Blake Ruby on boldness, bedroom pop and where to go from here

ADAM DELAHOUSSAYE

It should come as no real surprise that someone as artistically upfront as Blake Ruby had an entry into the arts that felt equally as storybook – or High School Musical – quality as his music does. Ruby described the moment he knew where his heart lay.

and no one was really happy about that. That was the moment where I kind of realized what was more important to me.” they’re in A&R or a producer. And that’s cool if you’re really trying to grind it out and be competitive, but one thing I realized coming home is how important creating is from the perspective of being a lover of music, and not just because you’re surrounded by the industry.”

Instead of pursuing a career in collegiate athletics, Ruby would then go on to tour Belmont University, the only school he visited and the one he graduated from in 2020.

Ruby, now 24 years old, has been surrounded by music his entire life. He grew up playing in his grandparents’ church band, played for Maryland collective Red Couch in high school and recorded his first ever EP “Not I” in his Belmont dorm room with friend Chris Donland. It should, by now, be safe to say that Ruby made the right call on that fateful gameday.

“I played lacrosse in high school, and there was one game where the school jazz band concert I was drumming in got scheduled the same night as a playoff game, and it was one of those moments like ‘you have to pick one,” Ruby said. “And I picked the concert over it,

Ruby signed his first publishing deal with Black River Publishing three months after his college graduation. After five years of making Music City his mainstay, Ruby has returned home to Westminster, Maryland to focus on his wife, newborn child and new puppy, Mowgli. For Ruby, it’s a homecoming that’s felt like it’s been a long time coming. More than that, it’s given a new perspective for an artist whose main concerns lie in personal growth rather than the external.

“One of the things that’s so great but also kind of depressing about Nashville is it’s such an ‘industry’ town,” Ruby said. “Like everyone you meet or go get drinks with is in music, or

Ruby, now two years married, is always bringing new insight into his favorite emotion – love. In 2019, he released “Bless You,” a track that, in Ruby’s words, capitalizes on that feeling you get when someone loves you, even if you can’t even bring yourself to do the same. After three years, those feelings haven’t seemed to sway in any particular direction, but rather reinforced by an outlook of a love more permanent.

A lot of Ruby’s catalog could simply be boxed into a package simply labeled “indie pop,” but as with any post-internet artist, there’s more to it than that. Jazz influence peppers his production, the prose and cohesiveness of his lyrics almost feel akin to country music’s songwriting, yet it still feels too soon to predict what that overarching sound will be, even for the singer himself.

“I’m never sitting around saying to myself ‘okay, whats popping on TikTok?’ or whatever, I try not to let outside forces influence what I’m making at all,” Ruby said.

Ruby’s new single “Love You,” was released

March 10. The singer says it’s probably his most pop-influenced track on his upcoming album, which should be seeing its release this summer. He cites Tears For Fears’s “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” as an influence and artistic relative for the song. If it’s as creatively honest as any of his releases thus far, listeners can expect that uplifting tenor to only solidify the journey he’s had so far.