I hold that my encouragement didn’t make a bit of difference—Ryan pulled that confidence from somewhere within herself. You can’t teach stage presence like that.
She moved seamlessly from the first song to “Providence,” her own song. I hadn’t coached her on the order, but she’d had the instinct to start strong, bring it down to something slow, and leave them on a high note. She barely even waited for applause when she finished “Lonesome Road,” looking for a minute there as though she was entirely absorbed in her own world, picking out a little melody while she tuned a bit.
And when the audience was quiet, she began:These sunny days a stubborn shadow’s slipping ’cross my mind / The afternoon’s a dream when I’m with you. / But I can see the ocean calling through these Norway pines / And I know what it’s calling me to do.
Her voice was cool, haunting. After the lively first song, she had her listeners in the palm of her hand for that mournful little piece she wrote. Watching from backstage, I swear I didn’t see a muscle move the whole three minutes she was singing. Hell, even the guy in the taco truck back by the other vendors was leaning out to watch her, his elbows on his stainless-steel window counter.
You couldn’t look away when she was singing like that.
Mari
When Ryan finished “Providence,” I swear—no one moved. No one breathed.
And then she started “My Tennessee Mountain Home” just like the first one, a cappella, hands resting on the body of the banjo, using that same sort of lonely voice she’d used through “Providence,” drawing out the words about sitting out on a front porch in the summer.
But as she went, she let her voice warm and lighten. And then she began fingerpicking again, pushing the tempo faster. She leaped up an octave on the second chorus, and I got goose bumps even in that August heat. Some people broke out cheering just for that.
By the time Ryan had reached the final refrain, the audience was singing along—she was encouraging them. She picked the final notes on the banjo and got a standing ovation.
I saw the mask slip, just a little, as relief flooded her face. Then she recovered and took a deep bow, throwing her hair back once again.
Frank
I knew I’d created a monster when Ryan ran offstage with this huge grin and this look in her eye. She wasn’t just happy about the performance—she was hungry. She wanted more.
Mari
The heat didn’t seem to bother Ryan the whole rest of the day as we walked around the festival and watched the other acts. Nickel Creek was the headliner Saturday night, and Ryan sat there on our picnic blanket with her arms wrapped around her knees, drinking in every song.
We drove back to Hamilton very late that night. Between the excitement and the heat and being outside the whole day, I was exhausted. I fell asleep just about the second I plopped down in the back seat of the Holdings’ Toyota.
But somewhere outside Boston, I woke up and looked over at Ryan. She was wide awake, staring out the window with her chin in her hand.
Three days later, she came over to me at lunch and smacked a folder down on the table. School started just after River Rocks, althoughit seemed to me that Ryan had hardly noticed we were back in the classroom. She said, “I made a deal.”
She was looking very smug about it. “With who?” I asked.
“My parents.” She opened the folder and showed me the pile of brochures and flyers she’d certainly taken from Frank’s shop, advertising different festivals and bluegrass events all up and down the Eastern Seaboard.
“The hell is all this?” I asked.
“They agreed that any event I can get into, they’ll take me. That includes all these fall festivals, the Salem Halloween ones, the holiday shows, and then next spring and summer when things start warming up again ...”
I had stared at her. “You’ll never have time for all this,” I remember saying.
But I was wrong.
Justin
Things really started to ramp up after Ryan did that River Rocks festival. I feel like I hardly saw her that eighth-grade year, which was tough, since I’d thought we were about to get closer.
It was like every other week she was gone. I still don’t know how she got her parents to agree to it, but maybe they were starting to see dollar signs in this thing. Ryan wasn’t just entering in festivals, but in competitions—and she was winning the kind of money that was unthinkable to a couple of middle schoolers.
A hundred bucks at Salem Days. One-fifty at Long Island Sound for the second-place prize,threehundred for first at Raleigh Rumble. She let me tag along with her and Mari sometimes, which is the only reason I knew I wasn’t totally dumped—yet.
I’ll be real with you. She was ... spectacular.
I remember watching with this sort of slack-jawed awe. And I’m serious, I was happy to cheer her on. That was my girlfriend up there, playing like her hands were on fire? Hell yeah, it was. Mari and I madesigns and got up in the front row. She would blow me kisses, and I just felt ... yeah. I’ve never felt anything like that since then.
