Serena Ryder is only 24 years old, but she belts out songs with the powerful sound and conviction of someone many years her senior. With a new album covering classic songs – some written over 100 years before she was born – Ryder is marking her territory as a future Canadian superstar.
Serena Ryder has been surrounded by a lot of legends lately. On her new album, If Your Memory Serves You Well, she covers songs by Leonard Cohen and Paul Anka. She has toured with Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman, and even collaborated with Bachman on her song “Out of the Blue.” Not bad for a small town girl from Millbrook, Ontario. Ryder sings with a husky, soulful voice reminiscent of a bygone era, and she speaks with the wisdom of someone with many years of experience. But then she jokes about fears of being on a tour bus with a bunch of “stinky boys” and mentions her MySpace addiction, and you realize that Serena Ryder is still a normal 24-year-old, and all is right with the universe again.
Following the last song on her new album, there is a hidden track of Ryder singing “That’ll be the Day” at seven years old. Listening to that track, you realize that from that young age, she was destined for something more than Millbrook. But she doesn’t discount the benefits of her small town childhood. “I really enjoyed growing up in a small town because of the trust and the freedom,” she says. “Everybody knows everybody, and that was really cool for me up until a certain age.” That age was 17, when she moved to nearby Peterborough, only to relocate to Toronto a few years later.
Ryder’s first album, 2004’s Unlikely Emergency, came about when Hawksley Workman heard Ryder sing on CBC radio. He was so impressed that he contacted her and signed her to his indie label, Isadora. If Your Memory Serves You Well marks her major label debut. It might seem strange that Ryder’s first album with a major label consists of cover songs (with three of her original songs thrown in), but the album was actually recorded before she signed with EMI. The project began when she performed at the Canadian Songwriter’s Hall of Fame and met its founder, Frank Davies. It turned out that they both wanted to do a project like this. “It was absolutely serendipitous and totally meant to be,” she says. They then had the difficult task of choosing from 500 Canadian-written songs. Ryder says the songs she chose were, “the ones that I couldn’t get out of my head. The ones I started singing along with instantly when I was listening to them.”
Ryder says that this project has been a major learning experience for her. “For me it was really about honing in on my own songwriting skills,” she says, “and finding inspiration and learning from the greats.” Ryder got to learn from a great first-hand when she started writing with Randy Bachman. She remembers that he and Burton Cummings would tell stories on stage during their tour. “Randy would say, ‘I’m really good at writing half a song,’ and Burton would say, ‘I’m really good at writing the other half,” she recalls. “I was on the [tour] bus and I came up to Randy and said, ‘hey, I have half a song!’ and he said, ‘great!’” They finished that song in five minutes, and came together once more to finish “Out of the Blue,” which appears as track 14 on the new album.
If you’ve listened to the radio at all in the past few months, you’ve likely heard Ryder’s single, “Weak in the Knees” – a heart-wrenching and haunting ballad. “The song is really about learning to love yourself – how to stand on your own two feet,” she says. “You can think that you love somebody else, but you never really can unless you love yourself.” Ryder says that the biggest compliment she has received is when people are moved to tears by her music – something that happens most often when she performs “Weak in the Knees.” “When I see someone who allows themselves to surrender like that because of some sort of inspiration or connection that they feel towards what I’m doing – that’s the ultimate compliment,” she says.
When I ask Ryder what her favourite live show has been, she tells me about performing at the Mod Club. “I’ve always wanted to pack that place,” she says. She reached her goal by selling out the concert, but what made the night special for her was looking out in the audience and seeing family and friends. Ryder seems to have a strong sense of what’s truly important in life – an insight that makes her wise beyond her years. Having been surrounded by legends, it is easy to predict that with her unique sound and raw talent, she will eventually become a Canadian music legend herself. I ask her how she would define ultimate success. “Just to have a sense of peace and satisfaction without wanting anything more than what I have,” she says. “I think that’s ultimate success for me.”
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