RyVo & The Revolving Door

The Origin of ‘RyVo’:

 It started within the open-mics here.

 First of all, I had a roughly 10 year period of getting comfortable with playing guitar, having decided to switch to it from the keyboard. Eventually, I got good enough to play this newer instrument in public, and from 2013 on, I had become a regular fixture at both The Hotel Utah's Open-Mic on Mondays & The Sacred Grounds Open-mic on Thursdays. My weapon was now a 12-string Ovation guitar, which I named ‘Everest’. As soon as I had enough songs under my belt, both originals & arrangements of various covers, it was time to start figuring out how to market myself and get actual gigs. The full name of Ryan Voss didn’t seem to really pop in terms of creating a logo. Plus, I knew quite a few other Ryans within this city, alone. How do I distinguish myself?

Around this time, by odd coincidence, both the host at The Utah & a wordsmith friend at Sacred Grounds started calling me ‘RyVo’. It just clicked.

There is something akin to freedom with the persona. Ryan Voss is limited to the physical world with it’s boundaries & rules. RyVo is a bit of a free agent that can talk directly about things that Ryan Voss can’t, if that makes sense. RyVo is BASED on Ryan, but in a way he’s also more than him.

It’s hard to explain, but suffice to say RyVo is the musical identity.

He is me. We are a free-agent with musical influences ranging from the likes of George Harrison, Leon Russell, Stevie Wonder, Gerry Rafferty, Jethro Tull, Manhavishnu Orchestra & The Eagles, just to name a few.

The Revolving Door:

  On April 29th, 2015, I had my first real solo gig with a band backing me. The band consisted of various friends from the Utah- the one exception being the drummer, Ben Peterson, whom I met elsewhere the previous year. (Ben also recorded with me on my 1st album, ‘Well...That Shut ‘Em Up!’.)

The throw-away title of this one-time band was ‘RyVo & The Company Pic-Nic’!  

We had joked about calling it a revolving door because I had a succession of guest musicians jumping in on some songs and leaving on others. The joke became the better name.

RyVo & The Revolving Door has a definite ring to it, not unlike, say, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers.

In our case, it rings true in both name & purpose. I’ve designed this band to be a bit different than others in that we recognize that many musicians in this day & age have commitments with not just one or two other bands or projects, but often times as many as five or even seven. This is a band that will continuously be in flux, having different people shift into it and then out again & then repeating the cycle with still others.

It’s open to anyone & everyone who might fit a particular song or album, hence it actually being a revolving door in many respects.

 The core members aside from myself at this moment in time are:

*James Conrad on lead guitar

*Frank Schubert (aka ‘NO!’) on bass

*Ben Peterson on drums

 In 2017, we released our 1st album- ‘One of Us Has Got to Go’.

And we’re just getting warmed up…

☜ⓇⓎⓥⓞ☞