About the Artist
David Ryan Harris is an Atlanta singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer who has spent close to forty years in music, including years on stage and in the studio alongside John Mayer. His own songs lean soulful and lyric-driven, built around the kind of close listening that fills a small room rather than a stadium. This year he is leaning further into production, with a record on the way with Atlanta artist Jennifer Lynn Simpson, while still writing songs for fun through a weekly prompt group led by Bob Schneider.
David Ryan Harris
About the Episode (Episode 135)
David Ryan Harris: The Puzzle You Never Fully Crack
Recorded at the 30A Songwriters Festival in January 2026, host Jason English sits down with a musician who has played to record-breaking stadium crowds and still measures his worth by the craft, not the fame. David Ryan Harris talks about why he would rather hold a few hundred people who are really listening than a stadium full of phones, and what forty years of chasing the song has taught him about staying humble and staying hungry.
Key Conversation Points
The craft over the fame: Harris stays in service to the work because the work never gets easy. "The guitar is a puzzle you'll never fully crack. Songwriting is a puzzle that you'll never fully crack."
Writing women, writing love: His love songs put women on a healthy pedestal without ever talking down to them. "I just try to say it in a way that is loving. That's how I see it."
Sobriety and learning to talk: A stretch of getting sober turned into a deeper look at how he relates to people. "I realized I wasn't an alcoholic. I was just kind of a dick."
There is also a turn toward production, where Harris finds something he cannot get from his own songs: the feeling of helping someone else finally say what they were trying to say. The full conversation is below.