I feel dramatically better today than I did yesterday, the day before or any of the 5 days before that. I have had this restless nervous unhappy unsettled feeling and it seems to have dissipated with last nights shenanigans. That’s always a good thing. Amazing what a little sushi and sake can do…

I seem to have finally accomplished my Google goal of getting on the first page of Ryan Sutter related search results. Of course, my new goal will be that the Ryan Sutter they are searching for is actually me. I quite literally need to make a name for myself. :-)

One interesting search engine related thing I noticed is that the Art and Music blog I have is on the front page. That one needs to have a little more info so I’m writing this to put on it. This is my musical history…

When I was a little kid my mom played music in various bands. I went to gigs and watched her. It was fun and I liked it. When I was in kindergarten my brother Rhett and I started pretending at being rock stars, lip-synching to Barry Manilow records, pounding on the couch, beating on flower pots and plastic guitars. Wasn’t too long before we started actually making music and not much longer after that (4th grade) that I took up an actual instrument (french horn, school band). I shortly realized that rock stars don’t play french horn so I traded it in for a guitar in 1986 and never looked back. Rhett and I called our band The Lavone and continued calling it that for about 14 years and 16 albums of obscurity. In 1989 we founded a record label to distribute our Lavone recordings and it was called Nuclear Gopher for short (although the long form took various permutations over the years). Nuclear Gopher still exists but I don’t think it will for much longer except as a redirection to Rhett and Reed’s (my little brother) new record labels. See, I left in 2004 and started Tasty Rerun and that’s where my music is these days. I got a new album in the works, a new recording studio and gigs gigs gigs. 2005 will be the year I start my music career in earnest at the ripe old age of 31.

Those are the basics, the things you need to know about my musical past. What you probably don’t know are the influences I have had. My musical influences over the years include (or have included):

King Crimson
Charlie Parker
Peter Gabriel
Michael Penn
Elliot Smith
Ben Folds
Billie Holiday
Django Reinhardt
Komeda
Jethro Tull
Pink Floyd
XTC
Elvis Costello
Brian Eno
The Beatles
John Lennon
Sean Lennon
The Flaming Lips
Thelonious Monk
Miles Davis
Charles Mingus
Neutral Milk Hotel
Tom Waits
Primus
Liz Phair
The Clash
Talking Heads
Adrian Belew
Neil Young

The list can, and probably should, go on. As is (I hope) obvious, my musical taste and experiences are many and varied and completely devoid of interest in “genre music”. The sound I’m developing right now for my new album is hopefully interesting and specifically my own. My little EP “The Context” is sort of a warm-up, an appetizer, for my new album “Songs of Bo Redoubt”, if you want to hear it, go to Tasty Rerun and give it a listen. My “best of” collection “20 Over 11″ will be available on Tasty Rerun shortly as well, in case you really want to hear what I’ve been up to over the last decade or so.

More From Ryan Sutter

Recommend [RyanSutter]

Related posts