Maybe Magic Puts Ryan Sweezey Under a Painted Sky with Guitars, Organ and a Trumpet
Maybe Magic Puts Ryan Sweezey Under a Painted Sky with Guitars, Organ and a Trumpet
Christopher Hawthorn Produced and Alan Douches Mastered the Burlington Songwriter’s Sixth Album
A small figure sits on a dark rooftop, chin tilted up at a purple and blue sky. That painting by Giovanina Bucci is the whole cover of Maybe Magic, the sixth album from Ryan Sweezey. Released on 10 October 2025, the record keeps the picture’s proportions. His voice and acoustic guitar sit at the centre, while the rest of a five-piece alternative rock band fills the space around them.
Ryan Sweezey’s title track is in the playlist below, and his full run of coverage sits on his artist profile. Maybe Magic reached AltPop.News through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news desks. Hit play on the album, then keep reading.
The image is doing real work. Sweezey pitches his songs at people who spend too long inside their own heads. In fact, the chorus of the song Maybe Magic admits that you can’t force the stars to glow. So the figure on the roof is waiting on exactly that kind of sky. Catherine Rizos handled the graphic design and Luke Awtry the photography.
Sweezey has been releasing alternative rock independently for more than ten years, and he is now based in Burlington, Vermont. He has also been nominated eight times at the New England Music Awards. Listeners who donated helped to fund Maybe Magic. Its ten songs keep circling the same worries: relationships, uncertainty, restless thoughts and the slow work of finding your footing.
The Maybe Magic Band Puts Colin Lenox’s Electric Guitar Over Ryan Sweezey’s Acoustic on Eight of Ten Songs
The line-up explains a lot. Sweezey sings and plays acoustic guitar on every song. Colin Lenox plays electric guitar on eight of the ten, while Kyle Saulnier plays bass and Caleb Bronz plays drums. That is a classic rock band set-up. In practice, Lenox is the player who gives most of the album its electric edge.
Christopher Hawthorn is the wild card. Besides his work at the desk, he plays keyboards, synth, organ, auxiliary percussion, slide guitar and trumpet. On the title track he adds electric guitar as well. Hawthorn is originally from Philadelphia and came to Vermont in 2011. On the Vermont scene he was known mainly as a trumpet player, before he moved towards keys on stage. So the trumpet on The One Up There comes from the instrument he was best known for. Hella Fuzz noted that the horns are a first in Sweezey’s discography.
The One Up There Started in the Crowd at a JOSEPH Concert
That song is the clearest picture of the whole project. The One Up There started at a concert by JOSEPH, the Portland, Oregon trio of sisters Natalie, Allison and Meegan Closner. Sweezey stood in the crowd, wishing he were the one on stage. The lyric then follows a fan from the ticket scan at the door to the second set. There, the band promises to trade acoustic for electric guitar. The credits do the same thing: on this song and on Sleepless Nights, Sweezey picks up the electric guitar himself.
He has named Motion City Soundtrack as the strongest influence on that song’s music. That covers the vocal lines, the melody and the guitars, and it is a useful key to the whole album. The Minneapolis band made its name by putting Jesse Johnson’s Moog synthesizer next to two guitars. Its anxious lyrics also rode bright pop punk tunes. Maybe Magic runs a gentler version of the same idea. Here, Hawthorn’s organ and synth sit beside the guitars, while the words worry about sleepless nights and an invisible girl.
Ryan Sweezey Kept Maybe Magic Rawer Than His Earlier Records With Producer Christopher Hawthorn at the Desk
Hawthorn produced, engineered and mixed the album. Jeremy Mendicino and Sweezey joined him as co-producers, and Mendicino also handled additional engineering at Lane Gibson Studio in Vermont. Sweezey’s own account of the result is a rougher edge than on his earlier releases. Even so, the production stays polished and the melodies stay easy to follow.
You can hear that balance in the mix. First, Sweezey’s voice sits high in his range and right at the front. Then each player keeps a clear lane of their own, instead of being pressed into one wall of guitars. Meanwhile, Saulnier and Bronz keep the rhythm section locked together. That matters on songs like Sleepless Nights, where the narrator lies awake listening to the house creak. The band supplies the steadiness he cannot find.
Alan Douches mastered the album at West West Side Music. Douches is a Grammy-winning mastering engineer with more than 16,000 albums behind him, across almost every genre. On Maybe Magic, his task was to make ten songs, tracked in more than one studio, sit together as one record.
AltPop.News’s curator team: “The record’s most anxious lines get its fullest band. On Controlled Chaos Sweezey tells the listener to take it easy and breathe in deeply while the five-piece plays on underneath him, and that pairing of worry and warmth is why Maybe Magic stays in our rotation.”
Ryan Sweezey Took Maybe Magic to the Higher Ground Stage With the Midnight Walkers in May
The live version of the album has its own band. On 28 May 2026, Sweezey played Higher Ground in South Burlington with the Midnight Walkers. Then, in September, he posted the set to his YouTube channel. It includes The One Up There, Sleepless Nights, Superhero, Black Widow, Controlled Chaos, Lady Nomad and Maybe Magic itself. There are also covers of songs by The Killers, Tom Petty and Neil Young. For a song about wishing to be under the lights, the filmed version is a neat answer.
More Vermont dates follow. Sweezey is back with the Midnight Walkers at Charlie O’s in Montpelier on 20 November. After that, he plays a solo acoustic show at the same venue on 3 December.
Maybe Magic will suit listeners who grew up on the melodic, guitar-driven alternative rock of the 1990s and 2000s. It also suits anyone who still wants lyrics that admit to overthinking. Play the album in the player above, or stream it on Apple Music and Bandcamp. Follow Sweezey on Spotify, and watch the Higher Ground set on YouTube. You can also keep up with him on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and X, and new show dates go up on his official site.
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