man, we’ve been doing this awhile and it’s really paid off.”
His hard work has certainly paid off as now Hurd has released two songs of his own to fans (“Love in a Bar” and “We Do Us”) and also nabbed spots on Chase Rice’s fall Everybody We Know Does Tour and Thomas Rhett’s 2017 Home Team Tour.
Watch the video above for more with Hurd. Tune in every Wednesday at 11/10c throughout the month of October for the reamining episodes of “Introducing…Ryan Hurd.” Check out Part 1 HERE. Be sure to follow Ryan on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and pick up “We Do Us” and “Love In A Bar” on iTunes.
