All Kindsa Music Mag

By Brendan Casey

“Telluride Speed”, Ryley Walker, Deafman Glance (2018)

Believe it or not (for those who only know me in Vermont), there was once a time where I was very in-tune to the indie rock world, and was really on top of great up-and-coming bands and new releases. I was really into it.

From about 2013 to about April of 2018, bands like Real Estate, Fleet Foxes, Twin Peaks Japanese Breakfast, Beach House, Night Moves, Strand of Oaks, Arcade Fire, Mac Demarco (before he blew up, and yes I’m that gonna be that shitty indie guy who brags about that one – I’m just lacking the mustache, Vans, taste for expensive coffee, nicotine addiction, and round-frame sunglasses), Bahamas, Hippo Campus, Current Joys, The War on Drugs, Kurt Vile, Courtney Barnett, Bright Eyes, The National, Wilco, The Shins, Alvvays and even Snail Mail towards the end (saw them twice believe it or not – one time on the same bill as Duster at Brooklyn Steel – me and my buddy Sam roasted them the whole show for being stereotypically sad-girl indie) played as the majority of the soundtrack to my tumultuous Metropolitan-New-York-City-Area-Tri-State-Suburban teenage years.

A lot of my connection to this music was fueled by being at home in the NYC area where there’s a great music scene where artists thrive, and was also fueled by being the radius of the transmission of WFUV, out of Fordham University in the Bronx (my dream school – still wish I went there but their head football coach left for Mississippi State about a month before signing day – never got that scholarship). WFUV was really the only hip station in the area that played good new music (other than maybe WPKN depending on the DJ) with a heavy dose of indie rock along with a lot of old goodies like Dylan, 60s R&B, and 80s and 90s alternative. WFUV to me was like a beacon of hope in an area where the “rock” stations shoved AC/DC (I’ll admit, one of my favorite bands when I was 10), Van Halen, and Rush down your throat 22 of the 24 hours a day and what was “new” to them was Nirvana and maybe the Pixies, stuff that came out 8-10 years before I was born…I’ll rant about shitty FM classic rock some other time. 

Anyways, WFUV is still the greatest radio station ever to me, and while I would drive my 1999 Volvo V70 to school in New Canaan from Fairfield through an hour of commuter traffic on I-95 and the Merritt every morning, when my Morrissey and Velvet Underground cassettes got old, WFUV was always there for me. I have a clear memory of hearing “Over Everything” off of Kurt Vile and Courtney Barnett’s Lotta Sea Lice for the first time in that car, stuck in traffic in Norwalk on the Route 7 Connector while already 30 minutes late for class. Not many other radio stations will give you that experience.

Around this same time – Spring of 2018 – I was kind of falling out of love with indie rock. I heard more and more new music shift to an electronic, computerized sound (I know it sounds so boomer of me, but it’s true). The presence of the guitar was fading out of the picture for a lot of indie rock music at this time. It began to lose its foothold in the genre, as software and synths began filling up tracks, and bedroom pop characteristics began infiltrating music that once valued the power of a couple electric or acoustic guitars. Indie rock started going soft- and the soft stuff became even softer – and as a kid who grew up on the Black Keys, blues and folk music, loves Johnny Thunders, MC5, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Dinosaur Jr., and had just seen Ty Segall at The Capitol Theater in Port Chester – this transition of ditching the guitar in indie rock did not sit well with me at all – and honestly, if you ask me, it ain’t rock without a guitar. Impossible.

Timely enough, to fill this lack-of-guitar-void (and to also distract my mind from stressful thoughts about my impending high school graduation and quick move to college – I graduated June 1 and moved to school for summer workouts for football at UConn on June 10), I became love-struck with the Grateful Dead (and a girl who helped me get into them – who I’m somehow still with roughly four years later – I don’t know how she does it).

After years of listening to three to four minute jangly pop/rock tunes and Spotify playlists where songs with different vibes competed with each other, I was ready for more. A band that played three to four minute jangly tunes, but then would launch into a 25-30 minute jam that could follow a different path or emotion on any given recording? Yes please. Sure, I had listened to Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty on my iPod while mowing the lawn during the summer as a kid, but the live stuff was a whole different animal.

I was in deep. In fact, from when I started listening in February of 2018 to roughly the end of May 2018, I had listened to every single Official Release on Spotify. Fucked up, I know. Onto Relisten for more…Deadheads know. The band’s ability to capture so many different emotions with a collective sound and the freedom that a live-show embodied really resonated with me in a time where I needed a sense of freedom the most. And remember when I said I was falling out of love with indie due to the lack of guitar presence? Yeah – that wasn’t a problem listening to Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir explore the musical possibilities of a 35-minute Dark Star. Jerry introduced me to the possibilities of what can be done on a guitar.

So I left for college in June of 2018, got sad, lost my WFUV, was thrown into a Division 1 college football lifestyle where everything was uniform and had to be done one way or it was wrong – and I coped by listening to the extremely counter-cultural Grateful Dead and sitting in my dorm room figuring out scales on my Strat. Puzzle-pieces began to get put together.

Fast forward a year and nine months to March 2020. I had quit football in August of 2019 for my own sanity (thank god) and was in the long process of finding myself as a non-athlete (I think even today I’m still figuring it out). I was listening to more music and playing guitar more than ever before, jamming with kids at school and practicing techniques. My roommate Doug and I (he had just called his football career quits that winter) were having a great time figuring our shit out post-football, meanwhile some virus over in Asia is doing its thing.

Soon enough, we’re being sent home from school, and the world is coming to an end. A pandemic for the ages is breaking out, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Doug and I and some of our football buddies went to Texas Roadhouse for a see-you-after-spring-break-meal (little did we know), and I joked about being in New York City for The Allman Brothers 50th Anniversary show at MSG that past weekend to freak everyone out – but we all laughed it off. Like I said, little did we know. The next morning we all got sent home.

So here I am, home for an extended period of time with literally nothing to do. No obligations (other than school). No expectations. The world is in turmoil but I’m safe in my home. It was also the first time ever that my siblings and my Mom and I were all home at the same time for an extended period of time with nowhere to go. No work, no sports, no guitar lessons or practices. No hanging out with friends. Weird times, man.

So here’s where it all ties together. 

Since October 2019 I had a blues radio show on WHUS at school so I was listening to a ton of that, and I was listening to a lot of American folk music (two genres that have always been in the mix one way or another throughout my life), and a lot of late 50s – early 60s hard-bop and modal jazz – but like I said earlier, Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers – Americana rock music that can jam – that was and still is and will always be my shit.

But now I’m home.

I have my WFUV back – and that will always be my shit too.

So just like that, my ears are reconnected with new sounds again. Modern music, stuff written and recorded in the 21st century. I’m back in-tune and digging what’s good with some of the NYC indie rock scene. And it’s all like, “Woah, Real Estate just dropped a new album” or “Oh shit, how’d I miss this Phoebe Bridgers girl?”, and then I’m like “Sonic Youth Live in Moscow? Let’s go!” and “Might as well listen to everything Pharoah Sanders ever touched” all while listening to a Grateful Dead show a day because there’s literally nothing else to do because the world is ending, remember?

And while all this is going on, no one is driving cars. No one’s going to work. Factories are closed. Public transportation is shut down. No flights from the airports. And what’s this?

They just saw the bottom of the canals in Venice for the first time in how long? The sky is bluer than I’d ever seen before. The air smells so clean. Winter is finally thawing, and the grass is turning a rich green, and little flowers are popping up out of the ground. Deer are walking freely in our I-95-adjacent neighborhood, along with everyone and their kids, getting in their steps and soaking up the sunshine after spending the day inside working, or doing school from home. 

It was all so beautiful.

So with this, and while craving newer music after breaking the seal to WFUV again, my buddy Sam sends me this guy Ryley Walker, who I had read about before online a few times, and whose name I came across while reading Relix, but never really listened to. Maybe a song here and there, but that’s it. 

Walker, a Chicago-area native who just last year moved to Vermont, has always had a knack for – at his music’s core – blending folk aspects with 70s rock, while occasionally nearing the edge of experimental with his influences. Regardless of the elements, he can blend and make some damn good music. Think of it as if Nick Drake, Jim O’Rourke, John Fahey, Bert Jansch and Robert Fripp all took acid together and had a musical orgie. That’s Ryley Walker. Freak folk, if you will.

So while driving through the woods of Northern Westchester, New York on a sunny day in March of 2020, the stars aligned for my ears and mind to be completely open and ready for Ryley Walker’s song, “Telluride Speed”.

How’s that for a fucking backstory to me hearing a song? Jesus.

Something about the intricate fingerpicking and the flute aligned perfectly with the re-awakening beauty of early Spring.

It reminded me of (as my friend Sam would call it) a “suburban pastoral” feeling. It has such a relaxed, woodsy feel – but still has a progressive motive to it. It ain’t totally acoustic farm music, and it ain’t over-processed, electric city music. It’s somewhere in between.

The six and a half minute song kicks off with multiple guitars doubling some saudade riffs, while drums low in the mix set the scene and complement the music. It’s not dissonant, but not overbearingly happy either. The song then drops into the theme, throwing my mind’s eye right into the scenic lower Hudson Valley – somewhere between “upstate upstate”, and the city.

While the fingerpicking guitars hold down the music in its earthy, sylvan roots, the flute dances atop the music, reminding me of a bird fluttering through a forest, while yellow, early morning light fights through the thick green canopy above. It isn’t an overjoyed, naïve sound, but one that’s mature. A sound that is glad to know what it knows now – and is appreciative of it – but is still learning from experience.

Walker’s lyrics and soft yet very controlled vocal delivery seconds this emotion, as he sings “I threw a rock, Up to your window, Poor use of the night”. As he reflects, he maturely and almost humorously realizes that he probably should have found something better to do. We live and learn.

He sings: “Hanging feet, From the rafters, Late on rent, or is it me you’re after?”. We get a sense of urban imagery, paying rent, but the last line opens a can of worms regarding relationships. Is it a girl he’s singing about? Or is he bugging and paranoid? Perhaps we’ll find out. Maybe the music will answer for us.

Up to this point, the verse progression, the fingerpicking, and the flute create a beautiful, serene soundscape that paints imagery of nature, birds, and leaves blowing – yet it isn’t winter nor does it feel like summer. To me, when I first heard it, it felt like early spring. Instrumentally, this part of the song bleeds pure Americana.

Once the verse is over – down we go into this dark, angular, almost prog-rock fuzz-guitar riff for a few measures, thrown down the rabbit hole, potentially answering the question regarding the relationship between our characters. It’s a stark contrast, nearly baroque from the beautiful flow of the verse, but still never felt completely unexpected. There was always a sense something could happen – before it drops back into the verse, beautiful as ever. We hear the sounds of a bright and chiming electric guitar, playing beautiful lines as it breathes, never overstepping the serenity of the flute.

Throughout the next verse, Walker sings “Sun chatter, at a mumble, covered by the cause. Sweet demon, an empty stomach, tab clears the bar. Hopped up on, Telluride speed, I think I owe you from last time”.

We get imagery of the sun, a bar, and some meth. The Holy Trinity? Maybe to some out in Telluride – not to me, but we get the sense our character is dealing with not only the drugs, but the person they’re getting them from. There’s a relationship going on here – and it might not be a good one, as we’re thrown right back into that dissonant, angry sounding guitar riff.

As the major-sounding verse comes back and floats us along, Walker sings: “Bulk jotter, Loose binding, Tried to read you in the wrong way, Venus burning, Not trying, Glossed over at the wrong place, Dressed down, for revival, I lost it all in the right way”.

Damn. That’s heavy.

Clearly, this song, while beautiful in the verses, is lyrically dark, and the fact that the dark riff always comes back after each verse can be symbolic. Drug related or not, it can be easy to slip and fall. Even when you’re pushing to be strong, that dark side can still poke its head out at you.

We’re then quickly thrown into a prog-like jam with an irregular time signature and a nasty descending riff  – before we get hit in the face with a head-bumping break and fat psychedelic electric guitar riffs reminiscent of 70’s rock, and as the flute returns, and they play together until the fade.

When I first heard this song in March 2020, it hit me just right. While “Telluride Speed” has verses contain a sweeping beauty that aligned with the revival of life after winter and the beauty of nature in a time that we all appreciated it more than ever, it’s instrumental passages remind you that there was something big, dark, and unknown always behind it all – that being a pandemic.

“Telluride Speed” is the perfect combination of blending folk and Americana with a heavy, jam-like feeling. The contrast between the verses and in-between, were, reminiscent of the beauty of the verses in a good 1973-1974 “Eyes of the World”, and the minor outro jam. That addition of dissonance would make going back to major just that much sweeter. Playing with multiple feelings and emotions lends freedom to the music.

Listening to “Telluride Speed” takes me back to that time. Because of my situation, because of what I was hearing around me everyday, because of what I was listening to, I heard this song and it struck a chord. It was a beautiful blend.

Here’s to good music being made in the 21st Century.

Here’s to “Telluride Speed” by Ryley Walker.