The Black Ryder Interview

Scott Von Ryper - one half of the Black Ryder - stopped by for a chat with Max Easton as a part of Soulshine’s feature on the Sydney newcomers, touching on anything from recording to record deals and Tom Waits. With their debut album seeing light in November, there’s plenty going on in the Black Ryder camp.

The Black Ryder are a lesson in the old adage ‘it’s not what you know, but who you know.’ Playing their first gig as the support for Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, this Sydney two-piece of epic indie proportions have had a great start to what looks like being a list of very favourable reviews. Of course, it always helps when ‘what’ you know is equally as impressive as the line-up of guest musicians on your debut album. Making waves with a unique brand of genre-bending tunes (highlighted by the genre description of Other/Other/Other on the band’s myspace,) the Black Ryder are someone worth keeping an ear out for. Thus, we’re featuring them; with our opinion being that they’re an important new addition to Australia’s rapidly rising number of new acts country-wide.

So without further adieu, and without further leading cliche's, here's the interview in it's entirety:

Max Easton (Soulshine): So how’ve you been?

Scott Von Ryper (The Black Ryder): Good…we had a bit of a big night last night, so feeling a little bit chatty today, but not too bad.

ME: Oh yeah? Where have you been?

SR: We had an event last night; which was a listening party and exhibition of photo’s from a recent clip shoot and we also premiered a film clip. It was all done in a gallery in Darlinghurst last night…yeah…we had a great time.

ME: How’d that go for you?

SR: It was great. Packed out, lots of people there, and even people who wanted to buy some prints which is great, so we sorta rushed to get it ready from the weekend before and it ended up really great.

ME: Oh, great. I don’t think a lot of people I know have really heard of you guys, you sorta slipped under the radar a bit, but it seems like you’ve got yourself a bit of a following.

SR: Yeah, definitely have a following going on, we’ve only played a couple of times in Brisbane Sydney and Melbourne, really doing supports for a couple of International bands that we knew or played with…other than that, it’s really been finishing the album and doing all that. So it’s kinda been a bit of a digital presence, mainly word of mouth. We probably get just as much love from people overseas as we do here.

ME: Guess that’s the world we live in isn’t it?

SR: Yeah it is. It’s great. [laughs] It’s great to have that medium. We live in times now that we can write and record a song at our house, post it up at night…and people are sending you messages the next morning from across the world telling you how great it is.

ME: And you’ve been received well live as well?

SR: Yeah, yeah…the reviews have been quite favourable, and I guess we’ve been lucky that the crowds we’ve been playing to were quite suited to our music; whether it’s been the Brian Jonestone Massacre or the Ravonettes or whatever, it all sorta crosses over pretty well. So you’re generally not playing to people who don’t like your kind of music if you’re in that situation.

ME: Is that how you’ve linked up with those guys [from Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Church, BRMC, etc] to be playing on your album, just by touring with them? Or is there some other story going on there?

SR: Well a lot of those guys we knew before…Aimee and I were touring overseas in other bands and the guys from Black Rebel and Brian Jonestown Massacre…and the Ravonettes we met through friends…but yeah, it’s mainly through friends or playing with them in the past and staying in contact. It’s nice that they asked us to play with them when they came out, I mean, our first gig was on the Black Rebel tour in Australia. When they asked us to do it, we didn’t even have a band to start with…[laughs]…I think we only had four songs, so we had to get our shit together pretty quick. It was a studio project, that’s how we dreamed it all up. We originally thought that we could play here and if we go overseas we could recruit some friends playing in other bands who happen to be on tour at the time…so yeah, we quickly grabbed a bunch of friends in this country, and we also had Wiki from Brian Jonestown staying with us, a big favour that he toured with us. It was good…we had to do it pretty quickly and of course we were very lucky that our first ever shows were pretty big shows…at the Corner Hotel you know.

ME: [laughs] Not a bad way to kick it off I suppose.

SR: [laughs] Yeah, great way to start…

ME: So what’s the feeling of releasing a debut album. Do you feel a lot of pressure or expectation surrounding that?

SR: I think there was…I don’t feel it so much anymore, but there was a lot of pressure before because we were doing it all ourselves. We went and recorded it and mixed it and a mate of ours produced it…then of course there’s the added pressure of actually getting it finished…so we were trying to do business with people to try and put the label out. You end up talking to people for months…and there was lots of stopping and starting with different labels over that…so that adds pressure when you think something’s gonna happen and it doesn’t…or you feel like you need a bit of money to do something. Now we’ve finally nailed our deals in Australia, so we’re not distributing through our label, but through EMI, so I’m glad we waited as long as we did…cos the deal we did was probably perfect for us. I don’t think we could have any better. It feels like the weight has been lifted off our shoulders and placed on the shoulders of the people who work for us. They gotta get out there and do the marketing or whatever to get it out there, so I’m looking forward to it now.

ME: Has recording the album been an effort where you feel like you’re done with the recording side of things now? Is it a feeling of being free in a way?

SR: Yeah, when we finished, I walked out of the studio and didn’t wanna go back in for you know…a while [laughs.] I just spent hours and hours and really late nights listening to the same song five hundred times, you go nuts by that stage…and of course there’s that thing in the back of your mind…where…by no means was I an engineer before this, I only kinda fooled around with it. So it was something we were doing on the sly…I definitely put a lot of pressure on my shoulders by doing that. It’s rewarding now, but it was really stressful the whole time…thinking ‘maybe we should get someone else who really knows what they’re doing’…I reckon I did that every month for the recording…it was only the last couple of months where it was too late to hand it to anyone that I shook that. It became so much our baby that we didn’t want to give it away in the end. There was one side of us that was thinking it might sound more polished if it was produced by someone who knew what they were doing at a studio…but a lot of people were telling us when they were listening to it that it sounded really unique to them…and different and special, so I was worried that if we handed it off that we might lose that…and it would lose its uniqueness…so that’s what we ended up doing.

ME: It must feel great that you did it yourself; it’s a mighty achievement really. Especially with the brand of music that you’re playing, that is pretty much defined by post-production work in a way to get it all sounding right.

SR: Yeah, it’s rewarding and it’s something you get a kick out of…obviously because I spent so much time with it I was hearing a lot of different things…so hearing some of the things we did well really gave us a kick and made it rewarding on all sides.

ME: The music that you guys write and play…was that something that you sat down and said ‘okay, we’re gonna play this brand of music, we’re gonna play acid rock’ or whatever you want to call it…or were you sort of just following your muse?

SR: You know, it was sort of a weird procress…when we first started doing it, we had three songs I think…that we demoed and each one was radically different. And as we continued to do more, it was strange…I was kind of wondering ‘well, is this a Black Ryder song? Or is it not?’ And should we keep going with this…it was very strange to begin with because we were trying to work out what our sound was…and when things strayed from what we though the sound was I began to realise that that’s a part of what we do now. What we have is…an album where there are songs quite different from each other and I really like that fact. Sometimes we have a massive wall of sound guitar track next to a dark, psyched up country song. There was a guy last night who heard that song on the clip and asked ‘is that what the rest of the album is like?’ I like that…that you can confuse people’s expectations.

ME: What are your plans from here then? Are you planning to tour Australia or Overseas?

SR: We’ll probably do one more show in Australia this year…down in Melbourne…and early next year, we’ll do one or two festival shows which are locked in. So then we’d like to check out overseas and play over there…so that’s probably our objective…and the focus right now is to get the record released over there. It’s not out here until the 9th or 6th of November, so it would be great to have a release lined-up in some other territories. I’d love to have it out in Japan, and the UK and Europe and America of course…so, there’s a lot of work ahead of us to do that.

ME: Just quickly to finish off…the band name; Tom Waits, Vampire’s or both?

SR: Yeah, it’s a Tom Waits reference…the musical ‘The Black Rider’ that Tom Waits wrote the music for and William Burrows was involved in…Aimee and I saw that in Sydney when it played a while back and it left a bit of an impression on us. So when the tough thing came, when you’re looking for a band name…essentially the hardest thing you ever have to do…that just popped into my head and it felt right ever since. It had nothing to do with my surname or anything like that [laughs]…more to do with Tom Waits than me.

The Black Ryder's debut album is out on November 6th through their own label The Anti-Machine Machine through EMI Distribution.

(Photo: Stefan Duscio)

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