Big Drums, AstroTurf and a U-Haul Truck: The Making of Mike Ryan's 'Way It Goes'

In 1997, about a year after her breakout hit, “Heads Carolina, Tails California,” Jo Dee Messina cemented her dynamic brand with a Phil Vassar composition, “Bye Bye,” which found a woman with my”. ” as she quickly walked away from a dead relationship.

Now, in 2024, less than a year after Cole Swindell's trophy-winning “Heads Carolina” intervention, Mike Ryan cements his own edgy Texan brand with another Vassar composition, “Way It Goes,” that finds a woman speeding away. a “foot down, toe up” U-Haul truck. An angry departure is a timeless source of inspiration, and Ryan certainly identified with the sentiment.

“Sometimes you just have to say, 'Enough is enough,'” he explains.

Writing with Vassar can be an experience. Songwriter Brett Sheroky recalls a writing session when Vassar disappeared for about 40 minutes, only to return on a Segway, circling a couch in the middle of the room and trying to juggle while trying to tackle a compositional obstacle. .

“That's him,” says Sheroky. “Just go, go, go, go, go.”

Vassar hosted a writing session with Sheroky and Andrew Peebles on July 17, 2020, in which they came up with “Way It Goes”, though no Segways were used in the process. There wasn't enough space in the room they used on the side of the house.

“He's got a garage that he turned into a studio space,” says Sheroky, “with this green AstroTurf for the floor and carpets everywhere.”

Sheroky came up with a fairly common phrase, “The way it's going,” as a kind of loose idea to write, and Peebles was digging through chord progressions on his guitar until he found one with a slight Tom Petty vibe—a little grit, a little mystery, played with a sense of movement. As this unfolded, they began to dissect how “as it goes” might work and — as Nashville writers are wont to do — began looking for a turn of phrase or double entendre they could apply. In the process, a subtle image of separation emerged.

“That's just how it goes, like 'he dumped me, tough luck,' right? — That's a meaning,” says Peebles. “And the second meaning, which was the nice part of that title turn, was 'How is it it literally goes?' She's driving a U-Haul truck, foot down and toe up.”

They dropped that image into the chorus and followed it up with a shot of “Born to Run” playing on the radio — the Bruce Springsteen song, not the 1982 country hit by Emmylou Harris.

Despite the solidity of the sound, the verse essentially captured the singer feeling cut off as he watches the whole thing play out, amazed that the breakup could be so smooth. It was, in a way, like David Nail's “Red Light,” an event they recounted in that chorus. “We mentioned it in there,” Sheroky admits. “That line, it says, 'Saturday anyway,' because [“Sunday”] is part of the song “Red Light”. “I was like, 'So, is that on the nose too?' But it just feels right.”

The lyrics would highlight it even more. In the opening stanza, the singer reflects on the judgments he expected to accompany a final scene. In the second verse, they got extra descriptive, detailing the tears, mean words, and broken dishes missing from the moment. Essentially, they were cleverly bringing a load of drama to a song about his absence.

At a later date, a phone call or two helped develop the song's bridge, with the guy watching U-Haul taillights disappear into the distance as the woman travels down a figurative “one-way.” It's an important moment, but the guy seems unlikely to do any introspection about it. “He probably doesn't think he's the problem,” observes Peebles. “He's just the guy who observes the situation and takes it all in.”

Sheroky, who is expected to release his first album this year, sang on the demo, an all-acoustic production that carried all the momentum found in “The Way It Goes.” (“the” was in the demo tag, even though it was removed from Ryan's master title).

Sheroky and Peebles would call up the demo and listen to it for personal pleasure, but the rest of Music Row didn't seem to respond. That is, until Ryan heard about it. He's been a longtime Vassar fan, and Ryan and Sheroky both wrote for Sea Gayle Music, so when someone mentioned the song in 2021, he was open to it. And he immediately responded to the “Way It Goes” storyline of a breakup that didn't go well.

“There's a lot of different ways these things fall,” says Ryan, “and I just feel like they captured the raw emotion really well.”

The task for Ryan and his producers, Bart Butler (Jon Pardi, Warren Zeiders) and Ryan Gore (Midland, Randall King), was primarily to capture the basic tone of this demo, but transcend it in its acoustic form. “That song sounds bad,” Ryan says. “We definitely changed some things to make it my own, but it was a really cool road map to follow. It just felt very tasteful front to back and well written and -able already. We just had to put our spin on it.”

Drummer Evan Hutchings had a little fun on the cut when they recorded the instrumentals Backstage on Music Row. And Rob McNelley energized the opener by turning the signature riff into a twin guitar track with a southern rock feel. “If I can put in some big drums and drive it with some loud guitars, I will,” says Butler.

But Todd Lombardo also drops in an almost hidden banjo, with Mike Johnson overdubbing an atmospheric steel guitar that adds a hint of western sound, providing a sense of cowboy isolation as the woman heads off into the horizon. Capturing Ryan's lead vocals on Sound Emporium was also a breeze.

“He gravitates to songs that he knows are in his wheelhouse,” says Butler. “He's not one of those guys — 'Oh man, that's going to be a tough note to hit every night. But I'll cut it anyway.' He picks the right songs for his vocals.”

Ryan independently released it to country radio via PlayMPE on January 8th, and it is at No. 16 on the Texas Regional Radio Report dated February 22nd. Among the stations playing it is KIKK Houston. WDGG Huntington, W.Va.; KBRX O'Neill, Neb.; and WPPL Blue Ridge, Ga.

Ryan identified with the details in “Way It Goes” and he's sure he's not alone. “I just feel like music is the most powerful tool known to man,” he says, “as far as connecting giant audiences to unique thoughts or situations that are going through.”