ryan davis & the roadhouse band’s mid-tour hive mind

Seven people exited a van outside of Brewery Nønic in Menomonie, Wisconsin—an old train station and one of the Chippewa Valley’s best spots. It was October 13, the first day to really feel like fall out here, when Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band rolled up. They stopped on their way to a show in Eau Claire after playing Minneapolis the night before. The sets were supporting spots for MJ Lenderman, and it goes without saying, every night of that tour was an in-demand ticket. An always great Lenderman had become indie rock’s main character on the back of his near-universally beloved new album. As a massive bonus, the Roadhouse Band were tagging along.

The Louisville singer-songwriter and his ragged and rootsy rock’n’roll band’s 2023 album Dancing on the Edge is just an incredible collection of songwriting, and at the Stones Throw in Eau Claire, they played the hits—“Free From the Guillotine,” “Learn 2 Re-Luv,” and “Flashes of Orange” all just stunned. Davis wore a Samhain hoodie and red tuque with wide sunglasses dangling beneath his chin. With a full crew of incredible players crowding the small stage, the jams hewed close to the record’s loose and freewheeling nature; a warm and welcoming set by some truly real motherfuckers.

After all six members of the band sat around a table in the back room at Nønic near the dartboard, pinball machine, and table of college students, it set in that all six members had ordered the same stout without coordinating. Just a few days into the tour, the Roadhouse band were operating on the same wavelength. They unanimously voted to meet for afternoon beer over coffee, for example. While the band’s lineup rotates, the people sitting around that table represent a constellation of musicians who identify as an extended family. They laugh at each other’s jokes, have a shorthand, and inspire each other to make shit. This is a conversation about creativity, community, and the joy of goofing off when there’s a hot mic present.

Let’s start by going around the table—everyone introduce themselves by talking about some of the different projects you’re involved in.

Ryan Davis: Sure, I’m Ryan Davis of the Roadhouse Band from Louisville, Kentucky. I run a label called Sophomore Lounge, and everybody involved here has had records come out on the label.

Jim Marlowe: I’m Jim Marlowe, also of those things and places. Me and Ryan do another band called Equipment Pointed Ankh with Dan and Shutaro, who’s not here. He just moved back to Japan recently, but he’s a pretty integral part of all these things. Then Ryan and I did a band called Tropical Trash with Dan for years. 

Ryan Davis: I did a band called State Champion before this and Jim played with us for the last year or so of that, too.

LT: I’m LT, which is short for Lou Turner. I’m from Nashville, and I play bass in the Roadhouse Band.

Trevor Nikrant: I’m Trevor Nikrant from Nashville. I play pedal steel and some keyboard. LT and I have a band called Styrofoam Winos that has two records now. Those are very recent.

LT: We do solo stuff, too, under our names.

Trevor Nikrant: Styrofoam Winos is a Sophomore Lounge production.

Ryan Davis: Contractually chained to Sophomore Lounge. 

Trevor Nikrant: For a 100-album contract. 

Ryan Davis: You didn’t even read that contract. 

Dan Davis: It was written in crayon.

Christian DeRoeck: I’m Christian “Smokey” DeRoeck, based in Athens, Georgia, guitar and vocals. I play in a band called Little Gold, which is country rock stuff. I’ve got one LP and one 7” on Sophmore Lounge,

Dan Davis: I’m Dan Davis, I’m based in West Virginia. I play bongos and electronics. I was in Equipment Pointed Ankh and Tropical Trash, and now I’m doing this.

Wait Dan Davis and Ryan Davis, no kin?

Dan Davis: No kin.

Ryan Davis: No kin. Sometimes we lie about it.

You’re all geographically pretty spread out, so how did this band come together?

Ryan Davis: The record that’s out, Dancing on the Edge, was something I wrote at home alone as my first solo record. I demoed it out as such and started piecing together some ideas for how to do a studio recorded version of it. I brought some of these guys along, like Jim, who lives in Louisville. Dan ended up coming, he kind of surprised us. When it came time to do stuff live, we put our heads together and figured out people that might contribute to that scenario—people that would be good musically and fun to hang with. I’ve met all these people in different contexts over the years. We’re all just kind of homies so it naturally came together.

What’s the vibe on the road been like?

Ryan Davis: [everyone laughs] Man, just the hard questions right off the bat. No, it’s been amazing. I wanted to answer facetiously, but it’s been probably a little too much fun. The Lenderman crew’s so sweet and encouraging, and crowds have been cool. I think it’s a good pairing of bands in terms of a lot of their fans not having heard of but walking away with records at the end of the shows.

You’ve been in bands where you haven’t put your name up front; what was the decision like to have this band foreground your name?

Ryan Davis: I fought against it really hard. I was like, “I’m not gonna call this my name, I’ve got to come up with a band name.” I came up with a bunch of ideas and none of them really worked, and at a certain point, it felt arbitrary coming up with a random thing to call your band. At some point I had several people be like, “Why don’t you call it your name?” I was like, “NO!” 

Jim Marlowe: That is exactly how that conversation went.

Ryan Davis: When I’m writing songs, I’m not writing songs about what I did with my day or how my feelings feel or anything. I’m writing as a sort of non-person, so it seems weird to attach my name to it. At the same time, we’ve made a lot of friends touring over the years and people know me. I make art and I had a fest and it’s like, “Oh, it’s Ryan. It’s his record. This is what he does.” It was like I might as well call it my name rather than, I don’t fucking know, make up something stupid and have to live with it. Like State Champion, for example.

Do you guys have new stuff beyond Dancing on the Edge?

Ryan Davis: Yeah, we were actually just listening to the record together for the first time. Half the band hadn’t heard it because different people play on it. We just in the last hour listened to most of the songs. We have a new record that we’re working on now that’s getting there. It needs some work. Half the people who play on the record live up in the Northeast where we made it, like in Rhode Island, which is where we made the first Tropical Trash record. We kind of have different factions. I think the idea is on this tour, we’re going to go to Emily Robb’s studio and get everybody in this version of the band to do some overdubs. It’s like 85% done; it won’t be out until next year.

With new shit around the corner, what’s your relationship like with these older songs you’ve been playing on tour?

Ryan Davis: It’s weird because we wrote all these songs, made this record, did some touring, and then I was like, “I think I’m gonna just keep a good thing going and write a bunch of new songs,” so then I was obsessed with not even thinking about the old ones—just writing the new ones and recording the new ones. Then when this tour came around it’s like, “Alright, I’ve gotta forget about the new ones and relearn all the old ones,” and then it’s gonna be back to weird chunks and cycles.

Jim Marlowe: I do think having LT, Trevor, and Christian in the band, it’s got some new gas in the tank. 

Wait, are you all drinking the same beer?

Entire band: Whoaaaaaa. [laughs and clinks glasses] Cheers! 

Dan Davis: It’s a chilly morning and we’re all kind of like, “Mmm, yeah!”

LT: We didn’t even talk about it! That’s a good metaphor.

Ryan Davis: Our lunar cycles are tuned in.

Jim Marlowe: It’s like all the birds flying away at once.

That’s beautiful. I want to ask the folks who just heard those new songs—how do they feel?

Dan Davis: Being part of it but also being a fan, it sounds like a natural progression of Ryan’s tunes.

Trevor Nikrant: It’s like a new tunnel in the same cave.

What are you all listening to in the van?

Ryan Davis: We started doing this thing called the Jam.

Christian DeRoeck: It’s the only good thing Spotify has ever done, really. You can all link up and it’s an active, evolving playlist with everybody adding to it.

Ryan Davis: And you can do it on Spotify. [everybody laughs] Download the app today. There’s a feature where we could link up with the Lenderman crew and they could join our jam and we could play songs for each other’s vans.

LT: The Lenderman crew doesn’t have Spotify.

Ryan Davis: We just outed ourselves as the weakest. We came on see/saw to promote Spotify. What have we been listening to? 

LT: What haven’t we been listening to? 

Ryan Davis: We started a drive at midnight and ended in Minneapolis at 5am the other night, and we were standing up in the van dancing for arts of it, listening to disco and trying to keep ourselves awake.

Can we talk about Sophomore Lounge specifically? Do you feel like you’re curating releases from within your circle?

Ryan Davis: Yeah, and when it first started, it was just friends of mine—me and whoever was making shit that didn’t really have a home for it and being cheerleaders for one another. Then you would met people on tour that were kind of in that same boat. You would say, “Alright, jump in with us. We’ll write Sophomore Lounge on your CD-Rs too and sell those at shows.” 

Now it’s gotten to a place where I’ve been doing it for 17 years where I just get sent so much stuff, and it’s stuff that I genuinely love and would love to be involved, but I just can’t do it. It’s not even the money, just the energy and time and resources. I don’t think I would be doing people any favors to take on the record only to be distracted on tour, not doing what I would be doing. At the end of the day for me, it feels like my extended family or something.

With the Roadhouse Band, how does this extended family factor into the creative process? 

Ryan Davis: Specifically speaking to the Roadhouse Band, I wouldn’t say that any other person factors into how I’m actually writing the songs. But then as soon as that’s all etched in stone, I start thinking about people that could bring it to life and animate it. I would say that’s maybe the complete opposite of the Equipment Pointed Ankh stuff. Jim often refers to that as a Ouija board or something. It’s kind of like everybody’s guiding each other into the light or the darkness and seeing what comes from that. So it varies from project to project, but the family thing is important. This is the biggest tour I’ve ever been on, and I think having friends and family here makes it special. I’ve been on tours before where there was maybe some tension, or people didn’t know each other’s boundaries, and I just wanted people I could trust and love and get the job done. This was the move.

I was just talking to somebody about touring, how rare it is to get through especially international tours or long tours without having a fight or a quiet falling out. You really have to make sure everybody is comfortable with everybody in some capacity.

Ryan Davis: Yeah, I think a lot of that is getting older, too. When I was younger, everybody’s identity was wrapped into this creative thing. Whether it’s ego in a bad way or a good way, it’s ego nonetheless. It’s weird, you’re just making up songs, but it doesn’t fuckin’ matter. It’s completely pointless. To get so wrapped up and emotional about making music, it just seems unnecessary. 

Dan Davis: Like that’s not what it’s about.

Ryan Davis: But when you’re 22 years old and someone’s like, “Oh, you should hit the road and get fucked up every night and just  keep doing this stuff and just keep going hard,” of course something’s going to combust at a certain point. Whereas the older you get, you can say, “Dan hasn’t said anything today. Maybe he’s not feeling well. Maybe he’s homesick. Maybe he’s plotting to kill Christian.” I don’t know! We just let everybody do their thing. It’s a trust fall.

Dan Davis: And the alchemy of this group that’s really cool, too, is that everybody does have their own thing—an individual kind of music thing that we are all here to cheerlead and lift up and support. We’re not wrapped up where it needs to be my show or our life.

Ryan Davis: It helps keep the ego out of it. 

Dan Davis: And the trust fall thing is real. It’s a long time to spend with six people. We all just trust that if somebody needs something, we’ll speak up and we’re all here. 

You just played First Avenue in Minneapolis last night. How does it feel playing these bigger stages and rooms on the MJ Lenderman tour? Do you want that for yourselves?

Ryan Davis: Nothing about what’s happening, be it the success of Dancing on the Edge or getting to do this tour, is painting a new reality for me. It’s like, “Huh, that’s interesting. We get to play to 1600 people. Let’s go do that, then.” Then it’s like, “Oh, people like the record, cool.” But if they didn’t, I would probably just make another record. It’s part of why I wanted to make another record pretty quickly after the last one. I feel like if I didn’t get moving on it, I would blink my eyes and it’d be five years later.

Yeah, think about artists who release a masterpiece and then either go silent or go decades between records.

Ryan Davis: Lauryn Hill! We were just talking about that the other night in the van. How do you make this record and then it’s just silence? 

That seems like such a boulder on a person.

Ryan Davis: Yeah, it can crush you. That’s why we didn’t want to be too delicate about it. If people don’t like this next one as much as the first one, that’s OK. Maybe they’ll like the third one. 

Do you see the Roadhouse Band continuing at pace for a long time?

Ryan Davis: I don’t know. Just taking it as it comes. I had some ideas leftover from the stu from the first record, and that was enough to get going on the second one. Maybe the next stopping point I get to, I’ll feel charged to continue or maybe I’ll want to break. We also were working on a new Ankh record, Christian’s working on a new Little Gold record, [Styrofoam Winos] just had a record. The gears are always turning in some way, whether it’s Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band or not. It’s just kind of whoever feels like driving that day.

Jim Marlowe: I think it’s also really useful for us. It’s good to do something else. If I just did one thing, I don’t think I would have any fucking ideas.

Do you find that creative momentum is self-driven, or do you feel like it helps to have friends always doing shit? 

Jim Marlowe: I think it helps to have friends who are always doing shit. I also think, for me personally, it’s more of a compulsion to make something than a cathartic experience. That’s not part of my personal life. I just like to make stuff.

Ryan Davis: For this band, my process is very, very internal for when I’m writing—almost to the point of lunacy. I’m in my own head and obsessed with all this stuff that has nothing to do with anything, but it’s all for the ultimate pleasure of sharing it with people and making magic happen in some new way down the road. I’m kind of an introvert when I’m at home. I’m self-driven, I just make all this stuff in my studio. The other half of my brain is this—I love hanging out with my friends and drinking beers and seeing new things and making erratic decisions.

Christian DeRoeck: We do like those. Even though it’s not a scene in the sense that we all live in the same place, this crew and other folks too…like when I heard Dancing on the Edge I was like, “Oh fuck.” It made me want to write a better record because Ryan fucking crushed this.

Ryan Davis: I can say the same about the Little Gold record. I’ve known Christian since 2010. We played a show together in New York and just remained buds. He was telling the story last night: We were three State Champion albums in. He went from being like, “Oh, I like this band,” to, “Oh this is my family now.” You hang with the same people long enough and see what their vision is, and then you become part of it.

Christian DeRoeck: It’s family.

Jim Marlowe: It is family. That’s the other part of touring that’s awesome. We were just in Omaha and saw David Nance and all of his friends and family, and Emily Robb is a good friend of ours. There’s people in New England, like the Sunburned crew. There are so many people that you just do it for a long time and that’s the fun part of being on tour—seeing a family member.

Ryan Davis: That’s the true beauty of America in terms of the subcultural element. America’s kind of a bad place to tour. People often treat you like shit and don’t care, and there’s not a lot for bands in the underground—not a lot of red carpets being rolled out compared to somewhere like Europe. But there are all these little pockets of wonderful amazing brilliant people, and the longer you do it, you can kind of connect all the dots on the map. It keeps your battery charged for the thing you’re talking about.

Do you work on songs on the road? 

Ryan Davis: Jake Lenderman told me that he wrote a lot of stuff from Manning Fireworks on tour with Wednesday and stuff. That would literally be impossible for me. To write meaningful music of the same mental vein of what I do with this band, I could never do that. I need to be alone for days on end to do it. But it’s funny you ask, I was about to say it’s not creative at all because I can barely read a book in the van, but I just immediately remembered that last night at 3:30 a.m., we were recording new music at some guy’s house. 

Roadhouse Band music?

Entire band: No. [laughs]

Ryan Davis: A friend of ours that I kind of cut my teeth with, who did this band called Animal City that we toured with a bunch back in the State Champion days, had been working on a record with our friend we stayed with in Minneapolis. Dusty was like, “It would mean a lot to Dakota if you sang on a chorus or something,” so I’m like, “Fuckin’ plug me in man.” Then we ended up being like, “What other songs does he have?” We added all this shit that he didn’t even solicit. There was one song without lyrics and we were like, “There’s no lyrics at all? Can we write some?”

How do you think your unsolicited work will be received? 

Ryan Davis: I think he’s gonna like ’em.

Dan Davis: Positively, for sure.

Christian DeRoeck: You don’t turn these down.

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