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Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band
Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band
Dancing on the Edge, the remarkable 2023 album by Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band, came to life as a Covid-era solo project when Davis was at a low point.
Songs like “Free from the Guillotine,” and “Junk Drawer Heart” and the epic “Flashes of Orange,” recall a more darkly humorous Richard Buckner with hurting, heartfelt and often painfully funny tales about would-be cockfighters, jukeboxes that only play “Sultans of Swing” and “the pitter patter of my past mistakes.”
Davis, who lives in Jeffersonville, Indiana, which runs into Louisville, where he spent a good chunk of his life, is back going it alone for his show Tuesday, April 8 at the Cactus Club. The Roadhouse Band will rejoin him for a slate of European shows starting later this month.
At a crossroads
After his longtime band State Champion put out their last album, Send Flowers, in 2018, Davis says he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do with his life.
“Making Dancing on the Edge that kind of came out of, sort of, not to be dramatic, but at least personally, sort of rough patch, a dark place mentally, you know,” he says. “I mean, of course, this sort of all lines up historically with COVID happening, and so there’s that. But then there’s my old band ending and family stuff, and there’s this, you know, I basically had done nothing but toured and been in bands and thought about songs since I became an adult? I mean, since I was in high school, really, but especially since college, and shortly thereafter, I was just like, doing State Champion, doing this band and Tropical Trash that I did for a long time.
“It was just always kind of, it was just a given that that’s what I did, and that was my identity. I think when it’s when those bands stopped being as sustainable, and that lifestyle sort of came to a grinding halt shortly before, but lockdown and all that. I just, I don't know. I had a moment of reflection and trying to figure out, like, what else, what else is there?”
Still unsure of how to move on, Davis, who also runs the Sophomore Lounge record label, spent time making art and learning new instruments. He didn’t think too much about writing songs for some time. But then the songs started coming.
“I wrote all the songs just alone in the house, just kind of demoed everything to be more or less a solo record. I was just sort of focused on songwriting and not really thinking about the band or the live presentation. But when it came time to make the record, I kind of chose some friends to go up there with me to Rhode Island, where I wanted to make it and help flesh out the sounds. And then at that point, like we had not played the songs as a band ever until we were tracking them.”
A Louisville Legend
Among those who appeared on Dancing on the Edge was Freakwater’s legendary Catherine Irwin, who Davis calls a personal hero.
“She’s such a big deal to me, and my sort of, like, genesis of being a songwriter, inspirationally and personally, as a friend,” he says. “I was just with her actually a couple nights ago, hanging out. She’s, she’s the best.”
Follow-up coming
Davis hopes to release another album with the Roadhouse Band later this year. Several of the songs were started amid the songwriting breakthrough for Dancing on the Edge.
“After we did a little bit of touring, I just kind of went home and I was like, you know, I think now’s the time to strike and just and just kind of finish writing another little batch of songs,” Davis says. “Because I really do treat every record, and especially every songwriting record, like it could be the last, and I’d never hope that it is. But, you know, brains are weird. Souls are weird. One day you wake up and you just don’t know how to do a thing anymore.”
Ryan Davis performs Tuesday, April 8 at 7 p.m. at the Cactus Club. Old Pup and Tobacco City open.
