Although he is just 19 years old, on his first CD—“Bottom”—Ryan Wickersham already seems to have the ability and taste of an artist much older.

He shows ability because the songwriting and performances on this album are not only of a high caliber, but also demonstrate the chops of someone with much more experience. Not only musical experience, either. The songs themselves express ideas and sentiments that seem like they should be coming from someone with more life experience that most of us expect from someone of Ryan’s young age.

Taste comes into play because he has chosen to support these fine songs with arrangements stripped down to the basics. Each of the nine songs on this CD is accompanied primarily by a guitar or a piano. This is not only tasteful, but artistically fairly courageous. With such minimal instrumentation, the songs themselves are placed squarely under the spotlight. Fortunately, this set of compositions is more than up to the task presented.

Ryan has said that he wants to expand his sound to a full band in the near future. Although I would caution him not to rush too quickly into that, if he continues to exhibit the same taste and songwriting skill he shows on this disk, he’ll most likely make the right choices in moving his music forward from this encouraging start.
~BR