Ashley Ryan puts a new spin on longing for home on "Just a House." In the vein of Miranda Lambert's "The House That Built Me," Ryan captures the beauty in seemingly mundane scenes — lines on a doorframe marking your height, an earring lost in a vent behind the couch, a worn-out front door — and revels in the sentimentality that houses hold when they truly become homes. Unlike Lambert's 2009 classic, "Just A House" doesn't feature a narrator returning to the house where she was raised. This time around it's the house itself reflecting on its previous inhabitant. Simply put, it'll more than likely make you shed a tear for your childhood home.
"They painted me a different color, added on another room," Ryan sings. "I know I'm just a house/ But I'll always be home to you."
"'Just a House' is a song I wrote with Larry McCoy and Neal Coty," Ryan tells Wide Open Country. "It's about a house that fell in love with the little girl living there, and its heartbreak when she moved away. Oftentimes, when people move out of their childhood home, there is a mourning process — they won't see their old bedroom anymore, or the dents in the floor from when they played a little too rough...The song is in the perspective of the house, and it follows the devastating realization that, while the little girl is gone, it will always hold the memories of her living there — which is arguably more painful."
Listen to "Just a House" below.
Raised in California, Ryan began writing songs at the age of 16 when her grandfather gifted her a guitar.
"I didn't have anyone to sing my songs, so I started singing them myself, and it just seemed to work," Ryan shares.
Shortly after moving to Nashville, Ryan earned the praise of Keith Urban, and even joined the Grammy-winner onstage at Bridgestone Arena.
Driven by the female-focused music of her youth, Ryan is putting her own twist on the music she was raised on.
"I grew up singing 'Before He Cheats' and 'Gunpowder and Lead.' I really love fiddle in a song — I love that old traditional country, the grungy female country with the sassy drop D guitar and rolling banjo," she says. "So that's what you'll get from me."
