Texas isn’t for cowards. Neither is it suited to musicians who cannot hear equally well what big cities like Houston and small burgs like Wink have to tell them. Singer-songwriter Ryan James hears all the refrains and refines them to his purpose. He’s got a way to fill a bare-bones verse with a kind of deluxe longing that is plaintive and respectful and pleading and pleasurable, all at the same time. Ryan James takes on traditional country strains but filters them through the heart of a guy who realizes he isn’t solving the world’s problems because it’s hard enough to just talk about his own. Ryan James' story seeps through in his debut CD, Back to the Wind, sung with a voice that bespeaks a little whiskey and a shot of slow-working magic. “Home on the Range” is an ode to his father’s heroes. “Stay With Me Awhile” was written for his beloved wife Lindsey for their wedding day. “A Broken Heart” was poetry for a friend whose wife had left him after only five months of marriage. “Home to Texas” is simply a man hankering for “the place that loves us best.’’ And “I Pray for You My Friend,” which is always his closing number whether playing honky-tonk or listening club, is a Texas hymn written in a bluegrass key. Back to the Wind, produced by the fresh wizards of Nashville, Walt Wilkins and Tim Lorsch, is generating lots of spins and rave reviews. A new favorite of radio disk jockeys, the single “How Long” spent 13 weeks among the much envied Top 15 of the Texas Music Charts. And “Goodbye Carolina,” the first track on “Back to the Wind” was recently released as a single and is getting considerable air play. Reared in Rosenberg, a stone’s throw from Houston, Ryan had the advantage of listening to Lyle Lovett early and knowing what real music sounds like. Self-taught, Ryan took to the piano at four and kind of spread out from there to drums and the guitar. By the time he was set to go to college at Texas Tech, he was jazz scholarship material. But college wasn’t enough. So he wandered a bit only to find himself sure of where he’s home, sure of what he thinks and able to smite you with a single lyric that will leave you alternately seduced and sentimental and sorry you have to go home when it’s over. Ryan James “...deserves to be on a level playing field with the big-budget boys of Music Row.” Robert Oermann, Music World Homesick in North Carolina a few years ago, Ryan took himself to a tattoo parlor and settled in for some self-inflicted pain. The next day he had a six-inch wide Texas flag permanently affixed to his left shoulder blade. It was not an effort to put Texas behind him. It was meant to keep Texas, like a good angel, forever watching his back. It also worked to keep Texas in the vicinity of his heart and dangerously close to his voice which sometimes whispers in your ear, sometimes tells it straight and sometimes cushions the blow. It’s a voice you want to listen to. “I guess I don’t think there are enough Texas songs,’’ he says, smiling. “I’m working on changing that.’’ Somewhere back in Ryan James’ family, there’s some bluegrass, the Kentucky kind, which probably explains his way with a simple song. Somewhere, too, there’s a Daddy who listened to Pink Floyd and a Mama who listened to the Alan Parson’s Project. There’s a kid in Ryan who still remembers the melody to his first church choir solo and who professes to listening to even a bad album completely through once and something like Buddy Miller, Jack Ingram, James Taylor, Haggard and Cash over and over. “I draw from everything I’ve done and everybody I’ve heard.’’ Maybe that’s why Nashville calls him “a little edgy.’’ Maybe it’s also why he plays Americana even if he feels excommunicated by it. “Kind of like when Johnny Cash covered Nine Inch Nails,’’ he says, “you can’t be boxed in. I’d prefer if people called me ‘country’ but if someone sticks a techno beat behind my tunes, I’m okay with that.” That leaves Ryan a lot of room to appeal, inside the Lone Star’s borders—and out.