MTV NEWS: Ryan Ross Hernandez "Breaking Ground" on Let a Man Be Lost Follow-Up

Ryan Ross Hernandez has begun writing his follow-up to his highly successful Let a Man Be Lost. That album has just been out for a little over five months but the 31-year-old singer-songwriter is wasting no time in making the follow-up. Hernandez tells MTV News that its sound is "the next natural step to where I am as a person and as an artist."

"It's not a electric guitar-based record. I've been into songs entirely composed around acoustic guitars, and messing around with the piano and harmonica," he says, citing as a reference point. "This next album will be my, Brian Eno's Another Green World. My Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks. My U2's The Joshua Tree. My Springsteen's Nebraska. I'm not adding so many guitar blues licks, as previous records, because people will be expecting them… I'm so proud of the direction this record will take, that at this point I don't care if people don't like it when it's released."

The upcoming album, which will feature 13 to 16 songs, is a huge departure from his chart-topping November 2010 release, Let a Man Be Lost, which, says Hernandez, was very set-minded in being a project that met the masses. "Let a Man Be Lost was made with this bigger than life idea," he says, adding that he nearly lost his mind with the pressure he put on himself to make the perfect album. "It was made with all the intentions of making every aspect of it, sound and feel perfect. That's the best record I've ever made, and it might be the best record I'll ever make. But I'm not using it as a reference point for the album following it, because if I do that I'm bound to make two records that sound alike and that's one thing that I will never do in my career."

One phrase that he uses to describe the recording process for his coming effort is, "Simplicity isn't Stupidity." That most likely means that we won't be hearing the big instrumentation that we heard in most songs on Let a Man Be Lost. One of his musical experiments that we heard a little of on that record were strings, and while he says the horn section he previously used won't be returning for this next record, the strings will apparently be more providently used. "I have some really beautiful arrangements written for it. There is this one song in particularly where, the vocals and strings are going to make for an aching and gorgeous sounds."

Hernandez referred to Let a Man Be Lost' instrumentation as a, "no-holds-barred musical extravaganza," while he is calling this next record's instrumentation as "beautiful musical soundscapes."

Lyrically, Ryan Ross Hernandez is also straying from Let a Man Be Lost, a move indicative of his ever-changing personal life. "There's a level of self-loathing in [Let a Man Be Lost] that I'm a bit of embarrassed about now," he admits. "It's a really dark record, that did not want to sound like a dark record. I didn't want to make that record again. I didn't want to write those songs again."

With the new album, he thinks listeners, as always, will make assumptions about his personal life when it comes to his lyrics. "Everything I write is reflective of my own life and the lives of those people around me," he says. "They reflect the conversations you have and the rumblings of life around you. But when somebody gets into a relationship, people assume that they're going to get a certain thing out of an album." He wanted to quickly clear the fact that while he is currently single, if he were to get into a relationship at the moment, it would change the dynamic of the record.

He says he is a "couple of weeks away" from going into the studio to work on the as-yet-untitled effort. This time, instead of holing up in one studio for weeks or months at a time, he is changing the way he records in studio, opting to change studios every two weeks, recording in Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, and Nashville, with two weeks vacation between each move, an approach also hinged on his grown-up life.

"I'm moving into a period in my lives where getting settling down and getting married is very important," he explains, adding that all of his backing band members are either married, engaged, or have kids. "So living off in the woods for a month away from family isn't something I would ever force the musicians that work with me to go through anymore." The approach has also opened up a new writing style for Hernandez: "On this record I'm going to write every song before going into studio, and write the music in the downtime between studios and we will start recording the brand new song on the first day of the next session, which is something I've never really given myself the opportunity to do before."

Ryan Ross Hernandez will likely tour behind the new album, but don't expect him on the road long. "I love to find myself making a record a year from when I was working on the last one, rather than moving into a seventh straight month of tour," says Hernandez. "I'd like to capitalize on feeling inspired to writing rather than hobbling up onstage and jumping around for two hours in Dresden." He went on to say that he has taken a hiatus from touring for the fact that it wasn't starting to affect him both physically and emotionally, "It [touring] started to feel more like I was forced to tour. As much as I love playing for my fans, and I love to see them how they react to the songs. I've gotten to an age where have to put my own personal health and life ahead of things that I truly love to do."