Ryan Lindsey's BRONCHO: "My Plan Is Always Kind of No Plan"

How did you end up touring with QOTSA in Europe that year? 

I was very excited to go to Vienna. My grandparents had been there when I was younger, and they always told me about it. We got in contact with Queens of the Stone Age because Josh (Homme) was a fan of our second record, and we also had a mutual friend in JD McPherson. We played a show in LA at one point where he showed up, and we hit it off from there. We were talking about the possibility of doing a record together and it just didn't work out timing-wise for either side. But then they had that European tour, and he was like, "how about we just do this?" And I said, "yeah, let's do that!" And I remember in Europe all the venues were huge. Vienna was a big activity centre from what I remember. So, it was pretty fun for us to play in an environment like that because you can hear the way your music sounds in a huge room.

Do you prefer performing in big venues?

I like all types of rooms. I love small rooms. I love any type of room where people are glad to be there. I just love the physical part of playing, getting to play, having soundcheck, the whole thing is fun to me.

How did this pandemic actually affect your band or your music? Did it somehow?

Yeah. Well, the truth is that we were pretty much planning on taking a little bit of a break anyway, right when it happened. We had toured, just non-stop, for years. And we were at the end of that last record that came out, which was like 2018 (Bad Behavior). And thus, by the time we got to the end of it, we didn't have anything booked anyway. So, we were already set up to just relax for a second and rest, and stay in one place, you know, for an extended time.

Does it hurt not being around that much and that often?

I'm a nomad by nature. I love to be on the move. I'm always moving, I guess. But my girlfriend and I just had a kid, so I also just wanna be home. The pandemic has made everything more complex. Especially with a kid now. Because we can't just take our newborn baby to hang out with everyone, or for anyone to just come and hang out with us. This situation of the pandemic has been crazy though because of all kinds of stuff going on, you have no control over anything. Which I'm okay with, I don't need control over things. So, at some point, it feels that you just got to let go and let the current take us. So, I was already prepared to do all those things. And it feels like touring anyway. When you're on tour, you kind of just have to let it go. You don't have so much control over things and this trained me for being able to deal with certain aspects of the pandemic. But it's been crazy; there are people dying, none of that is good. It's a weird mix of all these crazy things but being able to be home is the silver lining for me.

Are there some gigs planned for the future?

When the pandemic came, everything started getting pushed to the next summer and then last summer was kind of crazy so then they pushed it to this coming summer. So, we decided let's not play until the only date we had fixed, for a summer festival. Now we're starting to book other gigs, and we'll be getting back out on the road this summer. There's light at the end of the tunnel.

Your new single, "It's Confidential", came out last year. It is quite different from the sounds heard in 2018's Bad Behavior. How did you come up with this song?

It was kind of a standalone for a friend of mine who does this podcast at the Philbrook Museum of Art here in Tulsa, so that's the reason the song was written. And we did a song a year before called "Friends", that was a similar project. There's a local school here in Oklahoma, run by a friend of ours. She paired up local bands and songwriters with kids in the program. It's a program that helps kids through the arts and other extracurricular activities. They have some type of introduction to the arts in different ways. And so, they wanted to do this record during the pandemic in order to get these people together. So it was in this context that this new song came out. We wrote that song with a kid, Gaius, who co-wrote that with us. He had an idea, and then we took it and ran with it. So, a couple of projects like that were fun to sprinkle through our little timeline here.

What does your creative process look like?

I have an idea, and I ruminate on it. I let it just kind of sit there until it hits me, and I have some inspiration, and I know what to do, and I go do it. This method is the same for anything else that I've done with BRONCHO—I just need it to happen naturally. And I know at that stage what parts of the song are going to be used, and in which way. The work on the new record is kinda the same. I got all these ideas, and I have versions of them I've recorded, and then I've gone to the studio, little by little, and we've all worked on it together. It's slowly like getting any little piece together, just kind of like any other record we've done.

And are there any rules in the process, or in music in general? I refer to an article written by you some time ago, where you applied the Eames Diagram to music, individuating the artist, the management, and the audience as sections connected in the diagram. You claim: "I have to believe that there are no rules in art. There is a way of doing things that have worked for other people in the past. That does not mean that they will work for me—or that they should work for me." Is that really so?

Yeah, I don't like to have any rules, I like to be open to anything that could happen, because everybody that's there in the room could have some type of different inspiration than whatever I'm bringing in, they might move in, in a way that makes even more sense to me. So even though there are moments where I hold on to something, and I'm like, "that's it, I'll hold on to it", there are times where it's like, "I'm not sure, maybe this isn't it? Let's see what else there is." I think being open just helps the process for me. It makes it less stressful—I guess it puts it in the easiest terms. It's easier, if I'm not so worried about it going in a certain way, you know, and I learned that during the pandemic. I thought I'm going to finish the record, and then we'll go on tour, but in the end, we haven't finished the record yet. And that needs to be okay because I don't need to go crazy, doing something that maybe isn't ready yet. You know? It's all about being okay. I guess my plan is always kind of no plan, but also, let the plan unfold as we go. And then, by the time you get there, it's like, oh, that was easy. But then it didn't feel easy because you didn't know how it was going to go. So, it's kind of like, taking everything into account and nothing at the same time. 

What first got you into music?

My family is very musical, there's always been an emphasis on the arts in some form or fashion. I've always been into it, and I started singing at a young age. And at some point, when I was in elementary school, my mom enrolled me and my older brothers in a boys' choir. I got a lot of classical training there. I hated it at the time, I didn't want to be there, but my brothers were there. So, I was ultimately okay with it, and I'm glad that I did that. Because those things that I learned, which became my second nature, have helped me tremendously along the way. Knowing how to use my voice—you know, there are times where I forget, or I do other things, but ultimately, it comes back to breathing properly. And that's such a huge part dedicated to singing, that I learned as a young kid. And without that training my voice would probably be in a different place—it'd be maybe harder, or probably I wouldn't be able to have the control that I'm able to have, without that training. I remember going to see a boys' choir and listening, for example, to the Vienna Boys' Choir.

And so how did you start a band?

It all started with just kind of following my brothers, and at some point, my brother started a band. And then my oldest brother went to college, and my other brother said, "if you buy a bass, you can be the bass player." So, I saved up my paper route money and went and bought a bass, and that's kind of where it really started, you know, being in a band, and it just never stopped.

What kind of music did you grow up with?

I still listen to the Vienna Boys' Choir from time to time. But I used to listen to all kinds of things like my parents listen to, pop-folk stuff like Simon and Garfunkel, a lot of Beach Boys, James Taylor, different types of music. As I became a teenager, the grunge era started happening. Nirvana and Weezer were huge. I was getting a lot of that pumped into this, in this little college town in the country that I grew up in. I got the music from an alternative local rock station. So through that, I started hearing this whole other side of things. And it just continues, I mean, I'm into all kinds of things. I like a good song, so it can be of any genre. If it gets me emotional, then it doesn't matter.

What music instead inspires you?

I love Iggy Pop, for example, his song "I'm Bored", but I love the different eras of his music too. Because he has so many different ways that he can go and that's really inspiring to me. He's still the same character but at the same time, it's like these different versions of him and they kind of span all these different generations. I believe this is also the reason why I like Leonard Cohen: he could play that soft 60s acoustic thing, but he could also be this demonic voice with 80s electronic music. Bob Dylan was another one who was able to go through these different characters. Those guys are masters for sure.

I would compare your way of performing or writing lyrics with Iggy Pop. I see that you two have in common the fact that you don't take yourself too seriously, and your lyrics, while at first glance they might look silly or superficial, in the end, they hide a deeper truth...

Maybe it's a little bit of where I am personally, too, because I can get riled up about injustice or something that I might perceive as an injustice against me or someone else. But ultimately, it'll get to a point where maybe I don't know exactly what I'm talking about. Or I haven't experienced enough to go the full range. So rather than being too serious about it, I'll end up laughing at myself, you know, because I don't know everything. I don't take myself too seriously or at least any time I do, I ultimately realise that. I'm the youngest son therefore I've always felt the need to get somebody to laugh, so as not to feel threatened. I feel like things don't make as much sense to me the more seriously I take it. I usually tend to enjoy things more if I'm just kind of having fun.

Also, the name you chose for your band, it sounds quite funny… 

This kind of falls in line with everything that we've been saying. It seemed like a good joke at the time, but now I'm not sure why it was a joke or if it was ever funny. But it was funny enough at one point to call ourselves Broncho, which is just mispronouncing Bronco. It also came from the first song I wrote for BRONCHO; we didn't have a title yet. The name existed even before we called ourselves that way. So, it feels in some ways like we didn't have any control over it, and somebody just planted that in our heads. I don't know. I remember at one point we wanted to call ourselves Pronto because it just made a lot of sense. We were like, "All right, we are Pronto!" But then we figured out that a guy in Wilco has a band called Pronto. So, in the end, we opted for BRONCHO. It seems funny enough to me to make sense.

How would you describe the music you do?

I'm really bad at defining things, but in some way, I'm thinking about BRONCHO somewhat as self-help—and Rock and roll. I think there's an aspect of it that can convey heartbreak in a way. But it can also let someone know that that's okay and that there's also a fun side to it, and in the end that they're there, too. Those things are somewhere down in the very middle of what we're getting across subconsciously. And so, I guess that's why I feel like we're in somewhat of a self-help rock band.

In what sense "self-help?"

In particular, there was an advertisement that I used to watch as a kid, where you would see a deal for like a 12 part cassette (of self-help, ED.) for three easy payments of thirty-three ninety-nine! And at first, I thought it was kind of funny. But then, at some point, I realised the beauty in it, and I think it can be a good thing, you know?

What are BRONCHO's plans for the near future? 

We have tour dates booked this summer in June and July. But we haven't announced anything yet. I think there's still some stuff that's getting worked out, but we are planning. For now, it's all U.S. dates, but hopefully, if something comes up, we can get over to Europe. I love Europe, and I have always wanted to go to Europe and live in the country. I always knew that the music would take me there somehow, or I just kind of banked on it because I never had money to go to Europe. I remember having a girlfriend who was studying in Europe, and I just couldn't get over there, but I relaxed because I thought, "I'm going to get over there somehow, and I'm not going to have to pay for it," you know? And ultimately—maybe we had to pay for it somehow—but it happened. That was a really magical time, the first time that we went. We've been over there probably five or six times, and every time it happens, it's like a miracle to me.

Is there a difference when playing in one place or another?

We tend to have a different kind of audience—there are some people who are really young, and then there are some who are much older. I feel like I see that everywhere I go. There can be a night where everybody is one way, and then you go back to that same city and they're completely different—it just depends on the night or the mood of the city. Sometimes you play on a Saturday night, sometimes you play on a Tuesday, and those little things seem to have a bigger difference on what's going on in the room, more than anything. 

What was the most unexpected country where you played?

We got contacted by someone in China who said, "Hey, come play in China, where we'll put this tour together for you." We were already going to be on tour in Europe, so we worked it out. We did the European tour and then we went to the UK and did like a week, and then we flew from London to Beijing. Already going through Europe is wild, but then you go to China, and it was a foggy time for me to go from place to place—but China was amazing. We played, I think, five shows in China. I would never have gone to China if it weren't for music, you know? And so those moments that get me to these places and give me the ability to experience life on a completely different side of the planet is something that I value greatly.