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. Fuck off that we don't know what it's like to sacrifice. The only trophies we've been given are inherited tragedies and pain. Fuck 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 bullshit 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 in his country

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 sweetness...

Just a

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 fuck, 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, he was still just a man.

This column was written on May 30th, 2020.

When I joined Premium Heart, I hadn’t written a song in a really long time. It had been quite a few years since I really took a lyrical queue in my head and pushed a whole song through it. But while we were writing and demoing the record, I felt like the themes that were already there, most of which were written by Nick, were so clear and inspiring that I knew I had something to say, and few of my contributions ended up meaning as much to me as what I wrote for The Credit Reel. 

At its face, the song is about climate change. But that was only the lens through which I tried to express a larger feeling that I’ve been having for years now. Moreso than just the fear of a world burned up and barren, this song’s about the overlying existential dread a lot of us have been feeling since Trump came down that escalator, announced his candidacy, and declared Mexicans were rapists and criminals. It’s about the uncertainty I’ve been feeling; just when are we going to bottom out and things are gonna stop getting… worse? And clearly, we’ve still found new lows to fall to. Luckily, Nick was there to write some of the more optimistic parts, about being in this hellhole together, but also keeping it on my level by adding some really scary biblical stuff. Part of a complete breakfast and all that.

I used to consider myself an optimist. That people would rally together and do the right thing when it really mattered. Clearly that was an idealism born of privilege and a naive view of just how broken our system and culture is. America’s power structure and "majorities" have done such a wonderful job at showing us just how little they care about anyone but themselves. “Yeah, that’s rough, but not for me and mine.” Education, health care, human rights, a cleaner and safer environment, diversity, and the list goes on, have all become part of a “liberal agenda” and have become polarizing to the point that in our system of electoral delegates, they don’t even warrant a vote in the Senate. We’ve been protesting that Black Lives Matter for almost 7 years, and Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Laquan McDonald, Jamar Clark, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Stephon Clark, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Amaud Arbery, and so many others are dead. And for what progress? Colin Kaepernick took a knee and was lambasted by the majority for it. What progress has this, primarily peaceful protest movement made in almost a decade? How long are people expected to just deal with a broken system when it not only doesn’t improve, but worsens? It doesn’t matter how much you point out the hypocrisy or try to make an example of someone clearly guilty of not doing what they’re supposed to be doing. Just last month, the sergeant from the Parkland shooting, who waited outside while children were murdered had been fired, sure, but the police department waited two days longer than the mandatory maximum waiting period for repercussions provided by their contract, so he’s back on the job. What a coincidence that that happened to line up so well for him, who’s now been reinstated! With similar contracts around the country, even when “bad apples” are made examples of, the repercussions are rarely permanent, even more rarely causing any systemic reform, and only serve to further rot the corrupt system we have. It isn’t until protests garner national attention does anything happen, and even then, it’s often marred by specific protections that prevent justice from being served.

I know this isn't a new problem. I know that so many people deal with this every single day, in ways that are much deeper than I’ll ever experience. But this time feels even worse. Maybe it’s just the pandemic getting to me. Maybe it’s that we’re approaching the 4th anniversary of Trump’s god-forsaken escalator stunt. I don’t know. But the juxtaposition of three major events has really broken the final shreds of whatever optimism I had

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.

The original column was published on January 15th, 2020 and can be found below.

Read all the pamphlets and watch the tapes. You turn 25 and now you’re all out of escapes.

Hey, the rock writer told me to tell you: “though you’re great and you’re brave

You still lack that which makes you a star.”

Read all the pamphlets and watch the tapes

I can’t stop thinking about creative growth and how much it ties in to our intellectual curiosity. As I get older, I’m more and more disheartened to see people just… stop learning things. Obviously, you can read a whole slew of political commentary into that concept; people refusing to grow past the status quo they’re most comfortable with or learn to accept people that previously made them feel “weird” about how different their lives and experiences are. But we’re in the Trump era and Biden’s the national frontrunner in the Democratic primary, so there’s a billion think-pieces on that. So let’s talk about music. Let’s talk about punk music.

Since I started listening to music, I’ve listened to punk. Pop-punk, ’77, and some early hardcore are my specialties. But around the end of high school, I started to kind of fall out of thecontemporary punk scene. At least in the scene I was in, heavier punk and metal merged a little too much for my tastes and got too… macho, the same thing that turns me off from a lot of 80s hardcore. Pop punk got too overproduced and started to drift away from the “my friends in their garage writing songs about girls” sound that I fell in love with of the late 90s/early 00s. So I fell out of it and started listening to a lot more indie and alternative.

But recently, I’ve started to fall pretty hard into post-punk. I’m new to it, so forgive me if I’m wrong about any of the details, but it seems like post-punk (and no-wave) seem to embody the DIY, relatable punk ethos, but without the cliché, trappings, and narrow genre focus of punk. I’ve been all about bands like Siouxsie And The Banshees, Sonic Youth, and Joy Division for the last few weeks after my guitarist gave me a path to delve in to. And man, it rules. It’s got that “garage band with friends” sense of freedom, but with a much bolder and unexpected musical direction. It really opened my eyes up to the idea that I don’t have to “leave behind punk” when I get bored of it, but I can just make different punk music. The punk ethos isn’t just about fast and loud guitars, but it’s just that, an ethos. The punks grew up and I had missed the whole thing for decades. This is the exact kind of music I want, no, need to be playing right now. Being an artist in 2020 has to be about inclusivity instead of gatekeeping. It’s all about making art for the right reasons, your reasons, not about following the structures set by the generations before us. Punk was punk because nobody had done it before, not because somebody did the exact same thing 40 years ago. And that brings me to LCD Soundsystem and their second album, Sound Of Silver.

LCD Soundsystem had been recommended to me a few times over the years, but I never really gave them a shot until this week. The aforementioned guitarist showed me a few songs and I wasn’t really wowed at first. But then I listened to this record and I was immediately won over. It really captured the exact feelings I’ve been having about making music today. So many songwriters just try to capture the sound they listen to instead of trying to do something new, something risky. I try to approach any creative project

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.

The original column was published on December 15th, 2019 and can be found below.

Workin’ in the fields til’ you get your back burned

Workin’ ‘neath the wheel, til’ you get your facts learned

Baby, I got my facts, learned real good right now

Poor man want to be rich, Rich man want to be king

And a king ain’t satisfied til’ he rules everything

Lately, I’ve found a lot of new appreciation for late 90s/early 2000s political critiques. Too often, and I’m guiltier of this than most, we become enamored by deconstructions of post-9/11 American domestic life and foreign policy and forget that there was plenty of division, strife, and protest in our “contemporary” society before the Bush Doctrine ramped it all up to 11. 9/11 was such a glaring and brutal bullet point on the American timeline that it’s easy to forget that a lot of the issues we still argue about were actually worth arguing about before we were shocked into the “modern American” mindset. A few of the things I’ve been thinking of are:

Christopher Priest’s fantastic 1998-2003 run on Black Panther, which serves as a stark critique of Clinton-era foreign policy.

A realization that the Star Wars prequels are secretly good and have a lot of very prescient things to say about America’s soon to start wars in the middle east.

And Bruce Springsteen’s late-90s output, specifically the live record documenting the final leg of his 1999 reunion tour with the East Street Band, Live In New York City.

When I started this column, I did a lot of soul searching on if I should include albums that weren’t just standard studio albums. Compilations don’t quite capture the moment in time and emotional thru-line that I try to focus on. Live albums have a similar problem, in that a set list might be pulling from songs that aren’t relevant to now or songs that are still popular and people want to hear. But in a live setting, older songs can be re-framed, in a new narrative, and given a new context to help us appreciate what they were trying to say all along.

Bruce is someone who I’ve never really listened to and I think it’s a great disservice to what he stands for that I took so long to really listen to his lyrics and realize what he was trying to say. I always knew he was a “blue collar” songwriter but I somehow missed just how much he spoke about so many of the economic issues we constantly talk about in modern political discourse.

From the Monongahela valley to the Mesabi iron range

To the coal mines of Appalachia, the story’s always the same

Seven hundred tons of metal a day, now sir you tell me the world’s changed

Once I made you rich enough, rich enough to forget my name

I mean come on, this is basically the script to an ad about the divide in the Democratic Party about trade deals in the Trump era. But with a bit more… realism and bite.

When I die I don’t want no part of heaven, I would not do heaven’s work well

I pray the devil comes and takes me, to stand in the fiery furnaces of hell

And that kind of aggressive populism, raging against the rich who look down on all of us is present throughout the entire show. Even when they’re dressed up in folksy Americana.

But that’s not why I’m writing about this specific record. I was originally going to write about Born In The U.S.A.

Born down in a dead man’s town

The first kick I took was when I hit the ground

You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much

Till you spend half your life just covering up

Born In The U.S.A. was the first Springsteen

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.

The original column was published on November 15th, 2019 and can be found below.

Should we talk about the weather?

(Hi, hi, hi)

Should we talk about the government?

(Hi, hi, hi, hi)

Currently, I’m in the final stages of a new music project that I’m so excited to release and it’s a great new direction for my writing. I’ve dabbled in political songwriting in the past, but I usually fell short and started feeling that when you make a political message the main focus, the song too often becomes more about sending the intended message over writing a great song. Sacrificing catchiness for importance. Placing relevancy over memorability. But this time, helped by the fact that someone else is writing most of the music, we’ve really crafted a record that I think is about some really important things, but never at the expense of making a great record that people will (hopefully!) want to listen to. And nobody balanced those two things half as well as R.E.M. did, especially on their 1988 album, Green.

Sometimes I feel like I can’t even sing

(Say, say, the light) I’m very scared for this world, I’m very scared for me

(Say, say, the light) Eviscerate your memory, here’s a scene

You’re in the back seat laying down

(Say, say, the light) The windows wrap around to the sound of the travel and the engine

Green was released on November 7th, 1988, the day before the 1988 American Presidential election. R.E.M. was very outspoken at the time against then-candidate George H. W. Bush and supported the Democrat, Michael Dukakis. Using their first major label release to raise their platform, it was clear that this album was going to be even more political than they’d been in the past.

Green is an interesting album in R.E.M.’s catalog. They’d been primarily playing in minor keys with more traditional instrumentation, but with Green they somehow managed to be more mainstream, while also becoming more experimental. Their songwriting became more major key and accessible, but their instrumentation was becoming much more diverse. This album features a lot of mandolin and pedal steel guitar, played by Peter Buck, and it layers the record in an eerie, but deeply, beautiful way. The higher string instruments interweave perfectly under Michael Stipe’s voice, which was reaching new highs with each new album, of which Green is no exception.

This is my world and I am the World Leader Pretend

This is my life and this is my time

I have been given the freedom to do as I see fit

It’s high time I raised the walls that I’ve constructed

It’s amazing what devices you can sympathize (Empathize)

This is my mistake, let me make it good

I raised the wall and I will be the one to knock it down

You fill in the mortar, you fill in the harmony

You fill in the mortar, I raised the wall

And I’m the only one, I will be the one to knock it down

Just about every single song on Green deals with some sort of bigger picture. They all certainly resonate with me, but the diversity in the messages, alongside the diversity in the musical directions the album pushes into, help make Green a truly iconic album. I never really hear anyone talk about R.E.M.’s influence on music and pop culture, but they’re a real benchmark of the transition from the punk-focused Reagan-era of political music, back into a more mainstream level of politics in popular music. The most famous song on the record, “Orange Crush” doesn’t shy away from the explicitly political message at the heart of