Ryan Scott

Ryan Scott’s musical life began
30 years ago, with the discovery of
his mother’s forgotten nylon string
guitar. Only a couple years later, a
stranger waiting in line for Santana
at The Fillmore offers to let the 12
year old kid sit in at his local bar
gig… the rest is some kind of
underground music history.
Ryan caught and followed
that music bug right away, starting
to perform live as a young
teenager in a blues band at a bar
on Cannery Row. Soon after, it was
a jazz bug that led him to New York
City to get schooled in the home of
modern jazz tradition. After years
of hustling in every which stylistic
direction to eventually become an
in-demand sideman and studio
player, Ryan finally emerged as his
full and true self in 2019, with the
release of his first one-man-band
LP, ‘A Freak Grows in Brooklyn’.
Recorded in a warehouse
rehearsal space and an apartment
closet, ‘A Freak Grows in Brooklyn’
is a culmination of years of
experiences and sonic research, an
experiment to see what’s possible
with one human, a bunch of
instruments, and a cassette
recorder. Playing all the
instruments himself, overdubbing
on a Tascam 488 multitrack, Ryan
managed to conjure a lo-fi
masterpiece of dry, raw simplicity.
But it takes time… the training was gigs of every kind. At first,
bebop around NYC, then the blues
started to creep back in… Touring
the world, producing and playing
guitar on records, writing and
recording music for film and TV…
through all of these disciplines,
Ryan has shared the stage or
studio with a plethora of
wonderful, diverse musicians,
including:
Marianne Faithfull, Aoife
O’Donovan, Amy Helm, Chris Thile,
Jon Brion, Jim Keltner, Marc Ribot,
Greg Leisz, Benmont Tench, Joel
Frahm, Chris Cheek, Joey Baron,
Greg Cohen, Snarky Puppy, Mike
Elizondo, Rob Burger, Roy
Hargrove, Wynton Marsalis, John
Ellis, Dar Williams, The Knights,
Leon Bridges, Stephen Sanchez,
Bob Sinclar, Doyle Bramhall II,
Marshall Crenshaw…
From the decades of experience
came a need to bottle it, keep a
record. When Ryan was young and
jazz-obsessed, he wondered if
there might be a new way to
combine conventional songs with
an adventurous jazz
subconscious… now it might be
better said as an improvisitory
lean. The search for this alchemy
of elements continues to this day.
As a result of the grand
reshuffling, Ryan is now based out
of Nashville, Tennessee, where a
basement has become the new
one-man-band laboratory. 2022
brought the release of ‘cookies’, a
vocal and keyboard heavy
basement experiment from the
depths of true solitude. Still
holding to a set of analog rules,
and created by one man and all
real instruments(the synths are
analog), captured onto some kind
of tape. Quickly thereafter, in
august 2023, Ryan released
‘Analog Vacation’, an epic 16 song
double LP covering a wide swath
of stylistic territory, but held
together by the one funky man
doing all the stuff. Check it out.