Conversation recorded & transcribed December 23th, 2024

TW/CONTENT WARNING: This interview contains instances of drug and alcohol use, self-harm and suicide.

MATT CIARLEGLIO: How you doin’?

RYLEY WALKER: Good. I'm in Rome, Italy, right now. 

MATT: Nice. How long have you been out there?

RYLEY: About two months and sort of indefinitely at this point. Everything's up in the air right now, but I'm really enjoying being here. I love the food, it's cheap living, there's good music and art.

MATT: What brought you there?

RYLEY: I have been touring Europe for a long time at this point, I've always been attracted to Rome, and it was kind of just divine intervention. Somebody I knew had an apartment available on the cheap to sublet. So, I was just like, Fuck It. Gave him some money, did a little paperwork, and I'm here! I generally make a living playing music in Europe. My life back in America is just working kind of straight jobs, which is great, but I can live within my means in Europe as a musician. I just did a couple shows in Naples this past weekend, in Avellino. Two weeks ago I was in Sweden, Denmark. My bread and butter is this part of the ocean, so I'm over here a lot anyway. I figured, why not just kind of live here full time?

MATT: That's great. Love that for you. 

RYLEY: You're Italian, right? 

MATT: Hell yeah, brother. 

RYLEY: I'm in the motherland! I'm doing Catholic shit. I'm just like, eating pasta and shit.

[both laugh] 

MATT: Fuck. Incredible. My oldest brother, Nate, got dual citizenship a couple years ago. That's on my list of things to do in 2025.

RYLEY: Yeah, man, come back home. They're waiting for you. 

[both laugh]

MATT:  Anyway. You're coming back to the USA on January 5th, back to Chicago. Back to Empty Bottle. You haven’t lived here for a while, right? You moved to New York?

RYLEY: About 8 years. Yeah, I left Chicago a long time ago, which is crazy to think about all the time that’s passed. I've lived like five different lives since then. All generally good, but I left Chicago in 2017. Yeah, let's just say seven years ago. I went to New York, and I had a great time there. I love New York a whole lot. It's no better or worse than Chicago, just a different place that is bigger and stinkier, and I enjoyed it.

MATT: Chicago is better than New York. Are there any particular spots you're looking forward to or always try to go to when you come back to Chicago? 

RYLEY: Well, that's the fascinating thing about getting older. Every time I go back to Chicago, the entire city has flipped again.

[both laugh]

Like, I remember when renting in Pilsen was $400 you know, like the whole city's changed. There's a whole Saved By The Bell new class of bands that I don't know, who I'm sure are awesome. Which is a great part about your job. You get to see what's going on in music there all the time. But a lot of my friends have left. I still have people I hold dearly there, and family too. I like going to Myopic Books. I like Empty Bottle. I like seeing old friends. I miss Bite Cafe, as I understand it's pizza now. I'm looking forward to the pizza, but I loved the shit out of Bite Cafe. I'm gonna miss that for sure.

MATT: So, the first time that I heard about you in Chicago was 2010 through Dustin Drase from Plus Tapes. He was putting out one of my band's old tapes at the time and he was like “You gotta see this guy Ryley Walker play, he shreds.”

[both laugh] 

And I was like, Okay, I'll see what's going on. It was in a loft in Wicker Park. Weirder Park General Store. 

RYLEY: Goddamn.

MATT: So, I went there, and that band Hollows was headlining. 

RYLEY: Man, what a sign of the times where the band Hollows could headline. Right? [laughs] I mean, it's great. I love it.

MATT: So that was the first time that I had seen you. I think it was a tape release for the Evidence of Things Unseen.

RYLEY: Wild. I remember I saw, like, Nobunny and Mickey there a couple times. I don't know if we even met, but I saw your band Rabble Rabble play quite a few times at like, Mortville and The Mopery.

MATT: Oh, Jesus.

RYLEY: I remember that you guys were fighters. It was awesome. You would just get in fights. I mean, it was just a different time, I guess, but people were fucking with you, you know, like everybody was kind of rabble rousing and being assholes. I got to know you and Ralph a bit, just through that music scene and going to The Mopery and Mortville.  It was a lot of fun. That was a really, really fun time to be 22 years old. 

MATT: Yeah, absolutely. It was definitely a wild fucking time. Full of fights and full of weird DIY spaces that were hazy with cigarette smoke and drugs and all kinds of crazy shit. It was a great and lawless time.

RYLEY: It was amazing! I always say that The Mopery and Mortville and those places were like if you watched the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie where young Sam Rockwell and the Foot Clan, you know, where they live, like, there's a skate ramp and shit. You remember that movie? 

MATT: Sort of. 

RYLEY: Where The Foot Club Clan hangs out. It had that vibe that was like, kind of reckless. It was all young people. Despite all the partying and stuff, I think the music really came first. And I mean that sincerely. Everybody was a serious music fan. There's obviously people that were only there to stir up shit and be an asshole. But I think 99% of the people there were really well meaning, huge music fans who wanted to see some really edgy shit and what was happening. I was really into subversive arts and kind of crazy stuff. So that was my experience with it, at least. 

MATT: No, I agree. And to go back to your point when you come back to Chicago, it's like a completely different place. You know, getting older and being slightly more disconnected from the DIY scene now, that felt like the golden era of DIY to me. Even though I know it's still going on and strong, it's interesting to kind of think about it.

RYLEY: I was traveling the whole country at that time, and what was going on was pretty amazing. It was before Spotify or even Facebook was kind of big. It was all still a bit word of mouth, a bit of internet guerrilla marketing was involved and stuff. I hate to sound like an old man yelling at the clouds, but it seems to me that the art was really, really peaking at that time. Like a bubble that was bursting with heat. Maybe it's just a real estate thing, because I don't think you can afford a giant space like that in Chicago anymore, or they don't really exist anymore, I don't know. Which one did you live at? What's the fucking thing? Ottoman?

MATT: Ottoman Empire. 

RYLEY:  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was another place that was fantastic. And like, some kids who had a little ambition would be like ‘Hey, my friend's band from Indianapolis is gonna play. They're fucked up. I'll get three other local bands on the bill’ and you guys were like ‘OK. That’s our Friday night. Let’s have fun’.

MATT: Yeah, there's still a really good scene out here.

RYLEY: That's an era where Facebook felt underground. It was kind of a weird guerrilla marketing tool for like, freak shit going on in Chicago. Now, I guess that might be Instagram or something. Facebook was kind of weird and fucked up and felt very anti-authoritarian, and I know it's completely different now because it's changed the way we think and look at everything in society. 

MATT: It's terrible. 

RYLEY: It is very strange to think about now and I could talk about that sort of stuff for hours. I had a blast back then. I had so much fun.

MATT: It was really fun.

RYLEY: I was also 20 to 22 years old. I was omnipresent, and that's where I got to know you better, friends with your sort of group, because we all ran in the same sort of conglomerate of fucked up kids who like to go to shows. But we all had our separate clicks, and I got to know your click, your band Rabble Rabble through that scene, Wally World, Ottoman Empire, Mopery, Mortville, all that stuff. Those are my memories of knowing you back then, at least. 

MATT: Yeah, for sure. So, at that show, the first time I saw you at Weirder Park General Store, you were playing instrumentally. When did you start incorporating voice and lyricism into your playing? 

RYLEY: Probably a couple years after that, because I was playing in bands. Sort of like an extra member in Tiger hatchery. I was into noise stuff with Ben Billington and Andrew Young and Mike Forbes. I was kind of a noise guitar player but then I started to get really good at finger picking. I got really into John Fahey when I was like 19. John Fahey and Jim O'Rourke, for that matter, were so big for me. Leo Kottke, that stuff. I became obsessed with finger picking. So I started recording demos. I met Dustin [Drase] at Pitchfork Music Festival. It must have been ‘08 or ‘09, I don't remember, but I gave him a demo because I liked his Plus Tapes label a lot, and he was a nice guy. I was like, ‘Hey man, I sound like John Fahey, will you take a listen?’ He's like, ‘Yeah, of course.’. And he got back to me and put out that tape. And then maybe, like, a year after that, I started putting lyrics into it, because I started to get the confidence to sing a bit more. 

MATT: Dustin and their partner, Morgan, own Cole's Bar in Logan Square. 

RYLEY: I knew that! I do keep in touch with Dustin. Yeah, he's such a good guy. 

MATT: They're both really good people.

RYLEY: Yeah, I'm glad that they took over. It’s like the epicenter of hanging out in Logan Square. I'm glad for them. It's nice because Logan Square is so vastly different from when we were always over there.

MATT: Oh my god, it's so different.

RYLEY: I moved to Chicago in ‘07. 

MATT: Same. 

RYLEY:  I’m sure in the 80’s and 70’s, it was much crazier or whatever. But like, even in ‘07 I remember my sister lived there and she'd be like ‘Don't come here alone at night’.

MATT: Yeah, it's pretty wild. But it's nice to see Cole's and Cafe Mustache are keeping it weird.

RYLEY: Yeah, Mustache was big. I think Mustache and Cole’s will be there forever. Those would be like Rainbo and Bottle. It’s the holdout of where musicians and weirdos like to hang. Where you can have fun and party and see a fucked up band. You know? I'm glad those places still exist within Chicago. 

MATT: Me too. So anyway, you got close to 20 releases in the last decade. You've collaborated with a shit ton of people; David Grubbs, Andrew Scott Young, Kikagaku Moyo, Daniel Bachman, Bill MacKay, Brett Naucke, among others. What do you got coming up, recording wise?

RYLEY: I don't have anything coming up right now. I'm just sort of hanging out. I'm writing new songs for a new record. But at Empty Bottle, I'm excited to play a bunch of those new songs. Which should be cool, yeah? 

MATT: Indeed. So, 2025 will be 10 years of Primrose Green. 

RYLEY: Oh, God.

MATT:  I know that you love talking about this record. So instead, is there something that you would want to say to yourself before you recorded that record almost 10 years ago?

RYLEY: The record's fun and it's good, but it's just like… I think I make better music now as an older person who doesn't wear his influences so hard on his sleeve. But I had fun doing it. You know, we did it at Jamdek Recording. We recorded there with Cooper Crane, all Chicago people, Anton Hatwich, Frank Rosaly, Brian Sulpizio, Ben Boyd, and we had a blast. And the record was a relative success. It was a runaway success for the label. It got my name out there. I'm really grateful for that. Do I think I've made better records since then? Yeah. But what do I say to myself? What I’d say to myself is ‘Just have fun. Easy on the cocaine.’

[both laugh]

MATT: Well, that segues into the next zone pretty nicely. You want to talk about your journey to getting sober?

RYLEY: Well, I've been sober for, it'll be six years in March, which feels great. It's the best decision I've ever made for myself, hands down.

I'm really grateful that I can make music sober, because I thought that was gonna go away, and that turned out to be the biggest crock of shit ever. That's what kept me sick for so long. Honestly, it was just like, my art and my music, which is such a fucking narcissistic, egotistical way of thinking. You're dying and you're hurting people and you're hurting yourself and you want to keep doing this in the name of what, a sick song? You know? It's weird and it's tragic. I have a lot of friends who've died because of that sort of mode of thinking. I got into drugs when I was a teenager, and I love them, and I still don't have anything against drugs and alcohol.

I don't care if people do them or use them around me. I just know that when I take drugs or alcohol, I go into a pretty dark zone, and I isolate myself hard. It triggers a depression in me that goes beyond something that's treatable, to me needing help. It doesn't work for me anymore. 

There were years where it was really fun and I was present with it, and I think I was enjoying it, but that doesn't last forever. That's what they don't tell you when you're getting fucked up. 

The joy you feel on this right now is not going to last much longer. So, I got a couple few good years out of drugs, I think, and they stopped working. Every time I would get drunk, I would get depressed, every time I did cocaine, I had to get more. It just became spiraling addict behavior, where I'm feeding it and doing it everywhere. I'm blowing off jobs. I'm blowing off people in my life. I'm hurting myself immensely. And it all just came to a head when I moved to New York. 

A little after I moved to New York, I finally asked for help because I could not imagine living like that much longer. Without sounding too violent or whatever, the thoughts of suicide were just constant in my head. I'll kill myself or I'll get sober. I'll tell you what, killing myself sounded really good for a while because I couldn't imagine getting sober. But thank God that I did reach out for help, and I got it. I went to rehab in Tennessee, and I stuck with it. And while you're there in rehab, they tell you ‘Most of you are going to go out, a lot of you are going to die.’ And there was some competitive thing in me, and I was like, I'm going to do this. Because the tragic thing is that a lot of people don't get sober. So, the fact that you're two years sober, the fact that I'm six years, the fact that other people are 20 years, or the fact that some people are two days or two hours, that doesn't happen. You know, statistically speaking, we just kind of dropped dead. That's why I firmly believe this shit is a miracle. I have no shame in saying that this shit is a miracle. To be in recovery and to see the other side of this.

I’d certainly be dead if I had kept on. You saw me do a ton of drugs. I think I was really good at masking it because when I was out, I was funny and jovial and happy, but when I got home, man, I was alone. That's the thing about drugs, I can recall so many nights going from the Bottle to Rainbo, then closing out Rainbo. The party's got to keep going. Everybody's like, ‘No, I'm going to bed’ and you end up alone. 

MATT: Yup. 

RYLEY: Every single night I ended up fucking alone with my thoughts, which was a scary place to be. And of course, I was sick from withdrawing from drugs.

MATT: Yeah man, it's very tough. That spiral. Same story with me, you're bar hopping to all these places, and then you close the 4am bar down, everybody's going home. And you're like, what am I going to do? You just end up alone. Most of the time. When that happens so many times, throughout years and years, night after night, the thought of dying versus getting sober becomes more attractive. Having to hit that bottom and figure out either I'm just gonna die or I gotta get my shit together. It's pretty heavy shit. 

RYLEY: I agree it is. 

MATT: It does feel like a miracle, as corny as that shit sounds, to just be sober. 

RYLEY: Yeah, the first thing you get back is your morning. That's what somebody told me. Like, day one, you'll kind of wake up a bit hungover and feel shitty. But day two, it's like you got your morning back. You wake up at like 9am and you're not hungover or feeling like shit. I remember being really, really moved by that. And that was the first time I believed that I might have a shot. And that's the first time I believed that life is better sober. But about the 4am bar… What was that bar on Chicago? Is it still there? What is it, California and Chicago?

MATT: Continental. 

RYLEY: I can't tell you how many times it was 3:58am, I'm sitting on the toilet stall and all my friends have gone hours before, and I'm just like, hitting the tiniest corner of a plastic bag. Like, please get me high. Please get me high. Please get me high. Please, God, get me high. And then that's gone. Then you go downstairs and they say, You gotta go! You go outside. All your friends are gone. You try to make friends, but you're just some weird fucking creep out on the street. So yeah, and you go home alone. And that went on for years for me, that wasn't just one night. That was four nights a week for seven years. I did that, you know? It was this cycle that never ended. I had to lose a lot, man. I had to lose relationships, I had to lose jobs, I had to lose self respect and stuff. It sucked. I had to be beaten down that hard into submission to finally ask for help. 

I don't miss it at all. And I hope anybody who's reading this far into the interview, and you're asking if you might have a problem, like, if you're looking for advice from me, the dude who's snorted the bottom of a bag at Continental; Ask questions and ask people in your life for help. I promise you won't miss it. I promise it gets a lot fucking better.

And that was another thing I thought that was gonna suck for me when I got sober, was my life is gonna suck. My social life is gone. And, dude, I gotta tell you, when I got sober, I thought everybody from Rainbo or whatever bar, I thought everybody I went to the bar with and did drugs with, I thought they're gonna come looking for me. ‘Where's Ryley? Where is he? We can't do drugs and drink without him.’. Nobody got in touch with me. You see who your real friends are. It's amazing. All these creeps who I met, hanging out on fucking back porches in Humboldt Park at six in the morning watching the sun come out. And I was that creep, too, I want to be very clear. All these fucking weirdos and creeps, they just peel off immediately. Those people don't need to be in your fucking life.

You'll see who loves you most. I learned what love is, and I learned what friendship was like after getting sober, what real friendship and real love was. And I'm glad I can receive that and give it now. It's a total gift. 

MATT: That's great. That's something else that a lot of people don't get, is like, I don't inherently have a problem with people drinking or doing drugs. Most people are able to drink and do drugs without it spiraling into a decade plus of abuse and I think there's kind of a stigma around that.

RYLEY: Yeah, I don't care what anybody else does with their body. It's not my business. If somebody asks me for help, I have an ear, but I'm no judge, jury or preacher. I'm sober, I'm not a Narc. There's a marked difference. Drugs did so much for me and, I get it. Drugs and alcohol are a miracle. But when I put them in my body, I do too much, and that miracle fucking runs away really quick, and it turns. I take too much medicine. I'll abuse anything. I'll abuse fucking drugs and alcohol until I drop dead or I pass out. It's an addiction. That's what addiction is like. There's a famous quote; One's too many, One thousand is never enough.’ That applies to my using and drinking. 

MATT: Yeah, 100% feel that. It just becomes a dead end.

RYLEY: I mean, take everything I say with a grain of salt but I promise, if you're an artist who's trying to get sober, I swear to God, your art will get better, and your life will get better. And there's absolutely a way out if you need. Ask for help, and people will point you in directions that'll help you.

MATT: Thanks so much for your time, my friend. 

RYLEY: Absolutely. I hope to see you at the gig. 

MATT: You know I’ll be there. Love you. 

RYLEY: Love you too. Peace out!