Pioneers O' Pioneers

Navy Blues - Erika Ryann

Original By Pearly Gate Music

I may add to this one, but for now…

It’s been raining all evening. It makes me think about last summer: how we were all set to move to Portland - how everyone warned me about the weather out there…

Most of all, of the way he looks at me every time we listen to (the original version of) this song. When finally Pearly Gate Music came to Denver, my love (who had known Zach Tillman from previous shows and interviews) asked him to play Navy Blues.

And after the show, Zach invited us to visit and collaborate in Portland.

Another year, perhaps…

cheers,

E.

Train Song - Erika Ryann

Based on the track by Ben Gibbard and Feist from the brilliant compilation album, Dark Was the Night.

In celebration of my upcoming show with Poets Row and Anthony Ruptak, here is a new recording. Not an original, but I finally lit a fire under my ass to get back to it.

cheers,

E.

ps - The photograph we used for the background of the poster is a shot I took with my favorite box camera from the 1920’s. It feels great to see it put to good use!

Moonshiner - Erika Ryann

Original by Bob Dylan

It is a very long way up from the very very bottom. Life would be so much sweeter if I really could just live at the bottom of a jar. As complicated as my life might get, this song always reminds me that I don’t need much to live the way I always dreamed I could; Food, drink and a challenging sneer to ward off the burden of religion. So long as I don’t let the clutter and petty worries of twisted politics bury me I can do anything. My hands are clean and my intentions are good - pardon me for laughing as I march forward. As I GO FORTH.

- Erika

Bullet Holes - Erika Ryann

Written and recorded by Erika Ryann

Cheers.

Demon Host - Erika Ryann

Original by Timber Timbre

As for the original meaning of this song, I can’t speak for Taylor Kirk. I’m sure there is far more behind it than he really cares to explain - and I would never pry for it.

However, I know how I relate to this song, how it makes me feel and, in that way, how it speaks for me.

cheers,

Erika Ryann

Fields - Erika Ryann

Written and recorded by Erika Ryann

Lyrics:

See as I do, out your window,

I’ll be watching, under six feet deep

If you’re walking where I’m resting

Won’t you leave a stone upon my bed

Fields of heartache, I’ll be passing

Rows of lovers I have left behind

But in your arms now, my search is over

Lay me down with coins upon my eyes

cheers,

Erika Ryann

Happy Old Year - Erika Ryann

Written and recorded by Erika Ryann

Just a little something.

I wrote this tonight on my way home from the liquor store.

I had gone on a walk ‘round the neighborhood, past the old structures supposedly haunted from the early 1900’s. They loom above the streets of Cap Hill (Denver), dark and seemingly forbidden as though, as I stand before them, I could never understand the life they have seen. The handles turned and opened doors.

I don’t think they’d understand our lives either. Years come and people go. We find our own ways of dealing with loss, starvation and death and what comes of it is just. us.

I can say it has been one of the best years of my life.

I can say I both look forward to and am intimidated by what is to come.

But, regardless, on we all shall go

cheers

to auld lang syne,

Erika Ryann

Idaho - Erika Ryann (original by Josh Ritter)

With the snow continuing in a slow drift around the windows of my toasty apartment, covering the two giant pine trees in front of my living room windows, I think I’m reminded of my home in the forest. I don’t miss driving half an hour just to get food, but I do miss dark, still nights with snow so thick on the ground, trees and homes it seems to silence everything. Outside and alone, there is a sense of something living in the dark space between the knotted trees. When I let my mind wander there, I find memories peering out back at me from behind the twigs. Old voices, faces, moments that pass behind my eyes like flitting silent films.

And a heavy sense of the unknown. There is what I see and there is what actually exists which sometimes terrifies me more.

But I am still a part of it. I can’t let it know I feel threatened by it, and so I venture into the knotted silence with my head held high.

cheers,

Erika Ryann

Land Locked Blues - Erika Ryann (Original by Bright Eyes/Conor Oberst)

from “I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning”

I’m not sure what came over me last night to record this. It was around 3am when I retired my guitar and I had only started one drink. I may post some alternate versions (ie: I may add more) but, when I sit on my hands and just listen to this as it is, I like the quiet between each string and breath. It stirs a kind of restless ache in my stomach which is all I wanted in order to do Conor’s song any justice.

Maybe it was the snow.

cheers,

Erika Ryann

Far Away Boys - Erika Ryann (Flogging Molly cover)

I finally recorded something with the accordion! It took me a few (hundred) tries to get the basic track (guitar w/ lead vocals) down, but once I had something to build off of, playing the rest of this came pretty easily.

All in a good night’s work.

Month# 3 of teaching myself the accordion.

Here’s to some of my most cherished memories: Estes park, smoking cabins buried in snow, taverns with wooden floors, stomping, sloshy Celtic songs for a Saint Patty’s Day brawl most of it’s participants won’t remember. To my favorite Scots Irish people in the world (you know who you are).

cheers,

Erika