Ryley Walker (Jansch-style vocals, finger-picking folk guitar with double bass and violins grooves)

LL did we see this guy play at the same festival with royal trux and lightning bolt?

yes we did!

oh ok. apparently i don't like this guy's persona OR his music then.

some of his tweets are funny though.

Seems weird to meticulously harmonize the visual accompaniment for their ongoing series of Ryley Walker articles unless they do it the same for everyone. I haven't checked!

xposts

I've been a big fan, but the new album didn't click with me either. I struggle with his si-hi-hing style a little.

He's great live - do go if he comes to town.

crying laughing emoji

F**k Ryley Walker, whoever he is. pic.twitter.com/ZlyvS8nfZk

— Adrien Begrand (@AdrienBegrand) August 29, 2018

Kill yr idols I guess. There's plenty of other folks that do his schtick w/o being colossal douchebags.

there's a whole napoleon complex specific to dudes who make the most milquetoast, inoffensive music but express the most virulent assholish opinions about other people's music. it can be funny but do you really want to put yourself in the same persona type as father john misty

OTMFM

you lie with vice, you get challops

Hilarious thing is ryley either gives zero fucks or is also laughing his ass off

His Twitter persona is pretty funny I guess, but there's also something really irritating about his showy contrarianism.

^ true. That Noisey piece elicits about equal parts lol and ah-come-on-fuck-you
Duke's right about him being great live, had a blast last year

I saw him live once but he had the great misfortune of following Circuit Des Yeux. My point being, everyone should see Circuit Des Yeux asap.

that was a great bill

like I love Leonard Cohen and that interview is one of the funniest musician interviews I have ever read.

Gotten 20 or so death threats from the Leonard Cohen piece. Never gotten death threats from switchfoot or genesis fans. Genesis forever

— Ryley walker (@ryleywalker) August 30, 2018

TBF, he needs to piss off some Yes fans to get some legit death threats.

genesis forever

I heard Phil Collins will send you death threats via fax machine

walker of the skies, walker of all

The weird thing is for not knowing much about cohen, ryley actually got cohen’s persona down pat

He was that montreal to nyc transplant fagboy and it is totally a thing

vice would know

sorry that was a flip comment, but I find this characterization very upsetting

Whenever someone plays classical music I say, “hell yeah the verve bittersweet symphony”

— Ryley walker (@ryleywalker) September 21, 2018

lmao

So yeah, saw him Friday night with Trad Gras och Stenar and Endless Boogie (both very great) as openers. He's got an extremely good band together backing and each individual song performance was pretty sharp, understated but not inaudible singing, good sense of ensemble performances all around -- my friend Paul and I traded thoughts back and forth, he mentioned Prefab Sprout, John Martyn and Jeff Buckley, I was thinking of late 90s indie-goes-prog in turn. His loud and exuberant-but-verging-on-obnoxious between song stuff, well, maybe I need to be his age or something. (That said, as I told Paul, we're not talking 90s/00s Anton from Brian Jonestown Massacre here.)

Also he just announced a full cover album of Dave Matthews Band's The Lillywhite Sessions. Whatever works for ya.

i've heard it, it's very good

Between that and Lady Bird I'm...not looking forward to DMB becoming a new generation's Steely Dan or something.

i don't think it's gonna be a thing

I feel better now!

Yr gettin old ted!

Yeah fuck that Ted guy.

i mean, I Was A Teenage DMB Fan. i've since realized most of the music is not very good at all! but something about the lillywhite sessions still fascinates, in that 1) matthews shelved it bc it was too dour and ended up recording a shitty happy album in like nine days with glen ballard and he put that out instead 2) its dourness means there's a lot less dumbassery than on your typical dmb album, and the melodies are for the most part really gorgeous. walker's rearrangements are both really radical and yet true to the original songs. it's very very very jazzy

i've never heard the DMB album he is covering (i hate the DMB, they are so bad and hated), but Ryley's version is pretty OK. a weird thing to do for sure, but oh well!

I agree DMB has a lot of gorgeous melodies. Most people don't like the vocals and the jam band delivery.

lol

If I get on here and say “I just boofed a Habenero Garlic Boneless Wing™️ covered in cocaine...uuuuhhh David Bowie is bullshit but Jars of Clay totally slaps dawg, don’t sleep” then people will respect me

— the modern folk (@themodernfolk) October 25, 2018

also, make good music

Listening to "In Castle Dome" and all I hear is "In Castleton"

http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/ciu/bb/9b/df3ae03ae7a0e5de6cddd110.L.jpg

good for him, excited to see what he does next

https://uproxx.com/indie/ryley-walker-interview-addiction-mental-health/

saw him w/ ryan jewell + special guest neil hagerty last week, 40-minute psych jam.
his new instrumental LP w/ charles rumback is fantastic.

oh yeah you can check out the walker / jewell / hagerty jam here: https://www.osirispod.com/podcasts/beyond-the-pond/beyond-the-pond-episode-083-indie-jam-basement-sesh-w-ryley-walker-ryan-jewell/

Glad to see he's in a much better place, I had no idea how dark of a place he had gotten too. Just goes to show you how insidious depressing and addition can be. You'd think opening for a guy like Richard Thompson would be a highlight for a guy like Ryley, but he was suffering so much.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of love for them on ilx, but his set with Garcia Peoples backing him up on the Rocks Off Concert Cruise was great.

i really enjoyed the rumback lp xxp

great interview, sounds like he was really suffering glad he found his way out

Hadnt heard of this guy at all but checked out the rumback album on spotify today and i'm really digging, cool stuff

he's definitely had a cool trajectory this decade! very glad he is doing better mentally now ...

Of all his great projects lately, I'm surprised by how much I keep gong back to that Dave Matthews thing.

he was good at first but soooooooooo Bert Jansch feels like he has more of a unique voice now, feels like he's in the Chicago rock tradition now

I'm in that weird interzone of being a bit of Walker sceptic while continually checking everything he does. It's like I'm waiting for him to *become* or whatever; he's clearly got all the talent. The Rumback album is sounding excellent.

this tape sounds great http://www.nyctaper.com/2019/03/ryley-walker-steve-gunn-march-5-2019-union-pool/

This record he did with JR Bohannon and Ben Greenberg is pretty cool:

https://huskypantsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/for-michael-ripps

new album 'Course in Fable' coming out in April

stream a track here: https://ryleywalker.bandcamp.com/album/course-in-fable