33 & 1/3 Under 45 Ryan Lynch

You can find episodes on frondsradio.com and be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have any suggestions or thoughts, my twitter handle is @stoopkidliveson and I’d love to hear from you. You can find Ryan’s band, Premium Heart, on facebook, twitter, instagram, spotify, bandcamp, or most places you stream music for music, upcoming releases, and shows.



Hoo boy, here we are. The day after Trump left the White House. What a disaster this whole thing was. The work continues, clearly, but Jesus Christ, dudes, thank god that's over.



To celebrate/close this door, I've made a farewell playlist of 33 songs from the Trump campaign/presidency that mean a lot to me as we move on from this disaster. I really like how it came out and I hope you do, too!



https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7GiRo4g1raF5LODonvWZhc?si=3M5DojapTbW_0ECISU5Ih



Anyway, I'm wrapping up the show. As I've talked about in the past, the show was primarily a way for me to express a lot of the stress and anxieties I was having under 45 and it really helped me so much and I'm immensely grateful for everyone who came along with me. I had the idea for the column after my wedding, where our ceremony was pretty much the first episode of the show. Instead of readings from religious texts, we pulled lyrics from songs that meant the most to us and interwove them through stories of what made us fall in love. That day also re-opened my love of performance and was the first step for me getting back into writing and playing out again for the first time in a few years.



One of the main reasons I want to wrap up the show is that now that Premium Heart is writing our follow up to "Kosciuszko," I want to really be able to focus on writing music and lyrics again and I've felt like a lot of the things I want to say were easier to write here instead of there and I don't want to split my writing anymore. So make sure you stay in touch through Premium Heart or my twitter or whatever! And just like... be cool and nice all the time.



Eternally grateful,



Ryan Lynch

You can find episodes on frondsradio.com and be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have any suggestions or thoughts, my twitter handle is @stoopkidliveson and I’d love to hear from you. You can find Ryan’s band, Premium Heart, on facebook, twitter, instagram, spotify, bandcamp, or most places you stream music for music, upcoming releases, and shows.



We've already made two batches of donations! Snares' funds are going to back Democrats taking the Senate back and the album is going to the ACLU! I'm prepping all the pre-orders any day now, so if you want some extra notes or fun stuff, pre-order it right now at: https://premiumheart.bandcamp.com/album/kosciuszko



And watch the Snares music video we made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55T6tS22_54

You can find episodes on frondsradio.com and be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have any suggestions or thoughts, my twitter handle is @stoopkidliveson and I’d love to hear from you. You can find Ryan’s band, Premium Heart, on facebook, twitter, instagram, spotify, bandcamp, or most places you stream music for music, upcoming releases, and shows.



Get stoked for all the huge Premium Heart stuff coming out over the next few weeks!

You can find episodes on frondsradio.com and be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have any suggestions or thoughts, my twitter handle is @stoopkidliveson and I’d love to hear from you. You can find Ryan’s band, Premium Heart, on facebook, twitter, instagram, spotify, bandcamp, or most places you stream music for music, upcoming releases, and shows.



This column was written on August 14th, 2020.



I woke up this morning, I could barely breathe
Just an empty impression in the bed where you used to be
I want a kiss from your lips, I want an eye for an eye
I woke up this morning to an empty sky



"Regular bad." That's how I've been answering the question "How's everything going?" Let's be real, no matter how lucky I've been, it's not a fun time to exist right now. In the past, if you gave an answer like that, you'd get a follow up or a check-in from whoever you were talking to, but now you only get that if you say you're doing great. I can't shake that. That the norm is to be miserable and it's weird if you're having a good time. I can't stop thinking about how normal that feels for so many of us, especially millennials. We've really never gotten a goddamn break, have we?



I search for you on the other side, where the river runs clean and wide
Up to my heart, the waters rise
Up to my heart, the waters rise
I sink 'neath the water cool and clear. Drifting down, I disappear
I see you on the other side
I search for the peace in your eyes
But they're empty as paradise
They're as empty as paradise



I'm really at the end of my patience with the whole narrative about millennials being coddled and entitled. That we refuse to grow up and are in a perpetual state of adolescence. Sure, a lot of us wallow in nostalgia and are obsessed with the good old days. Remember Magic School Bus? That was my favorite show! I remember watching it after school when I was 8, and for the first time, realizing all the things that I never imagined could happen in a school! It was right after my 3rd grade teacher sat us down and told us what had happened in Columbine. What an eye-opening time to be a kid!



When I was 10, the World Trade Center fell and we watched thousands die on television. By the time I was 13, we were in two wars and the National Defense Authorization Act and the Patriot Act were codified, promising we would never have peace and we would never have privacy. By the time I graduated high school, the economy had the worst crash in 70 years. I got my driver's license two days before Hurricane Sandy shut down my island for weeks. And I'm about to turn 30 while over a thousand people die every day from a global pandemic the rest of the world has gotten under control and the economy is in the worst crash in 80 years. So fuck off that we've never been challenged. F**k off that we don't know what it's like to sacrifice. The only trophies we've been given are inherited tragedies and pain. F**k off if you think this generation is too soft. Instead of turning into bitter reminders of what we've lost, we're the first generation in decades trying to turn it into empathy. We want to abolish student loan debt, even though we've paid most of it off already. We want universal health care even though we're young and doing fine. I just can't tolerate this b******t anymore. Look around at the world we've inherited and if this is what we're entitled to, I just hope there's a good return policy.





I've been listening to a whole lot of his modern catalog, and few stand out as well as 2002's, The Rising, which was written in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks. And the thing that keeps me coming back is the unbelievable sense of empathy I get from this record. While the majority of older white guys were calling for mass bombings and xenophobic genocide of the middle east, Bruce was doing what he always does, blending optimism and love with his genuine care for the people

You can find episodes on frondsradio.com and be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have any suggestions or thoughts, my twitter handle is @stoopkidliveson and I’d love to hear from you. You can find Ryan’s band, Premium Heart, on facebook, twitter, instagram, spotify, bandcamp, or most places you stream music for music, upcoming releases, and shows.



This column was written on July 14th, 2020.



Learn to leap, leap from ledges high and wild
Learn to speak, speak with wisdom like a child
Directly to the heart
Crown yourself the king of clowns or stand way back apart
But never give your love, my friend
Unto a foolish heart



We've been staying home for over a hundred days. How about that? And guess what? Everything's still terrible! But hopefully, everyone's developed some habits that help keep them going. For me, I've been playing a lot of Breath Of The Wild, the Zelda game, and really just losing myself in a lot of different music.




For the first couple months of quarantine, I spent a lot of time with the Grateful Dead. I've been a Deadhead for years and spent much of my adolescence with them, both as a fan and as part of the extended Dead crew family. They've always been a safe place for me to just sink into and turn off all the bad in the world, and hoo boy, did I need it more than ever this time around. I dove deep into every nook and cranny of their catalog this time, from the nasty, explosive psychadelica of '68 through the jazzy, exploratory 70s, but ended up landing time and time again in the Spring '90 tour. I've always gravitated towards this era of the band, with no small part of the credit going to their keyboardist from 1979-1990, Brent Mydland. Often with lyricist John Perry Barlow, Brent added a level of deep pathos and personal songwriting that's a real high point for me in the Dead's massive catalog. From an unreleased demo from Built To Last:
When the police come, you better let 'em in, Gentleman, start your enginesDon't forget to tell 'em what a sport I've been, Gentleman, start your enginesI got a head full of vintage TNT, They're gonna blow me up 'stead of burying meIf you don't like trouble, better leave me beGentleman, start your enginesLike the Devil's Mustangs, I've been riding hell for leatherPut away angry, angry in the darkLet me tell you, honey,There's some mighty stormy weatherRolling 'round the caverns of my heart


As an aside, because the Dead's pretty much exclusively a live band, I'm using the last studio Dead album released in 1989, Built To Last, as an outline. All of the songs here are from the Spring '90 tour, but are still tracks from that album.



The Brent-era is often maligned by Deadheads. He was the new guy, coming off of one of the most celebrated eras of live music for the band and a lot of the studio material suffered from cheesy production and overly catchy songs. It was the 80s, after all. But for me, by the Spring of 1990, I think the band was the best they ever were and this tour was really something special. I love their whole career, but this is the top of the top for me. And Brent was, for the first time, really elevated within the band. He writes and sings four of the nine songs on Built To Last and his songs started popping up more and more throughout the set. And with that, you can feel the pain and heart in every single one of his songs that helped make this tour the best of the best. And helped make me feel a little less isolated in this dark, terrible time.





Well, there ain't nobody safer than someone who doesn't care
And it isn't even lonely, when no one's ever there
I had a lot of dreams once, but some of them came true
The honey's sometimes bitter when fortune falls on you

And you know I've been a soldier in the armies of the night
And I'll find a fatal error in what's otherwise alright
Something shines around you and it seems to my delight
To give you just a little sweet

You can find episodes on frondsradio.com and be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you have any suggestions or thoughts, my twitter handle is @stoopkidliveson and I’d love to hear from you. You can find Ryan’s band, Premium Heart, on facebook, twitter, or instagram for upcoming releases and shows.



This column was written on June 14th, 2020.



Johnson portrayed Freedom - it rang just as loud as the bell proclaiming him Champion.



All forms of expression, whether artistic or not, are statements of values from the creator and are inherently political. If you can't accept that and wish people didn't have to be so political in their art, go f**k, and I can't stress this enough, yourself.



In 1970, just about a year after Miles Davis recorded his groundbreaking jazz fusion album, In A Silent Way, he recorded the soundtrack to an upcoming documentary on the boxing champion, Jack Johnson. Johnson was one of the first black boxers who was "allowed" to box a white man and become the world heavyweight boxing champion, owned and operated several desegregated nightclubs in the 1910s, and was arrested, charged, and sentenced by an all-white jury for violating the Mann Act because of his relationships with white women before the Act was even passed.



In years, we're about as removed from this record as Miles was from most of the events that made Jack Johnson a household name. But just like I feel that this album is as relevant today as ever, Miles felt a deep connection to Jack's story. Not only as a trailblazer for Black Americans, shattering boundaries that White America fought (and still fights) so hard to uphold, but also as a victim of the system. In 1959, after releasing the masterpiece Kind Of Blue, Miles was beaten and arrested by the NYPD for not "moving on" from the steps of the club he was playing an Armed Forces Day benefit at (the Birdland, one of the most important Jazz clubs in Manhattan) after walking a white woman to her cab. Despite pointing out that he was on the marquee and had every right to be there, (“I don’t care where you work, I said move on! If you don’t move on I’m going to arrest you.” said the cop) Miles was beaten bloody and dragged off. From his autobiography:





For everyone that says it's only about class and that if we pursue economic justice, racial justice will follow suit, you're still as wrong as people who said that to Miles in 1959 were. As wrong as the people that said that to Jack Johnson in 1912 were. It doesn't matter if you're rich, a racist system is still going to abuse you if you're not white. And then make you the villain for being angry. You're the real racist for fighting against the system.



From Davis' liner notes for the record:





Now I don't know a whole lot about Jack Johnson and I've never seen the movie. But I can still really feel what Miles is trying to convey in his soundtrack. The first side, "Right Off" starts with a very rock and blues feeling electric guitar, drums and bass, that immediately invoke the presence that a man like Jack Johnson, a man like Miles Davis, always invokes when they walk into a room. He lets John McLaughlin's guitar, Michael Henderson's bass, and Billy Cobham's drums tell the story for a few minutes, alternating between big fills and mellow lows until Miles comes in at about the 2 and a half minute mark. And he makes it clear that he's the star here. His trumpet fills the space and reminds everyone that people like him are the reason we have jazz. The reason we have the blues. The reason we have rock n roll. Together, they build the song up to something truly magical. Until about 10 and half minutes in, everything drops out but Miles' muted trumpet. Just long enough to remind you that hidden behind every jam that takes music to this kind of level, there's a deep, solitary pain behind it. As much as Miles Davis was the coolest band leader who ever lived,