Ryan Greenacre
RYAN GREENACRE (whose alter-ego is RUGGERNAUT) is a singer-songwriter from Ottawa, Canada. He received notoriety in the mid-2000’s with his critically-acclaimed rock band Golden Bulldozer. After winning the 2006 Bluesfest Talent Showcase at famed venue Zaphod Beeblebrox and being labelled “Ottawa’s Fastest Rising Band” by legendary owner Eugene Haslam, they played the massive summer Bluesfest Festival and gained a large local following. Never recording a standard album, their music circulated with fans in a series of limited-release EP’s and studio demos on cassette, CD and DAT.
Greenacre is now a solo act, working with a wide variety of musical collaborators in the Ottawa Valley and beyond. His musical influences range from 60’s psychedelic rock, to 70’s metal, to 80’s pop music and traditional folk, country and blues. He calls it 21st Century Troubadour Rock, infusing his songs with large doses of social satire and consciousness-raising mantras, with lyrics steeped in mythology, science fiction and contemporary digital culture. Let Me Be Free is Ryan’s latest single. The song is now available for download on Bandcamp.
I started writing songs as a way to express my deepest inner emotions, as a way to get what was inside of me out, and to process life. For me, songwriting has always been an intimate thing, and I usually prefer to write on my own, secluded and safe to explore my most vulnerable ideas without judgement. As I have grown as a writer, I have learned to love co-writing more and more. I love how multiple people can come together and create something that is both personal and universally true, and you always come up with something that none of the individual writers would have done on their own, which is really exciting. My favorite part of the creative process is being in the studio and producing the track. I love taking a song from an just idea to a fully realized artistic vision. In the production process, collaboration has been essential for me. I love to work with other producers and to get their ears and ideas onto the
track. Ultimately, writing the song is just the first step, and you really get to bring it to life with the production.
I also have a passion for education and the empowerment of young female and gender non-conforming writers. I love to work with young artists to develop their voice and express themselves, especially those who are underrepresented. When I was a teenage writer, music was really the thing I leaned on in my life to help me get through tough times. I know how powerful music can be in people’s lives, and how transformative it can be to have tools to express and create at a young age. It is an honor to pass knowledge on to future generations of women and non-binary creators, and to encourage them to be fully themselves no matter what society has to say.
To me, the best writing is the stuff that is honest, raw, and real. The things that you may have been nervous to say, the lyrics that help you understand yourself and your life a little bit better, the melodies that make sense of it all, and
also rip your heart out