Conversation recorded & transcribed December 11h, 2025

MATT CIARLEGLIO: People are starting to lose their shit over your shows and trying to get on the guest list. 

RYAN DAVIS: Dude. I've been getting all these crazy messages. Especially in New York and Philly, people being like, “This has been the hardest year of my life. My dad had heart surgery. I'll carry anything you need. I just need to get into the show.” I actually let some people into the Toronto show who I didn't know just because there was no one else I knew here but in New York and Chicago, it's hard ‘cause we have  actual friends we want to see. 

MATT: Totally. People that I haven't talked to in like 12 years are like, “Hey, dude, how's it going?” Yeah, I see what you're doing there, buddy. 

RYAN: Yeah, I see you from a mile away. 

MATT: So I think the first time I had met you, it must have been 16, 17 years ago or something at this point. But I was starting to get to know everybody at The Sac House [defunct DIY house] Sabrina [Rush] was saying that you were coming over for a show or a party, I don't really remember what we were doing, but I do have this really vivid memory before you got there where she was like, “Ryan Davis can out punch and out drink anyone and fall asleep anywhere.” And at that point in my life, I was like, “Who the fuck is this guy? He sounds sick!”. 

RYAN: [laughs] Who is that  guy? I love the “sleep anywhere” touch. There's something so not cool about that that it's actually kind of cool. And then you met me and were like This guy? What the fuck?

[both laugh]

MATT: So, you got some pretty deep roots in Chicago. How did that happen? 

RYAN:  My musical brain was formed a little bit before Chicago because when I moved there, I think I was maybe 18 or 19. I'd spent time playing in bands or more so fronting bands, like shitty bands as a singer or whatever in high school. But when I moved to Chicago, it was the first time that I became a part of a creative community of artists and musicians that were inspiring each other to play house shows or have a sculpture show in a warehouse.

That sort of thing was also pretty new to me at that point. Becoming more and more confident. The people I was meeting at art school were the people that I was going to see bands with on the weekends and going to parties that also doubled as art openings. Kind of like making your social life and your creative work life sort of blend together. I think it was a really important genesis to me to have it all be like one encompassing thing, to where it's not like you make your paintings or you write your songs at night and you go out and do something totally different in your free time. It was just kind of like all one life that really started very much so at, like, Ottoman Empire and in the place above Miko’s [Italian Ice] Places you can play to 16 people and feel so charged, you know, something inside of you. There's like a fire going off because you're connecting with people.  I feel the same way playing a sold out show now as I did at that moment in my life. Knowing that there's this creative vibration in a room and playing off that and feeling really good about it.

MATT: You went to school out here, right? 

RYAN: I moved there to go to school, SAIC, and I studied there for a few years, got my art degree, then I started working at Drag City. I was kicking around all the venues, not really helping out with shows so much, just kind of being there because I worked at a record label, and I was becoming friends with a lot of people and bands outside of the Chicago scene. And yeah, I was super involved for those last couple of years I was living there. 

MATT: I don't know if it was your first show at the Bottle, but I remember the first show I saw you there was State Champion opening for Deer Tick [July 2009].

RYAN: Yeah, and Dawes, who are now a pretty famous band. I think?

MATT: Yeah, maybe they are famous? 

[both laugh]

RYAN: It was funny, I was thinking about that show recently because that was actually the first show we played there, and increasingly over the course of playing there it was probably to less and less people [laughs]. It's changed in the last few years but for a while there I was like, oh, yeah, each one's getting slightly less and less in popularity. But, you know, it all comes full circle, I guess. 

MATT: What are your go to spots when you visit Chicago now?

RYAN: Myopic is always one of the first stops. These days when I'm in Chicago, it's usually for a tour and I'm kind of just at the Hideout or the Bottle or the like. I think I went and saw Jeff Parker at Constellation when I was there a couple times ago. For the most part, if I'm just there for an afternoon, I’ll find coffee somewhere. Go to a bookstore or one of the Recklesses or Dusty Groove or something like that. If I'm near Alcala’s maybe I'll go buy a pair of jeans or something like that.

MATT: Hell yeah.

RYAN: I kind of want to just get up there sometime and, like, not have a show and just hit the museums and the galleries and go out to dinner with friends. It's always such a rush when you're there with your band. I mean, it's fun, but it'd be nice to just kind of kick it there for a few days. 

MATT: 100%. Anyway, it’s been really sick watching your trajectory, the last few years in particular. Over time I've seen you play and played shows with you in so many basements and kitchens and weird nooks and crannies or just a year and a half ago when you were playing at Judson & Moore. Where now, pretty much every major publication I can think of has written about your new record. It’s awesome to see you get that traction and deserved attention for a really great album. Wall Street Journal? C’mon! It's some alternate universe shit. 

RYAN: It's really laughable at times. It’s pretty wild.

MATT: It still feels really grassroots. Are you at a point now where you kind of miss those weirdo kitchen DIY shows? 

RYAN: I don't think I'm far enough away from it to really miss it, to be honest. The people that play in this band that's getting these very reviews and selling out these very shows are the people that I was playing to no one side by side with for so many years. Be it in basements in the States or up in weird squats in Europe. Me and Dan [Davis] and Jim [Marlowe] specifically have been touring together for like 12 years or something... It's like a checks and balances system or something. We've played shows to very few people and still looked at each other after the show and were like, that was sick. Even if it was a weird club, there was maybe a misstep in booking it at the wrong place or in the wrong town or on the wrong night. But those shows, I can still feel really good. And I'm 100% of the mind that we will play those shows again at some point. I don't think that's a failure. I don't think that playing sold out shows every night is… I mean, of course it's a success, maybe monetarily, but I don't think that means that you're above failing or something, you know? I don't know. I guess I'm not even entirely sure what I'm trying to say. I still feel like I'm in that world and I want to fly as low to the ground as I can for as long as I can. Maybe that's the best way of putting it. 

MATT: You've released at least seven records in the past decade between State Champion, Equipment Pointed Ankh, and the Roadhouse Band. The most recent being New Threats From The Soul. There's so much to unpack with that record. It's so unique and good, and I think it really shows your song craft and taking it to this next sort of level. It's pretty fucking wild shit.  It's really good. One of the things that stands out to me the most is the lyrical relatability. There are so many good tidbits in there. One of my favorite lyrics is “It's Waco in the Bathtub.” [from song Mutilation Springs]. I heard that and was like, “Ain’t that the truth. Wait, what the fuck does that even mean?”. 

RYAN: [laughs] No one has ever quoted or mentioned that lyric! I think it's really funny. I don't even necessarily know what it means either. I wrote it down on a piece of paper one day and found it. I was like, I don't know what this means, but it's pretty interesting. 

MATT: It immediately stood out to me. That's something that I think about, especially with a record like this, where it's like, half the time I don't know at all what you're talking about but it's so relatable. Like, Oh yeah I've totally been there or felt that but don’t actually know what you’re singing about at all. Is their intentionality to your lyrical process or is it kind of accidental? 

RYAN: I think it's very much both. I think of the songs as these quilts of lived experience that, at times, I'm making passing references to experiences I've had. But a lot of it is imagery that's sewn together from things. It's a little bit of both. I definitely never sit down and say, like, I'm gonna write a song about politics or the weird week I've had or how my job sucks and I hate my boss. It's more this sort of ongoing notes of things that I keep. When I have a thought or I think of a couplet or see something written on a bus stop or there's an image that comes to my mind in the middle of a dream or something. I fill binders with that stuff. When I'm writing a record, I spend months obsessively doing it. I don't really come home after a day of work and write a song. It's this really intense process when it starts, and that's when I pull out all those binders and start sewing stuff together and say, okay, I kind of have the chords for the verse and the chorus. I really like starting the song with these four lines. What’s next? And then you flip through the pages and you say, oh, this kind of seems thematically appropriate for building on that. And then this story kind of begins to write itself and you're adding to it as it goes. But sometimes it does start from, like, scraps of things that you find written on something in your pocket or whatever.

MATT: That's pretty neat. I like the quilt analogy. 

RYAN: Yeah. 

MATT: It’s interesting how everyone does it a bit differently. To be honest, when I first started touring and getting more seriously involved in music, I learned a lot from you and looked up to you because of your relentless touring, your label, your mentality of just kind of getting out there and fucking doing it. But also your generosity. The first tour that I ever went on you helped us get a show, let us stay at your house, and made us breakfast. And every tour after that.

RYAN: Highlands Taproom, right? 

MATT: Yeah! Oh, man, speaking of shows that no one else was at... [both laugh]. I often think about that when talking about touring with people that are just starting out. Letting people crash in your basement, on the floor, making them breakfast in the morning. How those simple acts make a world of a difference when you're first starting out and hoofing it, figuring shit out. It was really inspiring early on to see you just continuously grinding at this thing. What sort of advice would you give a newer generation of musicians that are just starting and touring?

RYAN: That's a big question. Honestly, that whole network that you're referring to when I first met you. Being as fulfilled playing to 14 people at The Sac House. The after-show hangs in my mom's basement where she was basically like allowing me to run a punk rock hostel out of her house. I remember feeling charged by making friends and staying up all night and talking and trading contacts for booking more shows or talking about recording processes when all that stuff was still new to me and going to bed feeling like I was vibrating or levitating or something. It’s so fun meeting other people who I like that are in this world. It's interesting now because doing this my whole adult life and I'm just now getting to where we can afford to sleep in a hotel every night. Not a nice hotel, but not sleeping on floors. I don't envy people where that's the way they start doing this. To immediately have access to that kind of support system or something. Because I feel like so much of the tool set I have to be able to continue making music in the way that I want to and building this sort of like, you know, the continual world building. That's a term that gets thrown around a lot but it very much is like that. I think so much of who I am, beyond music, just as a person, comes from those years of hanging out with you guys and finding people that are like minded and like spirited and learning what you can. You don't take away everything from people but there's those conversations you always leave with a little tidbit of something. A clue toward what you're going to do next. I feel that way about the label and about the festival [Cropped Out] and everything. Trying to see that world from every angle and learning from it and learning from other people. The circle continues to get bigger and bigger. And yeah, I mean, I could talk all day about that, but I guess that's the quick answer for it. 

MATT: That's good. 

RYAN: Back to the advice question [both laugh]. Find a small group of friends that you can kind of trust as your North Star. If you don't feel like you can trust yourself, having people around that you can always bounce ideas off of, keep as a compass. Not a moral compass but can keep you in check and help you make decisions and help you learn to trust yourself and build on that. I think you gotta eat shit for a long time. Oftentimes I’ve played to very few people. I put out records that not many people show interest in. Doing the Roadhouse Band stuff, I made a couple records that were solo instrumental records that zero people gave a shit about. But I just knew that I was on the right path to do something beyond that. And then I started making the songwriter records again and it all clicked. But if it weren't for those couple records that no one barely even knew about or cared about, I don't think I would have made the ones that people do care about now. So that's what I would say to that, I guess. 

MATT: Going back to the label aspect, It's almost 20 years of Sophomore Lounge.

RYAN: Like 18, I think. 

MATT: Jesus. Time really flies. You’re well over a hundred releases at this point. Running an independent label is tough. I know you're packing up all these records and doing everything yourself and getting it all done. What is some advice you would give to somebody that's interested in starting their own label? 

RYAN: Don't. [both laugh]. Consider law school or some sort of electrician school? I don't know. I mean, I think I know. I feel like there would be so many specific questions I would kind of need to know what the person was trying to do exactly. To really give valuable advice. In general, start small. Use your own resources, don't try to get ahead of yourself. When we started doing Sophomore Lounge, it was just me and Sal [Cassato] and Mikie [Poland] writing with a sharpie on CDRs and putting SL03 on the back of a cassette tape. Starting on a micro level and then kind of slowly building it rather than jumping in and thinking if we get the right song on the right playlist we can press 500 copies of this thing and sell them overnight. Maybe you can, but I've never sold 500 copies until over a decade of doing it. So, I think it just depends what exactly you're trying to do and what your demographic is and what and why you're trying to do and what you want to get out of it. I could have plenty of advice to give someone once I knew that. But in general, starting it slow and just seeing where it takes you. 

MATT:  I’ve been thinking about this a lot, in a general sense; What does one do on bad days? Playing empty shows, vans breaking down, people not giving a shit about your records, not getting paid, whatever. What keeps you going when you're having bad days, bad tours, bad years?

RYAN: I don't know. That's something I thought about. I've been thinking about it a lot lately. Now that things are sort of “succeeding” for the first time. I really don't know what it is. I don't know what it is that kept me going for all the years. There's something. There's some sort of engine within me or some sort of cosmic or spiritual force between me and my small core group of friends that have kept us doing this for so long. I don't think it's ego. I don't think it is. Maybe it's like some sort of delusion, but not a grandiose delusion in that we're ever gonna be stars or something. I think there is maybe a mild delusion that what we're doing matters to more people than it does, or it could matter to more people than it does. I think the most simple answer is that it's never not been really fucking fun. There's been little pockets of time where it wasn't fun and those are the times where I did pump the brakes on it and say, You know what? Maybe I do need to reconsider. Not necessarily what I'm doing, but the way I'm doing it. And I do. There have been a couple pockets of a couple years here and there where I've stepped back and spent more time at home and thinking about if I were to do this again, what changes would I make? And then I made those changes and kept going. But I think really it’s the thing that I enjoy most in the world, and the more I do it, the more I can't fathom not doing it. There very well may be a point in life that I come to a crossroads and I'm not feeling this anymore and I'm getting burned out, or I'm more of a homebody than I used to be and I don't want to leave and go do this shit all the time. I'm dealing with a broken amp as we speak tonight, and it's annoying. Dealing with customs people and getting harassed is annoying, but it's a net positive for me, and it's just continued to be for my entire adult life, and I'm still having a blast doing it. So I think that until that stops, I'll probably just keep making records with my friends. That's just kind of the simple answer to that. 

MATT: Hell, yeah, the rules. Is there anything else that you wanted to touch on?

RYAN: I mean, yeah. If I wasn't  freezing in a green room right now [both laugh].  I'd probably be a little more articulate about all this stuff, but I can't think of anything at the moment. I'm too brain-fried.