135: Ryan Sawyer (Zeena Parkins, Charles Gayle, Boredoms, At The Drive In)

The Trap Set with Joe Wong

Joe Wong

Joewong, Drums, Comedy, Performing Arts, Arts, Drummers

4.8 • 709 Ratings

🗓️ 16 August 2017

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ryan Sawyer grew up in Texas, where he joined At The Drive In just long enough to play on the band’s first album. Now a long time resident of New York, Ryan has honed a style that exists at the convergence of punk and jazz. His collaborators have included Thurston Moore, TV On The Radio, Boredoms, Zeena Parkins, Charles Gayle, and Gang Gang Dance. He talks to Joe about self doubt, relevancy, his computer programmer parents, and the fortuitous experience of seeing Sheila E. at a young age.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The Trap Set will always be available for free, but we rely on donations from our listeners.
0:05.4	Please visit our website at thetrapset.net and click Donate.
0:09.2	Subscribe to our show on iTunes, and if you enjoy what you hear, give us a review. This is Joe Wong.
0:27.6	Welcome to the Trap Set, where each week we explore the lives of drummers.
0:32.6	I want to play something for you. I want to play something for you. You're hearing drastic classicism revisited by Reese Chatham, featuring my guest Ryan Sawyer on drums.
1:08.8	Raised in Texas, Sawyer found a home in the local DIY scene and played on the
1:13.8	debut album of At the Driven before relocating to New York to focus on improvised music.
1:25.5	Sawyer's aesthetic lies at the intersection of punk rock and jazz.
1:30.3	His collaborators have included Bordoms, Thurston Moore, Zena Parkins, Cass McCombs,
1:36.3	Nate Woolley, Charles Gale, Stars Like Fleas, and Gang Gang Dance.
1:40.3	I spoke to Ryan in Los Angeles before his recent performance with Tunday Adebimpe and Michelle Indegicello.
1:51.0	And now my conversation with Ryan Sawyer. My mother worked in and out of sort of like some sort of tech computer chip companies
2:15.6	and then was a stay-at-home mom and then went to school and uh and then my
2:22.5	father was a musician and had high aspirations of becoming a musician um actually moving out to
2:30.0	L.A. was one of his ideas and becoming a session man but uh my mom got pregnant with me, and he started taking some computer programming courses.
2:39.1	And then after a couple years, he started playing guitar less and less and working more and more.
2:45.2	And then that became his career as a computer programmer, which he still does to this day.
2:49.2	Did he make any albums or anything like that?
2:51.4	No, he was a, uh, acoustic guitar player, um, real sort of like consummate, like, uh, didn't like to jam as
3:02.2	much as he'd like to just like learn a song and construct it and like learn all that, you know,
3:06.2	the, the right chords and the
3:07.7	voicings and everything. But he never, I don't, I mean, never recorded anything. I think he
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Joe Wong, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Joe Wong and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.