Mississippi blues singer-songwriter, guitarist and teacher has punk roots?

Ryan Lee Crosby has navigated quite a journey into the music world after setting his sights on his first guitar at three years old.  I had the honor of interviewing Mississippi blues singer-songwriter, guitarist and teacher Ryan Lee Crosby about a new album, current international tour and what ultimately draws him to music.  Click here to learn more about Blues musician Ryan Lee Crosby, hear his music and where he will perform next.

Sleepless Critic:  I understand you were involved in punk at one point?

Ryan Lee Crosby:  Yeah, when I first started performing publicly, I was involved in a post punk band called Cancer to the Stars.  Labels are a tricky thing, but I suppose you could say that it was a post punk band.

SC:  Ok, and what kind of sound did you have?

RLC:  Well, we played together just shy of four years and our sound changed quite a bit over time.  When we initially began about 25 years ago, we were drawing from electronic music like drum, bass and early ambient music from The Imbeciles, Brian Eno, Joy Division and Gang of Four. It was a rock trio, but we were interested in evoking electronic sounds with guitar, bass, drums and vocals.

Our sound became louder, more aggressive and noisier.  By the time we ended, it was more like *sigh* a dark sounding rock band.  It’s hard to describe.  I think we had a lot of unusual influences such as Hip hop and trip hop.  It was electronic and Nirvana was an influence too, so it was a lot of different things. 

SC:  I ask you that because I reviewed a documentary of a hard core punk band at the NYC Indie Film Festival a few years ago and the punk documentary was paired with a jazz documentary.  You can make your own rules with jazz and punk, so perhaps that is how they related. 

RLC:  Yeah, I feel that there is an overlap between punk and blues too and it doesn’t surprise me to hear that punk and jazz can be considered in the same context.  Where things become really interesting is in all those styles of music, I think it is also embedded in blues and punk.  

I’m not a jazz musician, but I own some jazz records and within all of those, they are musical expressions of a yearning for freedom and a longing to transcend boundaries, make your own rules and your own community.  Those are the threads that make them feel resonant. 

I think of how brisk the momentum might be in 1940s bebop holding it alongside the hardcore punk of a band like Bad Brains.  They may sound like completely different types of music to the casual listener, but I think there’s a lot we can get when we let go of what something looks like or where it’s from and feel into the underlying quality of the work.  So, I think the rhythm and a sense of the momentum and drive in the rhythm a lot of times have a lot to do with that.

SC:  I agree and great insight into how all these genres can tie together.  You are a blues musician now, but how did you discover the guitar and how did you evolve into the artist you are now?

RLC:  My first memory of the guitar is the one my mom had when I was three years old.  It was kept in a separate room and I was not supposed to go in there.  I remember going into this room and seeing the guitar under a light bulb so there was this light shining down on it.  I didn’t start to play until much later.  My uncle and both my brothers played guitar so I came to it a little bit late.  My mom didn’t play, but I used that guitar on my first record and it disappeared somewhere in my early 20s. I don’t know what happened to it.  Guitar was kind of a means of relieving pressure and something that helped me relax into myself.

I am a guitarist, music teacher and have an English degree.  I never used my English degree, but it was something I enjoyed studying in school.   I went to Northeastern University because I was interested in their Music Business program, but after about a year of being in the program, I realized that it wasn’t really for me.  My parents didn’t want me to drop out of college and I didn’t have the heart to disappoint them so I stayed in school and got an English degree. 

SC:  I understand you have an avant guard blues style of playing the guitar.

RLC:  Well, I’m very interested in regional traditions and Mississippi in particular.  I spent time with a number of older practitioners down there, especially my primary mentor, Jimmy “Duck” Holmes.  I relate to playing the blues in that way.  That is oral tradition passed from person to person and my relationship to the blues is being as traditionally oriented as I can be.  I want to honor the way as I understand music is taught and passed on.  I also have these other genres and styles in my background and while I am organized around traditional Mississippi Blues, it all goes through the filter of my own life experience which includes a lot of other contexts.  It’s traditional to a degree, but there are a lot of entrances that come into it so I end up doing things like playing an electric 12 string guitar or sometimes using an ambient slide guitar and other things that you wouldn’t normally hear in traditional Mississippi blues.

SC:  You are in the middle of a big tour, but you are a Boston guitarist and singer-songwriter.

RLC:  I lived in Boston for just shy of 25 years and that is home to me.  A lot of my formative experiences all happened living in or around the city.  I feel like a Bostonian at heart, but I have been living in Rhode Island for the last three years.

I recently played at Satellite at Remnant Brewing in Cambridge, MA and it was really lovely.  A couple of shows in Boston this year, but for a lot of my life, I would play around town pretty frequently at places like TT the Bears, the Middle East, Atwoods, The Lizard Lounge and Passim.  For the past few years, rather than trying to play in town every month,   I’ll try to do two really intentional performances a year. 

I have two or three weeks worth of tour dates that have not been announced yet, but this fall, I plan to do a good loop around New England, New York, NYC and then go down to Mississippi and do a loop in the South. 

SC:  What makes the concerts in the South different than the ones in Boston?  If the blues is influenced in Mississippi, it must be a different feeling there.

RLC:  Oh yeah, absolutely because the cultures are so different.  Blues traditions were influenced by and created in Mississippi.  If I go to play the Bentonia Blues Festival, that’s the style of music I love in the town it was created.  If I’m playing that style in Blues in Boston, Rhode Island, Europe and elsewhere in the world, sometimes I’ll have to explain this kind of music. If I’m playing where the music originated, I don’t have to explain anything.  If I do have to explain anything, I have to explain why I’m there. 

In the South, audiences respond to an outgoingness that is not second nature to me as a New Englander.  The mood of the exchanges is just different in lots of ways.  Performing in Europe feels more like performing in New England.  Europe has cultural differences too, but I feel more cultural differences in the South than in the Netherlands or in Germany. Going to the source where the music originates from is a powerful feeling.

I grew up in Northern Virginia until I was 11 and then moved to New England.  Northern Virginia is just barely in the South and I don’t know how to connect what draws me to Mississippi, but it draws me somehow.

SC:  Are you working on new music?

RLC:  My new record, At the Bluefront, is out August 20 and we’ve been putting singles out from that album once a month or so.  I believe there are three songs that they can listen to either at my band camp page, my website or through streaming services and I am working on new material as well.

SC:  Do you have a favorite track that you really want people to listen to?

RLC:  The first song is Catfish Blues featuring Jimmy “Duck” Holmes who sings and plays on the track which is a real honor.  He’s on half the album.  People can hear another song called Mistreating People which is a pretty traditional Bentonia Blues style as well. 

SC:  It’s a tough industry to be a musician.  What is your biggest joy in what you do?

RLC:  What keeps me going is a heartfelt desire and a longing that comes from what feels like right from the center of my being to feel connected.  Music is an opportunity for us to connect to ourselves, connect to beauty, to meaning, to purpose and can give us a path and connect us to each other in community and in collaboration and to a sense of something bigger than ourselves.  That’s what I’ve always wanted my life to be about and I feel very fortunate that I’ve been able to live that life and to keep on going.

SC:  What I love the most about music is after a song is created, it doesn’t change.  You can revisit it and you can change as you get older, but the music stays the same. 

RLC:  When you produce a recording or document, it can live on.  It’s a beautiful thing.

Ryan Lee Crosby is currently on tour. Click here to learn more about Blues musician Ryan Lee Crosby, hear his music and where he will next take the stage.