Hot Local Singles: Ryli on Songwriting, Collectivism, Living in the Bay

Cosmic Amanda closed out her Total Accord Fest trilogy on Hot Local Singles with Ryli, who will open for Marika Christine this Thursday, June 4, a show co-presented by BFF.fm at El Rio!

Ryli is a band made up of members who are part of multiple, beloved Bay Area projects: Yea-Ming Chen (Yea-Ming and The Rumours), Rob Good (The Goods), Luke Robbins (Yea-Ming and The Rumours, R.E. Seraphin) and Ian McBrayer (ex-Healing Potpourri). Allllll the Ryli band members, plus Bobby Martinez from Dandy Boy Records, squeezed into the BFF.fm Studio for a conversation about songwriting, collectivism, capturing fleeting emotions, living as an artist in the Bay Area, Ween, and so much more. Listen to the full conversation or read a few highlights below!

Cosmic Amanda: How did Ryli start to come together?

Yea-Ming: I think maybe two or three years ago, Bobby was kind of joking around that I sounded like Mazzy Star or that I could sound like Mazzy Star -- something like that -- so I started writing a song in the vein of Mazzy Star.  I was having trouble finishing it, so he said, "You should go into my friend Rob's studio. He'll play on it and record it." So that's when I met Rob, and during that session, at the end, we kind of wrote a song by accident, and I realized Rob's voice is really nice and I really liked the way he harmonized with me, so...quickly after that, we started meeting up to write songs.

Rob: Yeah, we did spontaneously write a song at the end of that first session that became one of the tracks on the record, a song called "Downtown." Yea-Ming and I just clicked right away and started writing together and before we knew it, there were a bunch of songs and a band needed to be put together to play them.

Yea-Ming: When it was time to find band members, I already knew that I liked playing music with Luke. He had filled in on bass in the The Rumours a couple of times, and I liked his bass playing so much that I was sure that I wanted him to play with us. Rob knew Ian from before, and he was like, "Oh, I have the perfect drummer, I think he's moving back to the Bay Area." [Laughs] We've got to pick him up before other bands pick him up!

Rob: We've all crossed paths in other projects, and I think that's kind of how it goes a lot around here these days. Everybody's in three or four bands, and everybody's writing songs, playing together.

Yeah, it's cool to see this web of people coming together to create the scene as it stands right now. I think it's a really exciting and fertile time.

With everyone in multiple projects, how do you approach the balancing act between all the different things you do? Do some things get workshopped in various places and just end up somewhere? What's that process like?

Yea-Ming: For me, when I'm writing songs, I have the opportunity to bring it to The Rumours or bring it to Ryli, and generally, it's the songs I can't finish that end up with Ryli because it's a lot more of a collaborative project in general. We have so many talented, smart, really good musicians in this band. Everyone has different taste -- great taste -- and it's fun to explore what these guys can contribute to that.

When you say everyone has different influences or taste, that lit up a part of my brain and I want to know: what is the biggest rift or the farthest poles of what people are into?

Ian: Yeah, I like some kind of noisy crazy stuff, like I love this Brooklyn band called Yhwh Nailgun -- they're awesome, check them out. I like some noisier stuff that's not necessarily their vibe.

Rob: I'm a huge fan of early reggae. That doesn't find its way into Ryli's music but I remain a fan nevertheless.

Bobby: I've been in the van with this band on trips to Los Angeles, and depending on who has access to the iPod, I've been turned on to a lot of really cool stuff, but I became a fan of Ween through being with the band.

For awhile, there's been this conversation or narrative about artists leaving the Bay Area. I've heard several people say recently, "There are no artists here anymore," and I think that couldn't be more wrong. I feel like there are so many people that are still here and making it work, so I wanted to hear a little bit about what it is you do to sustain yourself here and how you make it work with being in multiple projects, too. Basically, give me your secrets [laughs]. When do you all sleep?

Luke:That's a good question, and it's a good point, too. It makes me think of something that I think Mike Ramos from Tony Jay said -- I may be misattributing this -- but I think he was saying that a reason behind the really tight-knit community here is because it's really hard to stay here and live here and sustain life here and do music. So I think that kind of fosters a lot of solidarity and support between people who manage it. But to your question, for work I organize tenants using labor organizing concepts and also run a record label called Take a Turn Records. And when do I sleep...I don't know [laughs] whenever I can. I don't know how I make it work.

Ian: I was thinking of what you're saying about how people think Bay Area, no artists, blah blah blah, and I can kind of speak on that because I was living in LA for awhile and then moved back, reconnected with Rob, and met everyone. Obviously, there's tons of artists here, but I think what it is is, like, for whatever reason -- maybe the industry of lack of it here -- it doesn't leave San Francisco. So I would tell people [in LA] about bands from here and people don't, like, know about the bands from the Bay Area a lot of the time. I'm not sure why that is. I feel like that's a different and longer conversation. But there are a ton of artists here, and it's cool. It's dope to be back and see that. It makes me happy. I work at a bakery in Outer Sunset with a bunch of people I knew from Tartine back in the day.

Yea-Ming: For work, I teach music from my home. That's pretty much it [laughs]. It's helpful because I can balance. I have my schedule so that I work in the afternoons only, so the morning is for working on songs or all the administrative stuff of being in a band.

Rob: Yeah, I guess I'll speak to how do you do it...amidst the hustle of trying to make ends meet and build a life in the Bay Area, how does one make art, and I've found that you just have to kind of cram it in in the spare hours that you have. You have to sort of chase that inspiration down with the last remaining bit of energy you have at the end of the day. You have to sit down every day and try to write something in the hours that you have, and it's very much a function of what you put into it. You know, there's probably a lot of days where we might be honestly a little too tired to make it to band practice or make it to the recording session in a perfect world, but we have the time to do it that we have to do it, and it means a lot to us that we do put these songs together and put them out into the world and play them. So you just have to find the time and energy in the scraps of time that you have to do it.

I think everybody's in so many projects not because we have all this time to be in so many projects but because everybody's so busy that if you want to stay artistic and you want to always have some music to work on, you have to work with a lot of different people because you never know when your schedules are going to line up. And when they do line up, you have to actively seize on those little bits of time because they can be more fleeting than we'd like. We'd all love to lay around on the beach and write songs every day, but we just do it in all the nooks and crannies of the time we have and make it work.

Listen to the rest of the interview and come see Ryli open for Marika Christine on June 4, starting at 9pm at El Rio! Details below: