Addiction, Recovery, and the Power of Music: Ricky Bryd’s Clean Getaway

How music can offer hope and possibility for addicts and addicts in recovery.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inductee Ricky Byrd has been clean and sober for thirty years. Over the last few years, after a long career playing guitar for Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, Roger Daltry, Ian Hunter, and more, Ricky realized he could combine his music and recovery to create songs that are useful to people struggling with addiction.

The result is Clean Getaway, both the name of a 501(c)(3) non-profit Ricky founded to reach addicts through the connective power of music, AND a brand new album of songs related to his experience with addiction and recovery.

The music moves from energetic rock to acoustic ballads, performed with an impressive lineup of guest musicians, and the lyrics — as Ricky accurately puts it — shoot “straight as an arrow,” spare and evocative, empathetic, illustrative without being preachy, some deep and some funny, and all of them meant to show that hope and change are possible for addicts.

On this blog we’ve talked about a lot of issues that musicians regularly face, so it surprised me to find that we’ve never written an article that focuses specifically on addiction and recovery. Of course that struggle isn’t unique to the music industry, but because of the nature of performance and publicity, addiction is perhaps more on-display when it comes to musicians.

I thought Ricky’s album launch provided a good opportunity to get this conversation started on The DIY Musician Blog, so I interviewed him about Clean Getaway, his sobriety, addiction, and how music can show a path forward.

I’d love for any musician that needs a place to talk about addiction and recovery in their own lives to please feel free to join the conversation in the comments section below.

An interview with Ricky Byrd about addiction, recovery, and music

CR: Before we talk about your new music, can you talk about what Clean Getaway does?

RB: Yeah, the centerpiece is always music. My dream is to go across the country in a tour bus that says “Have Recovery, Will Travel” on it.

And let’s say I start in New York and I travel with a rhythm section, with Liberty DeVitto maybe who played with Billy Joel, or maybe Kasim Sulton — Kasim’s also in the clean club, and he played with me with Joan and he’s out with Don Felder now, and he played with Meatloaf and Todd Rundgren of course. So let’s say it’s just me and a rhythm section and we go to Austin to play at a school or a treatment facility or an outdoor sober-fest benefit for some local outpatient thing, so I call Bobby Whitlock from Derek & the Dominos who lives in Austin, and say “Hey man, we’re doing this thing; you want to jump on board?”

And the album is the set list, really. And no matter where I go there’s musicians to call upon. If I go to LA, there’s Michael Des Barres. I mean Slash is in the club too. Alice Cooper. There’s a lot of people who are public about their recovery. A lot of the people I know don’t mind talking about it. We didn’t mind everybody seeing us drop-dead high, so we certainly don’t mind everyone knowing we’re clean.

CR: So every town has the chance to see a slightly different presentation of this music…

RB: Yeah, that’s one way to go.

And the other thing is I have three variables. It could be just me. And then when I add another person in recovery I call it my Recovery Troubadour Series, and I’ve actually done a couple of those. I did one with Mark Hudson. I did one with Kenny Aaronson, and with those shows I play these songs on acoustic, and with the other person we do it like a Nashville songwriter-in-the-round thing. I do one song, tell a little story about the song or about my recovery, and then he or she does something; so that’s the second thing.

And then there’s all different sizes of the band, and it could be a full band. If you go on the Clean Getaway site, you see the all stars. I just say “Hey man, if we ever do something near you and you’re available, you want to do something?”

So it’s all different variables. Now the key to this is I have to raise money to do it, because obviously it’s not going to be cheap. It’s cheap if I just go solo or we do the Recovery Troubador Series, but when you start bringing a whole band then you have production and other expenses. So, it’s about bringing in sponsorships.

I did something two years ago up in Torrington, Connecticut, which has been hit really hard — as has every place — by the heroin epidemic. So it was a beautiful theater, the Warner Theatre, from the 1920’s, and there’s a treatment center there called the McCall Foundation. They’re a non-profit and a really great treatment center, so we did a benefit. I pulled together an all-star band. I got Bonnie Bramlett from Delaney & Bonnie. She drove up from Nashville to do it. And what we did, you get sponsorships and they pay for the expenses, and then the ticket sales go to whatever charity you’re giving to. And that’s really the model of how we do it. And that’s what I want to do over the next couple years, to be this bombastic traveling sober circus, and do it for awareness, to raise money.

Sometimes it’s cool just to do a concert so people can see you can have a great time being clean. That’s the message. “Dude, you don’t have to be doing this.”

So that’s for awareness. And then there’s going to schools and talking to kids before they’re addicted. Once somebody is deeply addicted it’s a difficult thing to make them change. The only way to do it is to get them when they’re at their lowest, when they’re fragile, and try to get into that soul and try to convince them. Because when somebody’s on a run you can’t get them to stop. It doesn’t work that way. So I get to play at detoxes and treatment facilities on my own, and I just go with my acoustic and I do recovery music. I try to get them when they’re in a spot where they know they’re in a pickle. And I play these songs that were all written by an addict for an addict. So they relate. And after three songs, I say, “Man, did you get any of that?”

And they say, “Man, that’s my story!”

So I know I’m on the right track. And the other thing is, it’s best to try to get to kids beforehand. Prevention. Maybe eight months ago I went to Seattle. I went to a juvie center, I went to two high schools, and I just sat there with my acoustic and told a bit of my story. I said “Hey, you guys are probably too young to remember my band Joan Jett & the Blackhearts I played with back in the 1980’s, but you all know the song I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll, right?”

And they’re like, “yeah, yeah! We do.”

I say, “Well lemme tell you a story.”

And then they all love it. And I play these cool songs. I don’t play I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll though. That’s not in my set. But my angle is I’m this rock-n-roll guy. I’m in the Rock Hall of Fame, and I come stumbling into this school and I’ve got my guitar and I play these gritty, straight-to-the-heart kinda tunes.

That’s what Clean Getaway is. And if we can get benefactors to help pad our piggy bank, then I don’t have to go around looking for funding, because there’s a whole stigma with addiction. If it were raising money for cancer or for kids with issues, you know people reach into their pockets. But once you start talking about drugs and alcohol it becomes a different animal and there’s a stigma attached. Not with everybody, because it’s such a big problem right now and people are waking up and they’re seeing what’s going on. But some people think, “Hey man, you chose to live that life.”

It’s like, “No, man, you just don’t get the disease concept, do you?”

So my answer to those people every time they say that, it’s like, “Would you go into a hospice with your dad hooked up to tubes with Stage IV lung cancer — because he smoked three packs a day for forty years — you know, and look him in the eye and say hey man, you had a choice to smoke those cigarettes; that’s the way it goes, man.”

If you can do that, you come back and talk to me. Addiction is addiction.

So as you’re presenting this show, is the healing and outreach component solely in the songs and stories you’re sharing, or are you sticking around talking to people afterwards one-on-one?

Absolutely. Sticking around. Talking to people. Taking pictures. Signing whatever they want. There’ll be tables with educational stuff. I’ll bring along a professional to talk to the kids on the clinical side a little bit. Yeah, there’ll be all of those things.

That’s the whole point, to bring a traveling circus. You come see some great music. The music is all about addiction and recovery, hope, and possibilities, and then there’ll be tables with pamphlets, treatment options, education about drugs and alcohol, people to talk to about it. Because at this point, everybody you see has a story; they’ll come up to you and say, “Man, my cousin OD’d three times and seventeen detoxes.”

And I get calls all the time because people know I do this, and they say, “Hey man, there’s this guy I know, he’s a guitar player; he’s really addicted to Oxi.”

And then I make a phone call and I say, “Look, I’ll turn you onto the right people. I can’t point you to a place, but lemme put you in contact with someone who knows more about that side of it than I do.”

I mean, I know people who run sober houses. But that’s the thing, anything we do we have to really vet well because there’s so much corruption going on in the recovery industry.

Really?

Oh, it’s crazy. Look what’s going on in Florida with all the places closing and the dirty doctors and the pill mills selling bags of Oxi to dealers, and they turn around and sell it on the streets to kids at school. Bad treatment facilities that are like a revolving door, and they use the insurance system to make a lot of money, and they open these sober houses where people run free, and ya know, it’s a small percentage, but they’re out there, and unfortunately people are dying in those places. It’s all about the money.

So with Clean Getaway, before we do anything for anybody, I go there personally. I bring somebody. We vet the place.

So regarding addiction and musicians, I feel like there’s this perception that artists are more prone to addiction. Do you think that’s true or is it just that artists are more in the spotlight?

The latter. The latter. Listen, I put records out but I’m not actively in the music business per say like Jay-Z or something, so I’m not sure what’s going on now, but I know how it was — it’s all money.

So back in the day when album sales are huge, and a band like Aerosmith would sell a bunch of records, executives turned a blind eye. If you had a record advance, there’d be another $50k on there for drugs. I mean, not everybody. But people we know about that we’ve read about… who either died or got clean.

So I think there was a lot more leeway back then, but it’s just as bad today in the garment industry, or in schools, or across the board. It’s everywhere, ya know? It’s just that we read about it or we see on TMZ something about Lamar Odom or Lindsay Lohan or Robert Downey Jr. It’s just that we’re in the public eye. So I think “Is it more accessible?” maybe back in those days, drugs and alcohol were more accessible in some circles, and you’re on the road and everybody wants to get you high because everybody wants to hang with the band. So it might have been more accessible then to some degree within music, but today anybody can get anything at any time, day or night.

I know that’s the way people see things. And let’s face it, when I was a kid and started listening to rock and roll and reading rock magazines, I’d read about Keith Richards or Jimmy Page and they always had a bottle of Jack Daniels, and they looked glamorous. But it wasn’t that glamorous, being one that had the chance to go through it. You still wind up in the room at 4am trying to go to sleep. But when you’re a kid and you’re reading that stuff and seeing the giant crowds, everybody looks so cool. Hey look, in the 1930s and 1940s when your parents or grandparents saw Humphrey Bogart smoking, everybody wanted to smoke, right? Then lung cancer comes along.

That’s what it is: you see people doing stuff on the screen or on records and think “that’s cool.”

Yeah, the myth makes it seem like the two things are naturally linked in some way.

Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s any more in the music business than anywhere else. I think you’re right, we just read about it there. But believe me, it’s in every school and business. Wall Street is notorious for drug use. And nurses that get addicted to pills, and then they’re right there with access to steal them. If you get addicted, you’re addicted, period.

So you said the best time to reach people is BEFORE people get addicted obviously, so if you had a room full of young musicians who are about to go out on tour, or be in and out of the studio, and get into that busy aspect of the musicians life, do you have coping skills you’d share, or what advice would you give them to stay grounded and not turn to drugs or alcohol?

Well, I talk to them like I talk to my 16-year-old: in the words of Steven Tyler, when you get rid of drugs it leaves more room for sex and rock and roll. So I would say the illusion that you have to be drunk or high to make great music is just that, an illusion. Has great music been made like that? Yeah. But there’s been great music by people that never got high out there as well. And there’s great artists who never touched anything and painted beautiful stuff. So I would try to get them to understand that it’s an illusion, and to not fall for peer pressure.

I read a really interesting thing in the Keith Richards biography. He said, “Some people expect me, when they see me, to be that guy.”

So when you see Johnny Depp doing that thing, that second-rate Keith Richards wobble, people expect that of Keith. But that’s the thing, he walks in doing that because people expect it, and he’s not even Keith Richards anymore. He’s pushing 70. Not to say he doesn’t have a drink and smoke pot, I don’t have a clue. But the point is that people expect to see a certain thing, so I would talk to up-and-coming musicians and say, “Lemme show you some pictures of people that didn’t make it, and you decide.”

All you can do is educate people. You can’t make them do anything. And I feel that way with my kids. All I can say is “Look, this is what I went through.”

In fact, there’s a song called “Kid” on the record that I wrote with Mark Hudson and it’s about that: “I’m not preaching, I’m just reaching out to you.”

Because nobody likes being told what to do. But if I can tell my story and say, “Here I am, I just celebrated 30 years clean and sober. I’m in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I get asked to play with all these cool people. Why is that? It’s because they know that I show up. I do the work. I’m prepared. And I’m not gonna fall down in the middle of the set.”

So if the topic of addiction is heavily represented on the album, is it a narrative or concept album, or is recovery more of a theme?

I think it’s more thematic. Because I also wanted to get some airplay. All of the songs are the ones that I play in the treatment facilities. So the way the record came about is I’ve been doing this for three or four years going to detoxes and treatment places, and after every single one of those shows, a bunch of people would come over and say “Man, where can I get this stuff?”

And for like a year or two I kept promising that I would do a record. But I had to raise the money. sS someone suggested I do one of those online campaigns. I used PledgeMusic. I raised the money. I had the songs. And I did the record. Started in February and it’s just come out. The music is what it is: rock and roll. And the good thing is because the special guest is recovery, in a way, I can do any style I wanted. I didn’t have to stick to a genre. There’s really cool acoustic stuff; there’s some Chuck Berry kinda stuff; I covered “Kicks” by Paul Revere & the Raiders, because that’s one of the first anti-drug songs.

But the lyrics on the album are about recovery, addiction, hope, possibility. There’s a song called “Lighthouse” that’s about hope. Then there’s “Addict’s Prayer,” which is about relapse.

If you listen to the lyric of “Kicks,” he’s basically saying “Girl, you don’t have to get high. You can get your kicks somewhere else.”

There’s a song called “Better Days” that goes: “When I wake up in a cold sweat, trying to remember what I want to forget, living my life like Russian roulette…”

I’m trying not to pull any punches because I’m trying to get into these peoples’ hearts and souls. It’s like a mirror I’m trying to hold up. I went through this and I’m not preaching, but here’s the deal, bro: this is where it starts and this is where it ends. And there ain’t no other option: jails, institutions, death, or recovery.

So it’s a theme, but I want to get some stuff on the radio, because the more it’s on the radio the more people hear it. And the people that need to hear it, they’re caught between denial and surrender, and they won’t admit they have a problem yet, but they’re having problems. So maybe they’ll hear these lyrics and go, “Huh, why’s that sound familiar?”

There are a couple songs that don’t specifically mention drugs at all. One is a great rock and roll tune and hopefully I can get some people to play it on the radio: college stations, Underground Garage, and stuff like that.

So as a lyricist, was it easy or frightening to go there?

Easy as pie. I mean, I’m thirty years clean, and I’m not living in despair anymore. So I can look back at it from the outside and kinda write how I felt then and how I feel now. And basically the lyrics and the titles came easily.

If you listen to the record, the song “Broken is a Place,” it was the first recovery song that I wrote with a friend of mine, Richie Supa, and then it started from there. I brought that in and I would just tell my story and play one song. And I’d hear somebody say, “You know, I can’t stop relapsing.”

And I thought, huh, and I wrote “Addict’s Prayer.” See what I mean? Every time I went in I’d hear these people talking and we had this conversation back and forth, it was like my muse to sit down with a blank piece of paper and write about stuff.

Now I’ve got enough material for volume II.

Oh, that’s a good segue because I was wondering, besides taking this out on the road and making a bigger thing of the Clean Getaway model, what’s next? What’s after that?

So here’s the deal: I’ve been doing these music groups and I say listen, the record’s not out yet. I’m easy to find. Find me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, I’m right there. When you come out of this treatment facility, find me and tell me you saw me at such and such a place, and I’ll send you a copy.

That’s the thing, I’m gonna be giving this record away at treatment facilities to the patients I play to. But I’m gonna be selling it on CD Baby and all the other online sources, and I’m gonna put a percentage of those sales into Clean Getaway, and also put away some money to make the second record. From the responses, I know it’s worth pursuing. On my laptop I have fifty messages from people who heard me who said, “I have your lyrics on my refrigerator. I can’t forget that song “Lighthouse” you played.”

So I know I’m on the right track. It’s like this, if you’re a certain age and you had a broken heart from somebody ditching you, you go straight to the Al Green records. It’s the same thing with this; music heals. It’s another tool, another form of treatment. And to me it opens up doors. It makes people see what they’re going through and what they’re doing to themselves, through the lyrics. Sometimes poetry and music becomes part of our soundtrack. That’s why we relate so much to the Stones or the Beatles, or Kurt Cobain. Whatever you’re going through, these people write lyrics about and it becomes something you refer to no matter how old you get.

It’s a part of you…

Yeah, it’s always a part of you. So I kinda stumbled into this. Thirty years clean and I never really thought to combine music and recovery, and I got calls to do these benefits at treatment facilities with big all-star bands with Chad Smith, and Simon Kirke, and Elliot Easton —and people would come over and say, “I grew up listening to you; it’s so cool that you’re clean.”

And a light bulb turned on over my head, and I said maybe I can somehow use what I do with music and turn it inside out to heal people, or at least get them to where they’re willing to go for treatment. Because we have a saying, “We’re lucky we have the gift of desperation.”

That’s when you’re finally willing to do what you need to do to get clean. The gift of desperation, it’s like, “I’m about to die.” And hopefully you have that little window of opportunity when somebody’s in the right place at the right time and says or does something that makes you go, “Hmmm, maybe this isn’t the way to live?”

Yeah, I saw some of the testimonials on your site and it definitely seems like… it’s working, which must be so gratifying to know your creativity is being put to some good use beyond just entertainment.

Yeah, it’s great. And as a songwriter, it’s like wow, that’s what a songwriter always wants. You want to touch people. You want to make people either laugh, cry, or think. You don’t want to just put out a song that’s crap, and there’s lots of those. They don’t really say anything.

In this venue, I bleed over these lyrics. Every lyric has to strike like an arrow, and I have some funny ones. “Paranoid,” or “I Prefer Wakin’ Up… to Comin’ To,” they have some humor. Because I can look back now and laugh. And that title I got from someone who said, “You’ve got three decades of sobriety. Why do you still do those things? Go to meetings, and such?”

And I said, because I prefer waking up to coming to. And my brain said, “That’s a song title there.” So I put some rock and roll music behind it and there you go, it’s on the record.

---

You can check out that record today on CD Baby or any of the popular download and streaming platforms.

For more information about Ricky Byrd and Clean Getaway, visit their website.

The post Addiction, Recovery, and the Power of Music: Ricky Bryd’s Clean Getaway appeared first on DIY Musician Blog.

from DIY Musician Blog http://ift.tt/2hBdUIH