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Ryan Cabrera, Ryan Cabrera Take Away Away

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Title: Take It All Away
Release date: 29 June, 2004
Record label: Atlantic Records
Single: On The Way Down
Official website: Ryan Cabrera
Wikipedia: Ryan Cabrera

Ryan Cabrera Takes It All Away - Take It All Away

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If a Hollywood studio produced a movie trailer to introduce you to the career of Ryan Cabrera, it would feature Rockyesque moments of determination and triumph of spirit, Risky Business-like duplicity, and the innocence and absurd charm of an Adam Sandler movie.

How the feature-length film would end, however, is still in question, as this burgeoning singer-songwriter has barely completed his first act.

A budding career that began as a mere lark for Cabrera has shifted quickly from a hobby, to local star status in his Dallas hometown, to the very real promise of international acclaim. And while that last qualifier might seem like a leap at this early stage, it certainly seems much closer to reality when you visit the Italian and Australian fan websites that have dedicated themselves to news and gossip about the singer for over a year now.

It's this grassroots word of mouth that has been buzzing of late with the impending release of "TAKE IT ALL AWAY," the 21-year-old's Atlantic debut. Produced by the Goo Goo Dolls' John Rzeznik and Cabrera, the album is the follow up to "ELM STREET," Cabrera's 2001 self-produced independent release that became a staple in dorm rooms across the country. In addition to songwriting contributions from Rzeznik, Cabrera was joined by the duo of Sabelle Breer and Curt Frasca - who penned two tracks on Avril Lavigne's multi-platinum debut "LET GO," - Guy Chambers, who has written for Robbie Williams, and Jimmy Harry and Kara Dioguardi.

The road from bedroom troubadour to sharing writing credits with Rzeznik - a multiple Grammy nominated songwriter - was a shorter one than you might imagine for Cabrera. Just three years ago, he couldn't have imagined where he is today.

"I started playing guitar kind of by accident," Cabrera admits. While still in middle school he was continually drawn to a beat-up guitar at a friend's house. "I don't have a musical family, nobody sings or plays anything, and until that point I never even thought about music." He first picked up the guitar out of boredom, but playing quickly became more than ineffectual picking and strumming, and in little time Cabrera had taught himself the chords to Beatles tunes.

A late-night jam session led to his first band, a high-school punk outfit called Caine.
"The music was just as bad as our name was," laughs Cabrera. "I just wanted to play guitar, but it came along with singing, and I really didn't have a choice. They just threw me up there. I'd never sung in my life." Still laughing, the ever-humble singer passes his own critique. "I was horrible of course."

But things changed shortly thereafter, when Cabrera was introduced to the music of Dave Matthews. The effect was immediate and life-changing. "I said okay, this is going to be my life now. I have to start playing this music." It was then that he traded in the electric guitar and aggression of Caine for the acoustic-based sound of his newly minted band, Rubix Groove.

With management help from his not so older brother, Cabrera's new band quickly became one of the most popular units in the Dallas area. Rubix Groove was soon headlining clubs and playing multiple shows a week. Still in high school, Cabrera and company shared the stage with Cheap Trick, Ben Harper, and Third Eye Blind. With momentum high, the group enrolled at University of Texas and in short order became a campus favorite.

Cabrera had no way of knowing that he was on the verge of a sea change even as his band became a regional force. It happened when his brother bought him a block of studio time for a birthday present. He could only afford to send one person in, so Ryan went without the band.

"I went in there, just by myself, and I did three songs that I had written. And it went really, really, well." Well enough, in fact, that the engineer recording the session was so impressed by Cabrera that he offered to record a full album for free. "I had never really thought of playing solo, or ever doing anything like that. I was in a band," he reflects. But the prospect of that much free recording time was too much of a golden opportunity to pass on, and Cabrera entered the studio with a cache of songs he had been storing for two years.

The self-released record became "ELM STREET," and the response it elicited would prompt Cabrera to make the second significant change in his still young career. With initial pressings of the record selling out in local stores, and Internet orders coming in from all over the world, Cabrera made the tough decision to strike out on his own as a full-time solo artist.

"And then when my parents went out of town, I quit school," Cabrera says, casually moving through the timeline. "Oh yeah, they were pissed," he laughs. "They flipped." They had left town for less than a week and returned to find their son a drop- out.

"I quit school because I wanted to start really concentrating on singing, because I was never really a singer singer. I didn't really know what I was doing." And while this may have initially sounded like a simple excuse to get out of classes, Cabrera, with sufficiently tousled hair already, had no plans to sleep in all day. He found a respected vocal coach in Dallas who began teaching him in what might be considered the Jean-Claude Van Damme School of vocal training.

"She taught me a bunch of exercises to do which were really insane, unheard of things. We would do 1200 `bicycles' a day, which are kind of like ab-crunches. I had to lift up chairs and hold them while I was singing scales. Both of these are diaphragm exercises. It was like torture, but it really helped." Having learned the exercises, Cabrera entered a self-imposed boot camp-like exile.

"For five months I sat in my room and sang for four or five hours a day. I sang scales and held up chairs and did stuff in military positions, all these crazy exercises. My coach told me not to do this, said that it was horrible for my voice, but I didn't care, I did it anyway. I didn't really see anybody. I woke up, sang, and went to bed. Five months. And then after that I felt ready."

Returned to the performing world in singing shape, Cabrera joined Howie Day for a slate of sold-out shows across the country. With new management-Joe Simpson of JT Entertainment, manager and father of pop-star Jessica Simpson- behind him, Cabrera soon inked a publishing deal with Evan Lamberg at EMI that led to a recording contract with his E.V.L.A. imprint on Atlantic. Without a moment to rest on his laurels, Cabrera headed west to woodshed songs with various writers.

"I wrote every single day, most of the time with someone new, so it was insane. I ended up spending three months there. That's where I met John." Cabrera's publisher arranged a meeting between Ryan and John Rzeznik, and the two wrote a couple of songs together. They enjoyed each other's company and were very happy with their collaboration.

"When it came time to make the record and we were looking for producers, we were really looking for someone who had the same vision I did, who would let me still have my hands on the music, and not take it away and do their own thing with it. I knew that I wanted to co-produce the record.

"And then John was back in the picture, and he said, `I've never produced anything before, but I could do this, we could do it. I said, `I'm not saying no,'" Cabrera laughs. " So we went into the studio a week and a half later, and we recorded the whole record in a month. John had to go on tour, so we were under the gun." Rzeznik turned out to be the perfect co-conspirator for Cabrera. The Goo Goo Dolls' massive success is thanks in large part to the band's solid songwriting, and a clean production style that doesn't out-gloss the songs at hand. Both of these qualities infuse "TAKE IT ALL AWAY" from start to finish.

The months of heavy vocal lifting are on display as well. Cabrera slips into a husky falsetto on the beautiful lilting "True," and on the album's title track. The opening "Let's Take Our Time" bounds along on a Ben Foldsesque piano line while "Exit to Exit" is paced by a thumping acoustic rhythm. Wire to wire, "TAKE IT ALL AWAY" is punctuated by one undeniable chorus after another and lifted by the liberal use of soaring vocal harmonies on songs like "On the Way Down."

In preparation for the release of "TAKE IT ALL AWAY," Cabrera is out doing what he enjoys most, playing live. He's in the midst of a month long college campus tour that will take him from coast to coast. He's set his bar as high as possible, and looks to legends like Van Morrison and Paul Simon for inspiration. "I have to be that good," Cabrera says with matter of fact determination. "The same feeling that they create for me, I have to do for someone else. I still have a long way to go, but I know what I have to do to get better. I'm going to do whatever it takes to be able to affect people the same way I've been affected by the music I love."

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