Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band are playing at Salt Lake City’s Urban Lounge on Monday (11/3/2025), which feels somehow fitting. It’s the last venue I ever saw the Silver Jews play before the singer of that band passed. While Davis is creating his own sound and style, these ears hear shades of Berman and the Jews mixed into what he’s doing.
Give “New Threats From The Soul” a spin and you’re likely to pick up on that yourself. You’re even likely to fall in love with his verbose way of getting his point across. We spoke when he was at home in Indiana, right before he and his band set sail for the western states, and he admitted this band was born out of having a long, undying love for music listening.
Q: Do you have folklore surrounding how your band came together?
Davis: I did a band called State Champion for 15 years, and it was my main thing when I started writing these songs. I was young, in my early 20s and 30s, and I broke up with that band naturally. In 2019, we made our last record, and COVID hit. It took time away from touring — which wasn’t happening — and time away from songwriting. I focused on visual art and other kinds of music instead. When I started wanting to write songs again, I started the Roadhouse Band. I wanted to be more free in terms of the arrangements and be less structured. State Champion is drums, bass, violin and guitar for the course of the band. This one, we don’t know until we get in the studio what kind of song it’s going to be. I like that.
Q: And lengthy songs seem to be part of that. They’re over whenever they’re over.
Davis: Yeah, the songs I’ve written have always been long. I’ve learned to embrace that sometimes they need to be more than what I initially planned for. I’m not making them long just because; I get to the point I don’t think I can edit them down anymore, and let them live as is.
Q: What made you want to get back into music after State Champion?
Davis: Even when I wasn’t writing songs, I kept journals. I scribbled down pages and pages of ideas. I don’t know if I had trauma from the way the old band ended, or if I was worn out for thinking about music in a structured way, but I wanted time off. I spent lockdown buying drum machines and synthesizers and reading instruction manuals on how to program and use MIDI. I got in a new zone of creativity that was not about lyrics, but building soundscapes.
I demoed the first Roadhouse band record with all the junk I’d acquired, four tracks and stuff. I hadn’t played it for a band yet, because there was none. It was just me on my own, but it felt like a record, so I got friends together to go help me make a solo record. We didn’t have a name for it and there was no intention of ever touring it, but it went really well. From that point on, I had my crew of collaborators that I’m still using to this day.
Q: Do you get compared to other bands? Do others influence your music?
Davis: The obvious one: everybody says Silver Jews. David Berman was a buddy of mine. We corresponded over the years, and he was definitely an influence on me early on. The way I approach this music, though, is that we’re record nerds and music people. We’re listeners at the end of the day. We love everything from Detroit techno to free jazz to classic rock and (obviously) country rock. I’m a huge country fan. There’s ways of recording and arranging and collaborating that we use as points of guidance, but we’re just listeners. It’s hard to say what comes out in the music. That’s maybe for a listener to decide.
Q: Your record isn’t necessarily country, but those elements are there. It feels like a loose stream of consciousness journey from one song to the next.
Davis: I think with any sort of traditional music — country included — there’s a playbook, a system of boundaries to both adhere to and push against. Country music is a playing field that you can bring your ideas to and say I am going to sing about being lonesome, or about heartbreak, or life on the road. But you can break out of that in ways and bend that into your own shape. It’s a malleable form of music that I love listening to and being part of.
Q: So you’re a listener who became a reflection of what you were listening to. You liked it so much, you wanted to see what you could create on your own.
Davis: Yeah, that’s a fair assessment. I don’t think I have any sort of natural talent. I was such an obsessive listener that maybe I was under the delusion at a certain point that I could do it myself, and then figured out how to make that work.
Q: What do you like about your new record, 2025’s New Threats From The Soul?
Davis: I like it a lot: I made it. I’m involved in a lot of bands, and I release a lot of music, but it doesn’t come naturally. When I release a Roadhouse record, I have to fight with it, and I don’t sign off on it easily. When the final product is ready to be heard and sold, I like it a lot. It’s collaborating with friends and making each other laugh and scratching each other’s brains in a challenging but productive way. Those are all reasons I continue to do it after all these years.
Q: They say you never really finish anything. You just reach a stopping point.
Davis: I’ve tried to get better about that. I do a band called Equipment Point Ankh. Basically, we improvise things, get in the studio, build on them, and chop it up. It’s taught me to make quicker decisions and trust my instinct. Sometimes you can let the mistake show and they work. The song benefits. So think as an editor. Think seriously about the music you’re making without obsessing over it to the point you never finish or feel happy with it.
Q: And this record definitely feels like a continuation from the first.
Davis: That was intentional. They’re a lot like sibling records, and definitely live in the same visual and musical worlds. Maybe I’ll continue to operate in that fashion. Maybe I’ll break out of that mode and do something different. I haven’t quite figured that out, but I am enjoying the way they work together as similar puzzle pieces.
Q: What’s your take on the current music industry?
Davis: That’s a big nut to crack. On a micro level, things are good. We can talk all day about Spotify and the trends in the greater industry that don’t apply to me being a DIY record dude. On the day to day of being in a band and touring right now, though, I find a lot of connection with people. People are still coming out and buying merch and meeting other people. It’s operating in a way that still facilitates joy and forward motion. I’m sure I could neg myself into believing it’s not worth doing, but it’s still in a good enough place. I believe in it.
Q: What’s your version of success?
Davis: I’m changing the world. My face isn’t on billboards. I’m not winning Grammys or making tens of 1000s of dollars. Still, I’m 40 years old and able to make a record that people seem to celebrate and show off to their friends. People come out, and we go home with some cash to put toward our bills, and everybody gets along. I’m still making records that I find exciting, ones that are making their way to bigger audiences. That’s being successful to me.
Q: You have to be very observant when listening to your music. You have to pay attention to these tales or you easily get lost. It’s not a casual listen, which speaks to your being a music listener and lover.
Davis: As much as I love pop music on the radio, I think there’s no better time than now to make music that does require people to stop and think critically about it. Make music you can spend time with and it becomes more valuable to you the more you live with it. It’s not a bad thing in the fast paced Spotify playlist world we live in. I’m proud to contribute to the opposite of that.
Want to make your own observations? Tickets are still on sale.
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