‘Growing Pains’ is RYMAN’s Guiding Light

Photos by Grace Braswell

Before releasing his first record Growing Pains, RYMAN sat down with Pleaser to talk wordplay, weighted narratives and the excitement that comes with a debut record. 

In Ryman Wooten’s Notes app, he keeps a running list of witty wordplay that he might, one day, turn into a song. We were sitting outside of Bongo East at a squeaking, rickety metal table that tilted every time we leaned against it, when he willingly pulled out his notes app list and turned his phone screen around to face me. 

“I feel like a lot of times, I have no idea what I’m talking about until I’m talking about it,” Wooten told Pleaser over a freshly-cracked can of Yerba Madre, scrolling to find the notes app poetry starter kit he keeps in the yellow-lined cellular application. “It’s kind of just like word-vomit. I’m really big on phonetics, and words that paint a really pretty picture, even if I don’t know what they are. I have this long notes list in my phone, and every time I hear a word in conversation or a phrase or saying that I like, I write it down. Like the other day, someone said ‘bulletproof.’”

We met just a couple of days before his debut record, Growing Pains, released into the world, on an overcast Wednesday in July that felt thick and stifling (it’s been an almost unbearable summer in Nashville, where we’re both based). Conversation flowed from the undeniable likelihood that our friend groups overlapped, considering how the multicircle venn diagram of Nashville folks tended to intercept, to Wooten’s love of poem-esque wordplay, to his accomplishment of winning the Redhead Competition at the East Nashville Tomato Arts Festival twice in his lifetime. 

But the most exciting thing we talked about, as anyone could imagine, was the anticipation of his very first record– one that felt weighted, well-thought and honest. A lot of the songs on the record, including the title track, started as passing phrases, mulled over in a writer’s room where multiple brains collaborated to create the best possible version of the first original thought. There are a million ways to express a feeling, but Wooten is so specific with his word choices, you almost feel like you’re experiencing the feeling right alongside him.

“You would think I’m like, schizophrenic, just off my notes app,” he continued before reading off the list. “Hallelujah. Hand me downs. Playing tetherball with my heart. Getting my ducks in a row. Throw in the towel.” 

Growing Pains was written through the sonic undercurrents of a modern southern folk ballad. Wooten upkeeps his lyrical weight by accompanying his stories with well-played acoustic guitar fingerpicking and twinkly percussion sprinkled in the music like the sonic equivalent of glitter smeared on the face of a little kid. Although the musicality of the record is easy to bounce along and can be put on in the car without much pushback from passengers, the real star of the record is Wooten’s sweet, coming-of-age-like storytelling, a passionate lifeline of narratives. 

You can tell the person who wrote the record is a fresh 20-something– in the most honest and endearing way. It’s a time capsule of firsts, with lyrics like “Paintin’ over marks on the bedroom wall / Pencil stenciled where I stopped at six feet tall / Cleaned out the closet / Put all my shit in boxes” from the title track of the record. They reflect a universal feeling of becoming who you are. Growing up, growing out and growing in. It’s a lot of constant change– from first loves to passing phases to getting lost to feeling like you finally figured it out, over and over and over again. It’s one of the most precarious, precious parts of your life, and RYMAN captures the experience with emotional eloquence. 

“Last year when I turned 21, I hadn’t played a single show outside of Nashville. So much has happened since then. So much happens in like, a month,” Wooten told Pleaser. “I’ve had people of all ages reach out to me and tell me that the record made them feel something. I’m glad it can be digested by a broad audience.” 

Perhaps one of the most pinpointed, precise moments on Growing Pains can be heard on “Up in the Air,” the ninth track of the record. Wooten’s earnest, folksy voice pours out the words “Caught a red-eye flight to Omaha / To play a club show at a hole in the wall / I sing bad when I drink alcohol / But I ordered a Bacardi and coke / Now I’m cornered in a window seat / With this blue lit screen in front of me / I’m scrolling alphabetically / About an hour thirty minutes to go.” 

Growing Pains is so lyrically strong, the stories feel as worn-in and familiar as a story you’ve heard your friend tell about their own life a million times, or a sweater you bought from Goodwill when you were 15 that you just can’t let go of. It’ll live in your chest of drawers forever.

Songwriting started almost like a form of therapy for Wooten, but when he fell in love and started to create music as a full-time job, he found himself feeling like he didn’t need the crutch of a heavyweight piece of writing to get him through. Songwriting became more of a dramatized game. He writes to capture an overarching narrative of the human experience, and Growing Pains directly reflects Wooten’s ability to use words as a playing field for nostalgia– a soft place to land for anyone who finds comfort in states of yearning for versions of ourselves yet to be discovered.