The Ryan Power Interview
Tell me about growing up in Merrimack, New Hampshire. When did you first begin to fall in love with music? Was this something that was relevant around your household growing up? Do you have any siblings? Who were some of your earliest influences in your more formative years?
I have very fond memories of listening to the car radio while my mom was running errands. Golden oldies on the AM dial. Strange and warm beauty emitting from the speakers. I had no idea how it was made. I miss that. My first transcendental listening moment came circa 1983 in the basement of my best friend’s house. We were playing with Star Wars figures while listening to the radio and all of a sudden this music just hit me and sent me into a different dimension. It was “Steppin’ Out” by Joe Jackson. I remember staring out the window, hearing those gorgeous sounds and something shifted inside of me. The tones and patterns in the music made me feel more focused and alive. It was (and is) pure magic. Basically the template for the rest of my harmonic life. Thanks Joe! My brother is 6 years older than me and my sister is 7 years older. When she was in high school, her boyfriend would bring his guitar over to play us songs. My brother and I were blown away. This coincided with me seeing a classmate play guitar in a talent show, which led to my brother and I asking our parents for one. We received a student model Hondo acoustic. I was 11.
When and where did you see your first show and what ultimately inspired you to pursue a life in music? What was your local scene like during those years? Did you participate in any groups, or projects prior to becoming a solo musician?
Around 10 years of age, while out to dinner with my parents, I remember seeing a jazz band play at a fancy restaurant in Bedford, NH. I was mesmerized by the music and the people playing it. I think it was the first time I understood how music could be made together. My father had noticed that I was in awe of the musicians, so during their set break he took me up to them to get their autographs. I treasured that yellow tinted staff paper with the quartets illegible signatures. My father passed away in 1999 from cancer. I haven’t recalled this memory in many years. It really makes me appreciate and miss him. My aunt bought me Jimi Hendrix Smash Hits on cassette for my 13th birthday. This changed my life forever. I would get so lost in the imaginative production on his records. I’d play guitar for hours a day trying to emulate his soulful playing. His music was a huge inspiration to me and definitely fueled my desire to pursue music. I was so obsessed with him that I’d collect coins between the years of 1942 and 1970 just in case he had touched one. People at school thought I was a coin collector. I played along because I was self conscious about my fixation. In middle school I met Dan Snazelle. I’ll never forget seeing this beautiful weirdo walking the school hallways with pages of some giant, dilapidated book floating in his wake. We hit it off immediately and would stay in from recess to play guitar together in the teachers break room. One day he invited me to the library telling me I had to hear this special song he had just heard. We went to the LP listening booth, put on our headphones and he spun Heart of Gold by Neil Young. I was moved. There’s nothing quite like listening to music with someone else. Their attention changes your perception. You hear it through their ears too, a shared experience. Later that year we started a band called Quantum. We came up with the name by asking his older brother to write down a bunch of heady science terms on a paper plate. We were pretty disheartened when the TV show Quantum Leap came out that same year. I wrote my first songs for that band. Dan gave me a lot of confidence to do so. He’s such a fearless and curious spirit. We are still great friends to this day and I’m so happy I get to spend time with him here in Brooklyn.
You’ve been self releasing your own work since the early/mid 2000s. Tell me about those early days of writing and recording albums such as your self-titled, “Loventropy”, “DJJD Judgement Day” and “Is It Happening” before singing with NNA Tapes and the great Feeding Tube.
My brother inspired me to become a self producer/home recordist. In 1998, while I was finishing college, he was living at home helping to take care of my father who had a love for music and was a great singer. My brother had the amazing idea to make an album with him. He bought a Roland digital 8 track and began to accompany and record my father singing his favorite songs. I would come home on weekends to work on the record and help with the arrangements. When it came time to mix, my brother and I would work on it together. He told me he thought I was a natural at mixing and this led me down the path I’m still on. Between the ages of 18 and 24 I didn’t write many songs with words. After studying music at the University of New Hampshire I moved out to Berklee, California and started writing songs again. I was only there for 6 months, but I wrote an albums worth of material. In 2000, I moved back east to Burlington, VT where my brother was living. He lent me his digital 8 track to record my first album. Working on that machine was kind of a pain in the ass, so my friend Bright helped me build a PC desktop computer. I used that rig to record “Loventropy” through DJJD. By then I lived in a $500/month studio apartment above the Radio Bean in downtown Burlington. At one point I had a Hammond M3, vibraphone, rhodes, Otari 8 track, Prophet V and a drum set in that tiny apartment. It was pretty ridiculous. Things are happily leaner now gearwise, but somehow my bedroom always feels more like a control room.
I'd like to jump ahead to your most recent works starting with 2020’s debut on FTR entitled “Mind The Neighbors”. Tell me about writing and recording this record and what the overall vision and approach to this material was. How did the deal with those guys come about and what was your experience of writing and recording this album during that time with all the experience you had gained over the years?
I moved to Brooklyn in late 2016. My friend and I leased a storefront with a giant basement and paid our friend to build it out for us. We lived down there illegally and I had a small studio in the back. Quite heavenly for a basement without light. Previously, it had been a pet grooming shop, Perfect Pets by Victoria. We spent the pandemic down there in the “submarine”. It was a pretty bleak time, but luckily we had a huge bathtub in the kitchen. Those baths helped take the edge off of the impending apocalypse. I worked on the songs for “Mind The Neighbors” and “World of Wonder” down there concurrently. I used the more mellow tunes for the former and the zanier synth tracks for the latter. I love albums that shift stylistically, but wanted “Mind The Neighbors” to have a more consistent sound. In 2021 the basement flooded during Hurricane Ida. I luckily didn’t lose any equipment, but it damaged the studio walls and I had to vacate. I wrote a few more songs and put the finishing touches on “World of Wonder” in my next studio in Ridgewood. From 2012 to 2019 I was on the label NNA Tapes. In 2019 they were bought by Northern Spy and I no longer felt at home there. (I don’t think they were too impressed by my metrics). The original founders of NNA, Toby and Matt, were my good friends in Burlington, Vermont and running that label was a labor of love for them. That relationship felt very natural and I’m so grateful to those guys for all the support they gave me. I didn’t know how good I had it! Ted, from Feeding Tube Records, and I have mutual friends in the New England music scene. I hit him up in 2019 to release “Mind The Neighbors” and he graciously agreed. I’m very appreciative of what he does.
With a 4 year period of rest, you released your anticipated follow up “World of Wonder”. Tell me about your vision of what you wanted to achieve and express with this work. Would you mind giving some background to tracks such as “Silent Star”, “Psychic Mechanic”, “World of Wonder” and “Dracula Reality”?
I wanted this record to be really playful. It was essentially finished in late 2022, but I was still a bit stunned from the pandemic. I shared it with a few people, but somehow ended up sitting on it for a year. I will never do that again! Occasionally I’ll start writing lyrics for a song, hit a wall, come back to it and it ends up having two themes. “Silent Star” is a prime example of this. The first verse is a ridiculous story about a high school degenerate skipping class during the pandemic and the second is about grieving the loss of a friendship. No real connection except for the bad British accent. “Psychic Mechanic” covers a lot of territory, but it’s mainly about trauma, arrogance, empathy and compassion. “World of Wonder” was written during the pandemic when I was in a long distance relationship with someone in Europe, so it’s pretty literal in that regard. It’s also about my father. My friend liked how it blurred the line between love for a lover and love for one’s father. This song still makes me emotional “Dracula Reality” is also pretty darn literal. My mum’s father, Grampa, was an amazing painter and one Halloween when I was wee lad, he painted me up like Dracula for school. Once he was finished, I looked at myself in the mirror and completely lost it. I was both confused and in awe of what I saw. I knew I looked interesting and would draw too much attention to myself at school, so I ended up staying home. It was a kind of identity crisis compounded with severe shyness. A desire to make myself invisible, so I wouldn’t be noticed. It’s something I still deal with.
What does your 2024 look like with the new record coming? Touring and gigging this spring/summer? Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?
I just started rehearsing with some amazing musicians here in Brooklyn and I’m looking forward to playing more with them. We met for the second time today and it was a freaking blast. It’s really refreshing to hear the songs interpreted by sensitive musicians. The music takes on a new life. I’m not interested in recreating the recordings, I want it to be more flowing and loose. I’m hoping to get a live recording rig together, so I can document it. The band consists of Shane Simpson on keys, Jon Starks on drums and Henry Fraser on bass. I’m a lucky ducky.
