Jason Adasiewicz, vibraphone, gigs with Exploding Star Orchestra and Jagjaguwar alums Manishevitz and anyone else in town who needs vibes. Frank Rosaly, drums, is approaching the same longevity and padded resume, managing long stints with Josh Abrams, David Boykins, and Doug McCombs. Fred Lonberg-Holm, cellist, is as of now a member of Chicago’s old guard of jazz musicians, having played numerously alongside luminaries Peter Brotzmann and Joe McPhee, to name just two lines on a very long list. The band is a mixture of new and old Chicago talent, blending both jaded veterans of the post-rock and jazz mini-circuits together with a few eager, open-eared youths. The title sounds pastoral and quaint, but the titular green has dark hallucinogenic qualities, as does much of the LP. It begins near where All Kinds of You leaves off but quickly pushes far afield. The board was barely reset from the All Kinds of You sessions before Ryley was corralling his by-then-rejiggered band back into Minbal studios in Chicago to solidify a totally new direction in his creative vision. His 2013 recordings, that resulted in The West Wind EP and All Kinds of You LP, fully express these Anglophilic tendencies to the point of nearly exhausting their possibilities. He was finding a new path refracting the British traditional spectrum, from Bert Jansch to Nick Drake, and defying all the limitations of the genre. Though seen as part of the fraternity of young guitar masters like William Tyler and Daniel Bachman, his voice defied that stereotype. Practice became more diligent he began lacquering his fingertips at cheap salons, permanently giving his playing aggression and tone difficult to achieve with naked fingertips or finger picks. He quit his day job to recuperate but instead of returning to the grind he duked it out on the rock club circuit. It was a 2012 bike accident that set Ryley on his current path. Both efforts were impressive displays of fingerpicking prowess though not fully elaborated documents. 'Evidence of Things Unseen' and 'Of Deathly Premonitions' (with Daniel Bachman) appeared briefly as limited cassette releases. By 2011, at age 21, he finally began issuing recordings from his already impressive catalog of compositions. He perfunctorily maintained day jobs with frequently amusing results, famously getting fired from Jimmy John’s for practicing in the walk-in freezer. Ryley transitioned slowly into the finger-style artist we know today in 20, still opening for synth nerds in basement venues, but growing by leaps and bounds in virtuosity. A few years of wasted finger-bleeding basement shows variably under the names Heatdeath and Wyoming (with requisite cassette-only releases) firmly established his name locally, if not always positively. Things start to pick up for young Walker when he moves to Chicago in 2007 and briefly attempts a collegiate lifestyle as he storms the always fecund local noise scene with his Jasmine-brand electric guitar just a cheap knock-off from which he could coax unearthly sound hallucinations. Raised on the banks of the ol’ Rock River in northern Illinois, Ryley’s early life doesn’t give us much more than Midwestern mundanity to speak of. His personal life might be tumultuous and his residential status in question, but his bedrock is disciplined daily rehearsal and an inexhaustible wellspring of songcraft.
Swap out rural juke joints for rotted DIY spaces and the archetype is solidly intact. That’s as much a testament to his roving, rambling ways, or the fact that his Guild D-35 guitar has endured a few stints in the pawnshop. Ryley Walker is the reincarnation of the true American guitar player.
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