Blake Ruby Premieres New Album “She” at The Pocket

Singer-songwriter Blake Ruby talks organically falling in love with music, honest songwriting and playing The Pocket.

Blake Ruby does not just write love songs. Creating cinematic and nostalgic melodies in his latest full-length record, “She,” Ruby dedicates each track to every facet of what it feels like to love and be loved. But, the 24-year-old artist never planned that recording tracks in his dorm room at Belmont University for fun would ever amount to a true career in music.

Growing up in Maryland, the indie-pop singer-songwriter constantly found himself in the DIY scene, hosting backyard shows and kickbacks. Ruby began to immerse himself in the Nashville music scene with no intentions beyond doing what he loved. Now, focusing deliberately on being a musician, you can feel that he still writes music from the same place.

In his most vulnerable songwriting yet on his latest record, Ruby is stepping out of a comfort zone, but still staying true to himself. Just as he organically fell into doing music full-time, he organically writes his raw emotions, unabashedly honest about his anxieties and what it’s like to fall deeper in love.

We spoke with Ruby the day before the release of “She.” In anticipation of his record release, the indie-pop artist talked about what it meant to release this album, his thoughts on honest and spiritual songwriting, and his upcoming show at The Pocket on May 26.

District Fray: I think it’s definitely pertinent to ask you this first: How do you feel about your album dropping tomorrow?
Blake Ruby: I’m excited. There’s always a little bit of sadness, too. Because once your music is out, it’s not really yours anymore. It’s everybody else’s. And so it’s like sending your kids off to college. I’ve never done that, either — but I can imagine.

A lot of this record feels cinematic. What felt different this time in the album-making process?
I started writing the songs in 2021. That summer, I was living at Fenwick Beach with my with my wife, Kayla. We got married in 2020, but we moved back in with roommates. And that [summer] was the first time we lived just us two together, even though we had been married for around a year. That’s kind of where a lot of the songs started from. I really wanted the songs to be love songs, but to be a little deeper than that — just an expression of all the different corners of being in a loving relationship with somebody. It’s not just the things you normally hear about in love songs.

Why is this album called “She”?
It’s definitely a lot about Kayla, but I feel like it’s also about me appreciating womanhood and femininity. I feel like it was a project where I really wanted to touch on what a loving woman looks like to me. “She,” the title, was actually from the Song of Solomon [in the Bible]. That whole book is kind of written like a play. And there’s a couple of different parts in it that have like, narration, and one of the narrator’s is just “she.” And I was like, “That’d be so sick to call the album that.”

I think so far my favorite track has been “Only One.” Tell me a little bit more about writing that song and what it means to you as a love song.
I remember actually sitting on the beach. Every now and then I would go out to the beach with a notepad and write, and that was one that I wrote on the notepad. That song went through three different versions. When we started producing the album, I was like, “I don’t really like this song anymore.” We didn’t really have any songs on the record yet that had a really nice groove. I was like, “What if we tried to flip this around and make it way more like Bahamas, like Dijon?” We started with the drum groove and we looped that to write over the rest of it. And then I rewrote the chorus.

Tell me a little bit about writing “Our Bed” and writing from such vulnerability.
That was the one I probably wrote and produced the fastest, and I just had the clearest vision. [It’s] probably my favorite on the album because it feels the most real, the most raw. I really wanted it to feel like you were there, uncomfortably looking on a relationship, almost like a movie. There’s not really a specific explanation of what it’s about or what’s going on. But it just makes you feel a certain thing. That’s my favorite type of songwriting, and I don’t really feel like I get to capture it that much.

Going back to your background, how did you get into writing music in the first place? Where were you when you realized, “This is what I want to do”?
I grew up playing music in my grandparents church, like my whole life. I played in the high school jazz band — music was just part of my life; I didn’t really think anything else of it. Once high school hit, I started playing in a band and we were playing house shows and putting on backyard festivals, like two-day camping festivals. I was going to go to school to play sports, and then just kind of slowly realized I was getting burnt out by it. I visited Belmont [University] and I fell in love with Nashville the first time I got there. [At Belmont] I started recording in my dorm room for fun, just to learn more about recording. There’s never really been a lot of me pursuing or like, “I have to do this.” It just has been very organic, which I’m really grateful for. I feel like I didn’t even really think I was going to do music full-time until I got a publishing deal.

Being from Maryland originally, how does it feel to be playing one of your first shows for this album in D.C. at the Pocket?
I’ve never played D.C., so I’m really excited. I’m really excited to play a small room, just packed out with friends and family and stuff. I’m really close with The Dune Flowers and Jeff Draco, who are two bands and really great friends of mine. I was originally going to play the show on a different date at a different venue. But then, those guys were going to be on tour. And I was like, “I’m going move the date and let’s do the show together.” It felt like it used to when we would book shows together and just play for fun. That community of people is the community that helped me get my start playing music for people. So yeah, it’s going to be like a homecoming, like a long time coming.

You can buy tickets to Blake Ruby’s show at The Pocket here. Learn more about Ruby at blakeruby.com and follow him on Instagram @blakervby.

The Pocket: 1508 North Capitol St. NW, DC; thepocketdc.com // @thepocket_dc

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Jenna Schwartz