In the midst of crisscrossing Canada and winning over a new batch of rowdy fans every night on tour, one of country music’s fast-rising duos, Ryan and Rory, sat down with us to discuss their latest release, “Lawn Chair In The Living Room.”
The upbeat track comes from a very real and very relatable moment in Rory John Zak’s life. He shared that after going through a breakup, he could’ve leaned into the heartbreak and painful emotions and written a somber ballad. Instead, he and his musical partner, Ryan Follesé, alongside their co-writers Andy Albert, Trannie Anderson, and Kevin Bard, flipped the script and turned the story into something bright, clever and hopeful.
Rory recalled preparing to head to a writer’s trip down in Panama City Beach, FL when one of their co-writers walked into his house and discovered that his furniture had been replaced by just a lawn chain in his living room. Out of concern, he asked. “‘Hey Rory, what’s going on here?’”
The singer then opened up about his recent breakup and explained he was left with an empty house and needed to get creative to fill the space.
He joked, “I took the breakup and turned it into an interior design course and put a lawn chair out of storage in the middle of my living room. I needed something to sit on. I gotta eat pizza somehow.”
Being the creative songwriters that they are, Ryan and Rory saw this as an opportunity to “turn lemons into lemonade” and write heartfelt love song.
“So the reason it kind of happened that way…our co-writer Kevin, he called me and he’s like, ‘yo, is everything okay with him? I went over to his house and there was just a lawn chair in the living room’ and I was like, ‘man, that sounds like a song title.’ We all got to the airport the next morning and everyone was like, ‘okay, that’s the song title.’ And we were honestly in too good of spirits to start the trip off writing a song that was a downer,” Ryan explained.
The song quickly became something infectious, painting a vivid picture of a man imagining the life he could’ve been living if the right person had never walked in and changed everything. Ryan and Rory come together in a string of rich, seamless harmonies as they envision an alternate version of themselves, one where their singleness results in them sleeping in late, skipping church, letting their hair grow too long, wearing wrinkled shirts, and drifting through life without much effort or intention.
Underneath the jokes and tongue-in-cheek lines, the heart of the song sends the heartfelt message that meeting the right person can quickly turn life into something fuller, brighter, and worth showing up for.
They sing, “The more I think about it/ Baby, that’s a picture I don’t wanna see/ Chances are that single me’d have/ A lawn chair in the living room/ Cable box on the floor/ One night stand with a couple cans/ Only one key to the front door/ if I’d a never met you, I’d spend all my afternoons/ On a lawn chair in the living room/ Just waiting on somebody like you.”
By the end of the track, the country stars go from envisioning this life to actually living it, as they portray themselves cleaning up their acts, getting a second key to their home and feeling grateful that they don’t have to go back to the bachelor way of life.
“Lawn Chair In The Living Room” is a clear example of Ryan and Rory’s ability to turn emotional aspects of their real lives into honest stories. When tough moments hit, they admit that they naturally turn to writing because as Rory jokingly pointed out, “It’s free therapy.”
Ryan added, “Music and writing, it might as well be a drug, so if you’re going to turn to something, you might as well turn to that and it’s the best way, I don’t know, sometimes you can’t articulate how you feel, but you can sing…We’re noticing at these shows that it’s a song that these fans have never heard before and it goes over, you just feel it in the room and that’s how you know that you articulated those thoughts the right way.”
This stand-out song follows releases such as “Together Again (feat. Jamey Johnson)” and “Girls Are Pretty,” and marks the final drop to come from Ryan and Rory in 2025. The artists quickly pointed to their collaboration with Jamey Johnson as being one of their biggest “pinch-me” moments of their careers.
“Man, I would say [it was] arguably one of the most organic collaborations,” shared Ryan. “My dad and him wrote that song when I was 20 and Nashville picks a lot of great songs, but sometimes they just leave diamonds in the rough and that song was only ever on hold for Alan Jackson.”
He goes on to say that his dad, Keith Follese, got lunch and caught up with Johnson one day and before they knew it the duo was not only in the studio recording the collaboration, but gearing up to perform at the country icon’s 50th birthday celebration at the Grand Ole Opry in July.
“A big bucket list item early for us. We didn’t expect to have a collaboration with somebody that we look up to that much.”
Rory added, “He really took us under his wing past year, and we’ll be forever grateful… People have always asked us, ‘oh, what’s your dream collab?’ I’m like, ‘well, we already had one.’”
BBR Music Group/BMG Nashville’s rising duo will continue performing select dates across the U.S. and Canada with John Morgan and the James Barker Band through December 10. When they finally return home to Nashville after their lengthy touring stretch, the pair plan to jump right back into songwriting in anticipation for the new year.
“I mean we get back December 10th or 11th, something like that in Nashville, and then we’re writing I think four days a week all the way up until Christmas,” Rory shared.
Ryan jumped in to add, “Yeah, same crew we did this current single that’s coming out with, we’re going to steal three days here right before Christmas, which just shows you how hard they work because most people have quit after Thanksgiving. We’re actually incredibly excited.”
With all their hard work, fans can expect new music in 2026 in the form of a new full-length project.
“We’re going to be working on our second record full length…And then just going out in the road, we have a couple pretty big surprises that we’re going to announce tour wise,” they teased.
A full list of Ryan And Rory’s upcoming tour dates can be found HERE.
The post Ryan And Rory Discuss Turning Heartbreak Into Hope on ‘Lawn Chair In The Living Room’ appeared first on Country Now.
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