Photograph and Interview by Ian P.E.
Once in awhile Cleveland actually picks up a creative talent instead of losing one. With Terry Ryan’s recent move from the San Francisco Bay Area to Cleveland’s Westside, another eccentric oddity has been added to the sound and visual landscape here. The move makes sense to me – Mr. California is definitely one of the least politically correct acts out there…and most of the incredibly sensitive Bay Area scenesters never got it (he has some pretty funny stories regarding various crowds’ misunderstandings, especially with another band he fronts – The Vagina Boys).
And it’s not like he’s spreading hate or anything even close – it’s quite the opposite, Mr. California’s all about fun, problem is…our society is constantly moving toward safety, whether it’s softening ideas and comments or outlawing anything which may harm ourselves. Most Clevelanders have pretty thick skin though, so his lyrics shouldn’t offend too many people.
His one man band, Mr. California (and the State Police – his sampling/beat station) has released a ton of music over the last 9 years. From 7-inchers to LP’s and many compilations and splits in between – he packs his releases with as many songs as possible (most of them run around a minute and contain a few quick verse – chorus changes over a noise-laced, jagged guitar chord progression). His live show is out of control as well – a spastic (and funny…like ha ha) dance of rock’n’roll confusion, not to be missed and hard to be ignored…especially with that cute little butterfly guitar of his.
I sat down with Terry over a couple beers at Now That’s Class, which is probably one of the main reasons he’s moved to Cleveland…Paul really has a great thing going on over there these days, booking a good mixture of quality shows and all around stupid fun-fests (hot tubs, dunk tanks, skate ramps, dodge ball and other ridiculous nonsense). We’ve also included some of Terry’s artwork here as well. It’s a pretty good reflection of his style – a jam-packed collage of rock’n’roll badness!
You can join the legions of Mr. California fans (over 62,000) at: myspace.com/mrcalifornia
What inspired the move to Cleveland?
I bought my round trip ticket to come out here and play the [Romantic Getaway] fest…to do about 10 days out here, visit Alessandro [of the Grabbies and Flyin’ Trichecos] and just kind of hang out. Then my roommate told me that he was moving out of our apartment in Alameda, so I decided to just cancel my return ticket, go to Cleveland and stay – because Alessandro and Paula both have been like – “just come and stay”…and I had a lot of fun the last time I came out here – on a tour that went kind of sour. Things just weren’t going well because there was a lot of snow and stuff…it was January of 2008. But then I ended up playing the bar [Now That’s Class] for like 10 days, or 7 days or something…and I had a fucking blast when I was out here, and I always remembered that. And then – I get phone calls from Alessandro saying; “this band is playing or that band played, you should fucking be here”…and I was like – “yeah I should, I really should”.
That’s one thing about Cleveland versus San Francisco…you get a better dose of new music, there’s always some small band from the East Coast or Midwest playing, a lot of the tours never make it out to California…
One of the other really big attractions…with this bar specifically, or the show you have coming up…is that there’s this thing that’s not happening in Northern California – where everybody wants to have a metal show, or a punk show, or another kind of genre show. I don’t know how to get it across to those people who just want to hear black metal all night, but – you know, like the last fest [Champagne of Fests]. Saturday’s show ended with a black metal band, but there were no black metal bands all day long – that was great! So that variety to me is a huge attraction, I can’t get that in San Francisco.
Well I think that’s where the world is now – it’s post genre…
Absolutely, even with bands that I might consider shitty, that I don’t necessarily go for what they’re doing, at this point in the game, there’s this part where I go – “I don’t like this, I don’t like what they’re doing, they’ve pulled all these certain elements”…and you’re going – “this hybrid is fucking weird”. But they’re at least trying something new, I can hear that they’re at least trying to toss a curveball, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but for me, at least they’re trying to do something a little different.
How long has the Mr. California thing been going?
I’ve been at it for awhile. Mr. California has been around for a little over 9 years now…
Yeah, a one man attack with a butterfly guitar, right?
Well, the butterfly guitar is a recent acquisition. I’ve only had that for a little over a year now.
And comedy is a large part of your act, at least as far as the lyrical content…
I don’t know how on purpose that is. I think it has a lot to do with my viewpoint, and where my influences stem from. When I was growing up in the greater Los Angeles area, on Sunday night from 6 to 10 on KNET, which no longer exists, was the live Dr. Demento Show…he was a DJ who had a syndicated show, which would run for like an hour all across the United States, but at KNET he had 4 fucking hours of just playing novelty songs. I listened to it religiously every Sunday. And then, on top of that, on KROQ from like 8 to midnight at that time was the Rodney Bingenheimer Show, in which like the first 2 hours was the psychedelic stuff, which is like – anyone can kind of find that…well maybe, maybe not at that time period – now you can find anything on the internet. But the last 2 hours was all hardcore…so it was a combination of Sunday night being the best night of the week for me, and listening to that stuff over and over again helped me put my stuff together. Humor, yeah…humor has a lot to do with it. I’m a huge Frank Zappa fan. But I don’t know if he would like where I’m coming from…he didn’t really like punk rock all that much.
I was checking out your myspace page and saw you had Sockeye on your friend list…
I love Sockeye…actually the 7-inch with Joe, from Shoot It Up, playing guitar on it – I think it’s called Mr. California and Joe O’Phetamine wish you would die in a virus 7-inch, which Charles is putting out from My Mind’s Eye. The artwork for that is done by Food, that’s Dave from Sockeye, so he did the front and back covers for that…which was really awesome because then I was able to do some trades with him and getting a bunch of old Sockeye material on CD-R.
Right on…how about the live show, how’s that translate from the recordings?
I think that there’s a big difference between the audio versions of my stuff and the live show. They’re two different things…I really can’t play guitar very well, so jumping around a lot and acting like a fool is helpful for the live show, and then doing 38 takes at home on a 4-track is the other version of getting it to sound right for me.
How about other stuff, you do a little art on the side as well, right?
Yeah, I’ve always doodled in notebooks and stuff, but not really anything to where I got canvas or paper and really sat down. Then I found that I had some time when I was on unemployment to mess with that kind of stuff…the creative process is kind of weird for me, sometimes I’m just – music, music, music and that’s all I do, and then sometimes I just want to draw and paint. I have two really nice books full of acrylic stuff, and that’s actually where it started. I would just lay down the acrylic and let it dry – I’d fill the whole thing up, and then take a paint pen and just doodle in my spare time. After I had like a book and a half of that done, then I would go through and look at some of the stuff I did, and start doing those 12 by 12’s…I could draw from what I liked and be like – “oh, I like how that looks, I’ll incorporate that into this and start building from there”.
