Red Ryder Entertainment

I'm just reading the news that Scott Miller, the visionary behind The Loud Family - redryder alums from 1993-2000 - has passed away at age 53.  

Booking tours since 1992, I find myself as inspired today as ever, thanks to the beauty and genius I encounter daily with our artists.  "Livin' the dream" as more than one friend has quipped, and they're dead-on - I'm surrounded by an embarrassment of riches.

Scott Miller was one of these singular diamonds.  His ability to craft power(ful) pop which was smart, sticky, sophisticated, plaintive and elegant was, quite simply, a gift.  Three minute nuggets of gold, everywhere. Scott's band prior to The Loud Family - Game Theory - was one of a few who bridged the gap between the tastes of my mentor and influential - my brother Michael - and my own.  I remember my brother telling me about Game Theory, fell hard for producer Mitch Easter's band Let's Active, connected with Game Theory cohort Michael Quercio's Permanent Green Light, found myself - while managing Squirrel Nut Zippers - at Mitch Easter's studio Fidelitorium.  Heroes - they were heroes to me, and I was responsible for a vital facet of their careers.  This was some exalted work I was doing - how incredibly lucky I have been.

The Loud Family tours were the early days of redryder - routings sketched on legal pads, no email, lots of $2.40 Priority Mail packages, and if there was a need for gravitas, we unplugged the phone line, and sent a fax. Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things [1993], The Tape of Only Linda [1994], Interbabe Concern [1996] - all on Alias Records - Scott's creative powers were at their apex here.  

Thank you, Scott Miller, for bringing your art into this world, and for allowing redryder to guide the touring ship.  Much love, gratitude and respect.  May you rest in peace.

Our Twitter & Facebook URLs are more efficient and instantaneous in disseminating across multiple platforms, and so I ponder what to do with this corner of the redryder site.  

This month, a Top 10 (in no particular order):

redryder showcase at sxsw'13, presented in conjunction with IFC to include Matthew E White, Highasakite, On An On, Royal Canoe, Radiation City, Pageants || IFC Crossroads House || 302e6 ATX || 0314.2013

Andrew Bird's Summer calendar begins to take shape - catch him at New Orleans JazzFest, the inaugural BottleRock in Napa CA, Sasquatch at the beautiful Gorge in George WA, Boston Calling (the next day! air travel!), Newport Folk Festival & Pickathon.

Norway's Highasakite announce their first shows on US soils, and release a gorgeous video for "In and Out of Weeks"

Jukebox the Ghost pack NYC's Webster Hall in the midst of Snowpocalypse Nemo, and their biggest-ever North American headline tour, dotted with sellouts in Boston, San Francisco, Baltimore, Austin & more!

On An On wrap a North American run with Geographer, and pack a couple of NYC shows before heading over the pond.  They'll be back at it in the States come April.

Seven fan-sourced markets in Mexico & Latin America land Andrew Bird shows slated for February & March.  Props to Songkick's "Detour" program for creating the engine under the hood of this innovative approach to tour routing.

2.21.2013 | Rio de Janeiro BR | Teatro Oi Casagrande

2.22.2013 | Florianopolis BR | Teatro Governador Pedro Ivo

2.23.2013 | Sao Paulo BR | Cine Joia

2.26.2013 | Buenos Aires ARG | Niceto Club

2.27.2013 | Lima PERU | Toro Bar

3.01.2013 | Mexico City MEX | Auditorio Blackberry

3.02.2013 | Guadalajara MEX | Laboratorio de Arte Variedades

Erin McKeown's MANIFESTRA is released to glowing reviews, including this 8.5 from PASTE Magazine.

Tulsa > Carter Tanton [S/T] > Luxury Liners.  It has been a joy to watch Carter morph so completely as an artist over the past half-decade.  His latest Luxury Liners project They're Flowers, out in April, is both opulent and layered, revealing itself over many listens.  SPIN premiered a first track here.

On An On announce their first major US festival - Governors Ball in NYC.  Currently on tour with San Francisco's Geographer, On An On's debut Give In drops next Tuesday [1/29], and is available for a "first listen" stream on HypeMachine now.

On the heels of great success in Europe at prestigious festivals sich as Øya, Roskilde and Iceland Airwaves, Oslo's Highasakite annouce their first headline dates on US soils, on the heels of sxsw'13:

3.18.2013 | Los Angeles CA | The Echo

3.20.2013 | New York NY | Mercury Lounge

3.21.2013 | Brooklyn NY | Glasslands

ANDREW BIRD | Break It Yourself and Hands of Glory

[#3] FILTER Magazine's Top 25 Reviewed Records of 2012

[#16] NPR Music, Listener Picks, Favorite Albums of 2012

[#20] American Songwriter's Top 50 Albums of 2012

MATTHEW E WHITE | Big Inner

[#1] PASTE Magazine - The 20 Best New Bands of 2012

[#1] BLURT - 2012 in Review: The Blurt Top 75 Albums

[#15] CoS - Top 50 Albums of 2012

ON AN ON | Give In

MTV Buzzworthy - The Most Criminally Overlooked Artists of 2012 (but that's okay, because their record doesn't come out until late January!)

SHARON VAN ETTEN | Tramp

[#1] The Fly UK - Top 50 Albums of 2012

[#4] AV Club - The Best Music of 2012

[#5] PASTE Magazine - The 50 Best Albums of 2012

[#5] NME.com - The Big Picture: 50 Best Albums of 2012

[#6] American Songwriter's Top 50 Albums of 2012

[#10] eMusic's Best Albums of 2012

[#12] CoS - Top 50 Albums of 2012

[#31] NPR Music, Listener Picks, Favorite Albums of 2012

[#36] Pitchfork Staff List: The Top 50 Albums of 2012

Andrew Bird is featured in GQ Magazine's "10 Essentials" weekly column, he and his wife Katherine Tsina marry music & fashion in the Wall Street Journal, and the "Three White Horses" video from Hands of Glory premieres on VEVO.

Tour markets for a February 2013 tour of Mexico & Latin America are chosen by Andrew Bird's fans via an innovative campaign coordinated by redryder and Songkick.  redryder's Erik Selz recently spoke with Ben Sisario of The New York Times about the project.  Florianopolis, Brazil - who would have thought!?

New additions to the redryder stables On An On premiere "The Hunter" - the second track from their forthcoming LP Give In - on MTV Buzzworthy; Erin McKeown rolls out "The Jailer" from January 2013's MANIFESTRA on NPR's "All Songs Considered".

Sharon van Etten, The Magnetic Fields and Andrew Bird knock up the 93XRT "Best of 2012" listener poll.

Lost Lander and Typhoon are 8-bitted in this tour diary for their just-completed "Basin & Range" tour.

and finally, the dark side of redryder is revealed courtesy of Tommy Siegel, Jukebox the Ghost

Andrew Bird's music is in part defined by the way he marries the traditions of the fiddle and violin-- two very different styles played on the same instrument. If March's Break It Yourself was his violin album, full of careful pop-leaning arrangements, then Hands of Glory is its fiddle complement. It's a set of rustic songs born of his old-timey live sets as well as the loose sessions at his barn in western Illinois, on the banks of the Mississippi River. Bird and his band cover country tunes, strip down their own originals, and explore such weighty Biblical issues as death and resurrection, sin and salvation, creation and Armageddon.

Hands of Glory possesses an almost academic quality, as though Bird and his cohorts were presenting a musical essay about endtimes imagery in country music. The album begins with "Three White Horses", which, thanks to Bird's bowing, sounds like it's coming from an old acetate. That song is followed by a cover of the Handsome Family's "When That Helicopter Comes", an oddball gospel that deploys Jeremy Ylvisaker's bouncy bass and Bird's otherworldly bow as a soundtrack to separatist paranoia: "There'll be power in the blood, when the helicopters come." Bird switches theologies for "Orpheo", an austere reimagining of the spry "Orpheo Looks Back" from Break It Yourself, which thrives on the empty spaces between the strums and plucks, such that his gentle falsetto at the end has a beseeching effect. Only "Railroad Bill" sounds out of place: With its aw-shucks lyrics and animated hollers, it's a new train song that chugs along like a parody of old train songs.

Nevertheless, Bird thrives in this setting, which permits greater emphasis on his stoic vocals and curious playing. He intuits Townes Van Zandt's "If I Needed You" as a kind of secular hymn, directed to an ambivalent God rather than to a departed lover. His vocal cadence and mournful Appalachian airs evoke not so much a spiritual crisis but its resolution-- a place of relative piece after so much soul searching. Those same qualities bolster the inventive storytelling on "Spirograph", originally by the Minneapolis band Alpha Consumer. It's neither old nor country, but Bird treats it with the same care he might bring to a dusty ballad.

Thematically and perhaps musically, closer "Beyond the Valley of the Three White Horses" is intended to evoke some sort of afterlife. It's a lovely set of loops-- long bows, staccato plucks, airy strumming, and ominous ambience-- that draw equally from fiddle styles as well as violin styles, making it the most intriguing use of Bird's instrument on the EP. It's also the longest song on the album, unraveling gradually while never quite settling on one specific mood or theme. Instead, Bird constantly alters the shape of the composition, introduces new ideas, and lets them morph and mutate with each repetition. This technique is not necessarily new for Bird, but "Beyond" is a moment of subdued rapture, and, like the most bracing passages on Hands of Glory, it's one that arises from the way in which Bird's instrument inventively fuses these two disparate styles.

This all happened in just a few months. We are very excited to be a part. 

Give In is deep and rich and complex and endlessly revealing, and will be released 129.13 on Rollcall | ILG. My bet? 200+ dates in '13. Let's see if we can pull that off ...

I spoke about the project with Ben Sisario from The New York Times, and the resulting article can be seen in both print and online versions today.  Now that the concept has begun to percolate around the internet, we're able to watch pledges accumulate in real time here.