South West muso gets busy while world pauses for lockdown

While the COVID-19 lockdown was a stressful time for most, it offered many South West creatives a chance to knuckle down and focus on their art.

For Binningup musician Ryan Hodgson, this meant finally recording his second album.

After learning the guitar at 15 years old, Mr Hodgson has released his new album, Layla.

“Layla is a collection of 10 classic contemporary hits that I’ve played over the last five years since I’ve been doing instrumental acoustic guitar arrangements around the South West and Perth,” he said.

Mr Hodgson said the lockdown period gave him the opportunity to put together the album and perfect it to a level he was proud of.

“Leading up to it, everything just got cancelled, but the positive was I had more energy and mental clarity to get it right because I wasn’t performing gigs,” he said.

It gave me something to focus on.

While recording the album, Mr Hodgson had to figure out how to manage the natural sounds that came with living with other people.

“Being acoustic you want to pick up the real clarity and softness of the guitar itself, so that brought up so many issues to solve,” he said.

“The solution was to wait to record between 12 midnight to 4am to avoid other sounds.”

Mastering skills usually performed by a sound engineer was another steep learning curve for the musician.

Mr Hodgson said he was excited to be able to perform the album live since COVID restrictions have eased.

“Obviously the internet has a lot of possibilities, but there’s nothing like authentic one-on-one performances with a crowd — you can never replace that,” he said.