For Ry Cuming, the ocean is everything. Born on Woodford Island in the Far-North Coast of Australia and growing up in the coastal town of Angourie, Cuming was a bleach-blond kid who spent his days on the beach and in the water.
From the first time he stood on a surfboard at age 3 and held his first guitar at 5, he simply followed the natural path ahead of him. It was one that would take him to far-off places, riding unfamiliar ocean breaks and singing in his alternately sandy tenor and captivating falsetto along the way.
Cuming’s music has garnered him two Australian Dolphin Awards for Best Pop Song and Best New Artist, placements on NBC’s Extra and MTV’s Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, a spotlight in Vogue, and a musical appearance alongside Maroon 5 and Jimmy Buffett in the movie Hoot—all before the release of his self-titled debut album.
But it all began with his father’s surfboard and vinyl collection. “We grew up on the beach and literally spent six hours in the water everyday, almost like fish,” Cuming says. The surfer/musician followed the course of his daily surf sessions, joining his high school surf team, traveling up and down the coast for competitions, going pro, and picking up sponsorships (most recently, a promo deal with Roxy/Quiksilver).
His musical career unfolded on a similar path of serendipity. As a kid, he listened to his dad’s Marvin Gaye, Frank Zappa, Beatles, Police, and James Taylor records. At 6, he fell in love with the music of Michael Jackson. In his early teenage years, he discovered Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Rage Against the Machine. “I remember I had Pearl Jam album, Ten, on a tape cassette, and I would just rewind it and play, rewind it and play, rewind it and play.” That led Ry to play in a grunge cover band.
“And then,” he says with a pause, “I found Jeff Buckley. Bob Dylan had Woody Guthrie: He emulated him, dressed like him, sung like him, played his songs. I did that for a long time with Jeff Buckley. As soon as I heard Grace, that was it—that was my decision made. He’s inspired me and been more of an influence than any other musician, or even in surfing, anything.”
From the intimate, finger-picked acoustic guitar and legato strings of “Always Remember Me” (featuring Sara Bareilles, singer of the massive 2007 hit, “Love Song”) to the anthemic and swirling, long-distance heartbreak of “City of Lights,” Ry carries the late Jeff Buckley’s torch well. “I remember Jeff was in New York when he got signed out of playing in a little café,” Cuming says. “I just love that story.”
Ry should be pretty happy with his own story, too. At 18, he was discovered while playing in a hotel hallway in Costa Rica, shortly after flying to Central America on a whim. “I’d turned down a degree in Communications at a good school in Australia, and I just left,” he says. “I got on a plane, I didn’t have enough money, I didn’t speak Spanish, and I didn’t know what I was doing.”
One day after surfing in the World Longboard Championships, Cuming was playing in the hallway when one of the surfers called her boyfriend, an L.A. film producer, to come check him out. “The next day he came up to me at the beach and said, ‘What are you doing with your music?’ I just said, ‘Playing it.’ And he said, ‘No, but I mean, what are you doing with it?’ And I said, ‘What do you mean? I’m playing it.’”
On a layover on the way back to Australia, Cuming had some meetings and signed with Jive Records. “I came out to L.A. on the way back to Australia, not really thinking anything,” he admits. “I had long hair, barely ever wore a shirt, and I think I put on a pair of shoes in L.A. maybe once.”
But his particularly laid-back demeanor wasn’t a deterrent in falling in with the right people. Back in L.A., he recorded demos and started working with then-fledgling L.A. bands Phantom Planet, Rooney, and Maroon 5 (Cuming’s Australia tour mates in 2009).
Ry also hooked up with producer John Alagia (John Mayer, Jason Mraz) to produce his debut album. First up was the driving, lust-fueled opener, “Tearing Me Apart.” “In just one day it went from being this acoustic demo to this new kind of beast,” Cuming reveals.
Lyrically, Ry is quite the romantic. “Relationships and girls have always been incredibly inspiring for me—beautiful and heartbreaking and romantic and destructive and breathtaking, and all these things at once,” he says. “My favorite poet is probably Pablo Neruda. The way he talks about anything—from the ocean to relationships—is incredibly romantic. So I guess I have a running relationship with romance in general.”
The 11 songs on eponymously titled Ry Cuming move from gorgeous and hushed (“Home”) to grimy and rocking (“Chemistry”), featuring shout-it-from-the-rooftops choruses (“Meaning of It All”), vulnerable breakdowns (“Heartbreak”), and angelic, tumbling falsetto melodies (“Is This Love”). And while each hook-filled song burrows its way into your consciousness, Cuming didn’t want to make commercial viability the number-one priority in choosing which songs would make it to the final track listing.
“It really just came down to sticking to my absolute favorite songs that meant the most to me,” Ry says. “When I wrote them, I loved them, and my love for them didn’t go away. I love being an artist and touring, and every time I play those songs live, I feel captivated by being in that moment.”
