Ryan Spearman

"Spearman's emotive ability is deft and limber. The troubadour can pull heartstrings while cracking a sardonic joke. Spearman's timing here is unmatched"-Will Kyle - Show Me Shows

Ryan Spearman’s Green Strum Project is an evolving effort to interest more St. Louisans in sustainable living through the power of folk music and recycled instruments. Spearman, a teacher at The FolkSchool of St. Louis, recently released Missouri’s first local, sustainable recording, Get Along Home. The goal was to make a recording with significantly low environmental impact and, as a result, help raise awareness of easily adoptable sustainable practices and the importance of healthy local economy. The Green Strum Project’s largest public event so far took place at St. Louis EarthDay in April, when Spearman and friends helped hundreds of children and adults create musical instruments out of recycled materials.

Join EarthDance at The Mission Awards Ceremony in order to celebrate these outstanding members of the St. Louis community! - Earth Dance Farms

Ryan Spearman, an open-mic night host, guitar instructor and fine folk singer, isn't kidding around when he talks about "going green." His latest album, Get Along Home, was recorded using instruments made from repurposed or recycled items — cigar boxes, wine bottles and pizza boxes are all manipulated and employed throughout the album. Spearman, alongside his wife and collaborator, Kelly Wells (who is the executive director of the Folk School of St. Louis), founded the Green Strum Project to "explore connections between art and sustainability in St. Louis." It's a project that's easy to love even before you hear a note. As it turns out, the album of suitably hand-hewn folk tunes stands on its own, even without the ideological trappings.
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The breezy, sunny strums of Spearman's tunes mix well with his slight drawl and honeyed delivery. The whistling blues of album opener "Mutton Chops" tells the tale of a two-bit scammer in a familiar story-song style that shows Spearman an apt pupil of his forebears, but nothing on Get Along Home comes off as purposefully old-timey or affected. In fact, his best songs show a topical bend to his songwriting, as on the artfully plucked "Promised Land." In the song, Spearman takes aim at American values with neither vitriol nor paranoia but with a weathered, wearying sigh. A similar vein runs through "Land of the Free," though the slow fade of "Hometown" is a better display of what becomes of busted dreams. Amid these moments of heaviness and hard questions come plenty of front-porch picking and light, jazzy strums. Baseball fans will take special joy in "Willie McGee," wherein the great Cardinals outfielder is cast as a folktale hero who strides tall alongside giants like Bruce Sutter and Ozzie Smith. St. Louis always loves the hard-hustling underdog, and Spearman fits that mold with such an ambitious and thoughtful project - The Riverfront Times

Ryan Spearman

Get Along Home

Green Strum Records

4 out of 5 stars

Multi-instrumentalist songwriter Ryan Spearman used to reside uphill in Nederland and years ago fronted the old-time band High on the Hog.

For several years now, he’s been in St. Louis, and to say that he took some of Boulder County’s green ingenuity with him to the Midwest would be an understatement.

Spearman has just released Get Along Home, an album that consists entirely of instruments made by local luthiers as well as homemade instruments built from recycled, found and re-purposed items like cigar box fiddles, bucket slides, suitcases and pizza boxes, among other items.

In a press release that accompanied the album, Spearman, the founder of the organization The Green Strum Project wrote, “It’s my hope that the album will not only entertain, but serve to inspire others to explore the opportunities that occur at the intersection of art and sustainability… to prove that art will not suffer, but rather prosper when subjected to the “limitations” of an idea like sustainable mindfulness.”

Called the “jujitsu master of folk” by The River Front Times, Spearman has found a way to update traditional music, without sacrificing the antique feel. Get Along Home is at times light and joyous, at other times, deep and thoughtful, treading a line that winds between old-time, bluegrass, country and straight-up folk.

It’s a delicate piece of work from a musician who thinks way beyond the notes he’s producing, and the entire package shines because of that.

— Brian F. Johnson - The Marquee

Consider Ryan Spearman the jujitsu master of folk music. Whether as a solo artist or performing around town with formal and informal blues and old-time groups, he uses his considerable knowledge of folk material and unassailable skill on guitar, mandolin, banjo, harmonica and fiddle to disarm any attempt to fix tradition in history books or on wax cylinders. Spearman's 2010 album Live at the Chapel is no less than a clinic on how to update tradition without losing what makes mastering the old language worthwhile. His music speaks to the old spirits and teaches them a thing or two about contemporary life and song as well. - The Riverfront Times