It's late morning in San Francisco, the fog is finally beginning to dissipate and 9-to-5ers are starting the daily scurry from their cubicles in search of a quick-fix lunch. Not everybody in town is firing on all gung-ho six, however. At his hipster hotel, Nashville Celt-folkie Matthew Ryan is just stirring around noon; braving the sunlight outside his bungalow, he hungrily ventures forth -- too late, unfortunately, he's missed the complimentary patio breakfast by mere minutes. Blinking red eyes, scratching his short, sleep-strewn hair, he looks vaguely rodent-like, like a groundhog freshly prodded from its comfortable February burrow. On autopilot, he slumps into a deck chair and begins ruminating on his strange, serendipitous path as a songwriter, one that's led to his jangly, U2 -elegiac new sophomore set for A&M, East Autumn Grin.

Ironically enough, the road that got him here began with the earliest of early mornings. Literally, up before dawn, every summer morning, year after teenaged year, waiting for his deliveryman father to pick him up in the Groff's Potato Chip truck. In his native Chester, Penn., Ryan explains, Groff's was a very big deal. And riding shotgun with Pop automatically made him Snackmaster Supreme to the entire county. Not to mention one of the coolest kids on his block.

The whole experience was quite a hoot, chuckles Ryan, who netted one osprey-keen eye for observation during those regular runs. "I felt like I was with Mister Rogers, ya know?" he fondly recalls. "We'd stop in various places around the city, and everyone knew my father. He was the chip connection, so people were always really happy to see him. He was a very cool guy. And I, of course, had free rein -- I could have anything I wanted. But he had really good taste in music, as well, so we'd just drive around in his truck and play the Blasters, the Del Fuegos and the Waterboys. That was how I spent my summer vacations -- driving around in a potato chip truck, listening to really great records."

It's no surprise, then, that East Autumn Grin (which follows Ryan's critically kudoed '98 debut, May Day) rings with optimistic echoes of all three aforementioned outfits. It has a Blasters-healthy respect for all things R&B/roots ("Still Part Two," "I Must Love Leaving"); kitschy Del Fuegos-ish kowtows to sharp folk hooks ("Heartache Weather," "I Hear a Symphony"); and a Mike Scott/Waterboys way with an anthemic Irish chorus ("3rd of October," "The World Is On Fire"). Their lyrical portraits -- all finely detailed, carefully etched and often reverently insightful -- can be traced directly back to some of the colorful characters the young Ryan met along that Groff's route, "just these amazing old folks in these little corner stores, amazing faces and voices -- entire chapters of a past."

"There was remarkable old black guy in this really desolate part of Chester," Ryan continues, wistful smile on his face, awe still twinkling in now-fully-awake eyes. "Down by the Delaware River where, I imagine, thirty years before it was a pretty teeming place. But when a lot of industry left that area, it became depressed." The shopkeeper, though, refused to grow depressed along with his surroundings. "He held onto his store, and every week when we'd go in there, he would've created some new sandwich out of Philadelphia soft pretzels. He'd cut the pretzel in half, put turkey, cheese and honey mustard on it, or maybe hot dogs, and it was really good stuff. His specialty was this endless stream of pretzel sandwiches, sandwiches he was always excited about. To this day, that's something that stands out the most for me."

At fifteen, however, Ryan's Groff's sorties ended. His parents split up, and Dad moved to Nashville to pursue his most secret passion: songwriting. Ryan's mother remarried, and the one time the family reconvened was to buy Junior his first guitar at Christmas. He hated it; plucked one string a few times and put it down. He then followed his high school sweetheart into college, where -- like her -- he planned on becoming a teacher. It wasn't meant to be. At twenty-one, Ryan's romance splintered, and he made a maverick -- and fortuitous -- move to Nashville, where he moved in with his father, until his job at Tower Records landed him a place of his own. He picked up that castaway six-string, began plucking out a few loved-and-lost ditties, and eventually gathered the guts to sing them on amateur night at a local pizza parlor. "I didn't go to Nashville to be a songwriter," Ryan still maintains. "I went there with the idea that I would just try to do something other than be a schoolteacher. I was on some sort of Christopher Columbus trip."

Land ho! Crowds liked what Ryan was peddling, and followed him to larger and larger venues. Fans started telling him he sounded a lot like Steve Forbert, a bit like Steve Earle too. So Ryan immediately stopped playing his Earle and Forbert records at home to keep his developing artistic vision as pure as possible. Four years later, he inked his A&M deal, just as his successfully published father began to retreat from the music business entirely. "He's just making his own records, purist folk and old-country-type songs," Ryan says. "He just does 'em in his house, but he won't release 'em. Someday, I hope, he'll change his mind."

But the father-to-son legacy is still set in stone. Ryan is always searching, scanning crowds for faces as impressive and inspirational as the ones he saw on all those chip trips. "I love films that have character development, like Cinema Paradiso," he says. "I mean, look how long it takes for that story to unwind, and how much you care about the characters by the time it does. I think that's important -- it's food for the soul. I went to see The Patriot 'cause I've got this soft spot for Mel Gibson ever since The Road Warrior. But I went, and I just felt like I got hit in the head with a wiffle-ball bat and somebody stole my wallet while I was recovering -- all these goofy one-liners, everything building up to some sort of hollow humor.

"As things get quicker, we compromise depth, and that's incredibly dangerous," he continues, seeing the trend in music as well as film. "We have to strike some sort of balance, because only through balance will anyone know the difference. I mean, Eminem complaining about his fame on his second record? That's bullshit!"

TOM LANHAM
(September 21, 2000)