Joey Ryan dishes on inspiration, music, tour

Minneapolis-based band, Joey Ryan and the Inks is bringing their retro-pop sound to the Back Alley this Friday at 9:00 p.m. Frontman and Augustana alumnus Joey Ryan answered a few questions from The Mirror about his life and music.

Q: When did you know that you wanted to be a musician?

A: My grandpa was a bit of a musician - he used to play traditional folk and polka tunes and could play a wide variety of instruments.  I was given an old 1960's Sears guitar from him that I started to learn on in 8th or 9th grade.  I think once I dove in and tried to start writing songs I couldn't stop.

Q: Are there any musicians in particular that influenced or inspired you?

A: Tough to narrow it down to a few.  I listen to a lot of different stuff - but when writing a lot of "The Inks" songs - I was listening to a lot of old 60's pop - groups like The Beatles, Beach Boys, The Hollies, The Zombies, The Kinks, The Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison, etc. - where there is a ton of melody and a lot of vocal harmonies.  I think it's from that time period where a lot of these songs pull from or at least start out. But as a band, we all have our separate influences and it's fun to hear them come together and turn into something entirely new and different every time.  A few more recent bands we've been compared to - which I don't think are too far off - are  The Shins, Dr. Dog, and The Jayhawks, to name a few.

Q: How would you describe your style of music?

A: I think this press quote Rich Albertoni from The Ithmus describes it better than I ever could: "Sounds like Surfer Girl having ventured to a place where the buffalo roam."

Q: Where do you find inspirations for songs?

A: Inspiration is normally pretty easy to find.  Sometimes in my songs there is a pretty direct story being represented - a person or a specific time in my life. But, a lot of the time they are largely based on loose metaphors and piecing a few different (sometimes even fictional) story lines into one common theme.

It really happens differently for every song.  There have been a few songs that seem to almost write themselves.  "By the Wayside," for example, was written on the way to a funeral of a close friend's mother and just kind of poured out of me in a matter of minutes.

Q: What has the tour experience been like for you? Do you have any favorite (or least favorite) experiences on the road?

A: I love road trips in general.  I have been that way my whole life.  Our tour experience has been relatively limited to the Midwest so far, but we've met some great people and bands in our regional travels and look forward to expanding our tour schedule to support our next record, which we plan to release sometime this spring or summer.