About Me
Welcome to my story; a modern day Clark Kent-esque yarn-spin with a musical twist. Off stage I am known as Ryan Byrne, the former public-school music teacher from New Hampshire with a love for life and a penchant for trivial information. But just before I step onto the stage with Stephen Cochran & The New Country Outlaws, I go into the backstage dressing room and emerge soon after as "Smitty", the tasmanian-devil spinnin', bass-playin' superfreak . . . er, I mean superhero, the likes of which country music has never seen before. In The Beginning . . . I was born in New Hampshire's largest city of Manchester, but raised in the small town of Gorham (NH) from the 3rd grade up. I started playing saxophone in 4th grade and electric bass the summer after 6th grade. After high school graduation I studied for a year at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. For this small-town boy, the eye-opening experiences of going to college amongst a diverse, global student body of musicians coupled with living in the heart of one of the world's truly great cities proved to be one of the most exciting and memorable years of my life. For financial reasons, I transferred to Plymouth State College (now Plymouth State University) in Plymouth, New Hampshire; A small school in a quasi-rural setting with a regional reputation for having a very strong music program. Six years and several stumbling blocks later, I eventually earned my B.S. in Music Education. Not only did I meet some of my current-day best friends at Plymouth, but I also started a rock band, called Nostalgic Distortion (ND), with some of my college buddies that went on to stay together for 10 years, releasing 3 albums and playing small clubs around New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, and Massachusetts. Though we all hoped ND would one day provide us with full time work and a good living, we all had to find "real jobs" when we graduated from college.I became a public school music teacher in a small, rural area in New Hampshire not too far from where I grew up. I loved the job and ended up staying for 6 years, all the while continuing to play with ND on the side. However, when I turned 29 years old, changes were taking place all around me and it forced me to reevaluate my life. Members of ND were getting married and starting families and it became clear that they wouldn't be able to give ND the same priority it had once held in their lives. Still a dreamer at age 29, I realized I had to make some big changes in my life if I really wanted to pursue music full-time. I put my teaching career and ND on indefinite hiatus, packed my minivan with all my music gear and a few personal items, and moved to Nashville. I changed my focus from co-fronting my own rock band to pursuing a sideman position as a bassist/back-up-vocalist for a nationally touring artist. For two years I networked and played around town with several different artists before the opportunity with Stephen presented itself. As a member of Stephen's band I have had the opportunity to open up for and/or share the stage with a multitude of artists/bands from a variety of genres, playing everything from small clubs for a few hundred people to large summer music festival crowds of about 50,000!