The Montbleau Mystique

By T. Virgil Parker

When a band manages to keep a low profile it is usually for a good reason; such as: They suck.
Meanwhile, The Ryan Montbleau Band is quietly popping out here and there, making people see God, packing up and hitting the dusty trail. The reason this band is not at the tip of every tongue is very different.
The Romans said that in wine there is truth. It requires a liquid lunch to gather intelligence about the way people feel about Ryan Montbleau:

    What's in your CD player these days?
    Ah, err I can't remember.
    (Waiter brings more drinks)
    What are you listening to?
    Um, not much these days.
    (Waiter brings more drinks)
    TELL ME!
    OK, OK, The Ryan Montbleau Band. Tell anyone and I'll make you regret it, I want     it all to be MINE ALL MINE!

I can't deny feeling this way myself. There is an intensely personal relationship between this music and the people who listen to it, and people do have a logical reason for wanting this band to stay a secret. Ryan's voice is so compelling that if he sang about running shoes you'd wonder why you were in line with a box under your arm. Fortunately his lyrics transcend petty consumerism. In fact, the unearthly combination of the personal and the archetypal in this body of work is what drives the bonding experience.
Now, go ahead and read on, but destroy the evidence when you're done and don't tell a soul.

TVP: There's an authenticity in you work that runs deep, but it must have taken a good deal of crafting to get it there.
RM: I didn't really plan on doing this. I slowly started. I played guitar when I was little, and I played a bunch in college and finally started singing. I was writing the whole time and it just naturally came together. Since then it has all been a slow build, I just throw it out thee and see what happens. I hope that translates into authenticity. We've been playing so much as a band-two hundred gigs a year- that allows you to get deeper and deeper into the music. You start to hear things that you never heard before. We've still got a long way to go.
TVP: That's an unbelievable onslaught of touring. Can you write in the middle of that, or do you need a break from touring to write?
RM: I need a break but I don't get one. I'm looking out a van window right now. I wish we had more time home, but it is all part of the process. We bring it out for the people as much as we can. That's fine. I'm starting to get a little tired, but we roll with it. I have to write on the road.
TVP: It is also the perfect testing ground for ideas, I' guessing.
RM: Yeah.
TVP: Do you get a feel for the response while you're rolling out the new material?
RM: You can tell, especially over the years, what the people like. Th road actually is a pretty good time to try out new material. I still want to write more story songs and songs about the rest of the world. A lot of my stuff comes from introspection.
TVP: You majored in English?
RM: Yeah.
TVP: There's a narrative strand through all of your music. Do you start with a music idea, or a story idea?
RM: More often than not a musical idea. It usually starts on the guitar. I can already hear a melody over it. I start to sketch out words. Sometimes I'll get a musical idea that already comes with the words. I'll have to start jotting it down. I rarely try to fit something that's already written to music.  I try to write something fresh for music that's already there. I'm just starting to dig into my old journals and look for pieces I like, and try to fit those into my music. I did that more on te record we're recording now.
TVP You spontaneously discovered that you have a voice, but everyone seems convinced you voice was trained extensively. The level of complexity of the vocal treatment is unusual who hasn't spent years behind the baton.
  RM: I sort of have been singing in my head, since I was little. I never let it out and was never sure that I could. It was always kicking around in there. In middle school I sang in front of a friend once and he told me I was no good For years I didn't sing after that. I guess now that he was a little concerned that I could sing better than he could. By the time I was in college I started singing to myself in the car, say.  Of course it wasn't like it is now. I try to work on my voice and figure out what my limitations are. I feel like I need lessons now. I'm happy that I can sing at all.
TVP: The things that you say are your influences don't resemble your music at all.
RM: Like who?
TVP: You listen to a lot of heavy music, metal. Your work is in a category all its own.
RM: There's so many influences in there, especially with the band as a whole. We never set out to emulate anything. We embrace each tune as it comes.
TVP: I notice that the sun is used as an image in a lot of your songs. It is like a leitmotif throughout your album.
RM: I didn't  do that intentionally across all the tracks. It just kept popping in there on its own. I like to evoke as many emotions as I can in the music. To me the sun is such a strong symbol. More than a symbol, it gives you a certain feeling. I think I've used it too much. I didn't realize it until after the fact. Now I won't even do it. I get tempted to say sunshine, and I say something else. On this last album I wanted to say sunshine and I changed it to sunlight. A lot of my favorite music make me think of sunlight. I find myself wanting to emulate that.
TVP: When you look at a piece of poetry and see solar imagery in a systematic way you start digging at thematic elements.  I found myself digging into your lyrics that way. You must have taken you study of literature seriously.
RM: I definitely take the lyrics seriously. I play guitar and I sing, and the third part is the words. They're all equal. I could play and sing amazingly, but if the words were meaningless, the whole thing would be meaningless.
TVP: There's a lot of that out there..
RM: There's too much of that out there. I don't think there's a lot of strong voices out there, saying something. I'm really just trying to look into myself and be as honest as I can. Hopefully that is perceived as true.
I was a chemical engineer, then business school, then I was an English Major for my last two years, reading all the time. I'm still not as well read as I'd like to be. I studied poetry, which changed everything for me. That stuff is indispensable to what I do.
TVP: Usually with this much devotion from fans a band becomes huger than huge. Are you making an effort to prevent things from getting too big?
RM: I'm not intentionally keeping it small. I do want more and more people to listen. We have made an effort to keep it grass roots, one room at a time, independent, all on our own. I'm not against somebody coming in and helping us, but I've yet to see that the way I want it. I'd like help doing it the way we're doing it now. We've done a slow build for years, and that's how we've done it.
TVP: We are in a time when people crave content, it has been largely unanswered need.
RM: Not to many years ago I used to think that all my songs belong on the radio. I See now that a lot of my stuff doesn't fit into that format, a lot of it isn't that easily grab-able.
TVP: I'm not sure that you want it to be.  You have the right kind of momentum. I've heard promoters rave about you. That doesn't happen.
RM: I feel very lucky. We just try to be genuine with the music and with the people. The entire band, I'm just proud of the way we come into a town and treat people with respect.  And it comes back to you.
TVP: You're doing some festivals in our neck of the woods this summer. How's that environment for playing?
RM: Festivals are my favorite, they're just so much fun. Hanging out at them is so much fun too. The can be some of the best experiences ever. This summer is the festival season I've been waiting for, for around five years. We're in Gathering of the Vibes, Moe.Down, Sterling Stage.
Playing for those crowds is the coolest thing in the world, but  makes me think we should be doing crazy improvisational stuff, though our strength is really in songs. That scene is really where my heart is. My head is more in the folk thing and the singer-songwriter thing. The real core of that scene is people who are open to new things.
TVP: The real connoisseurs of music are at the festivals these days.
RM: If you can get those people going, you're doing something right. What's the alternative, the radio?