Leonard Cohen vs. Air vs. Pavement vs. Nick Cave vs. Avant Garde vs. Americana vs. Shoegaze

Ryan Wilson of Spider and I

Biography - Ryan Wilson

I started writing my own songs after playing guitar in an Orange County punk band in the early 90's. After growing incredibly tired of the one dimensional punk band thing I started writing my own material that was shunned by my current band mates. As I was writing my own material, I started to assemble my own band, which we dubbed ourselves, Pneuman.

Pneuman was a cross between Pavement and The Stooges. We played clubs all over Orange County and a couple of universities as well. Pneuman only released about a couple hundred copies of it’s only LP, Space Radio Static, which got a little bit of college radio play at UCI in 2000 & 2001 and good press in Orange County zines (Skratch, Mean Street etc.). Due to some of the members being in other bands or were forced to move out of state, I had to look for new members and subsequently, a new sound. In 2001, me and my good friend, Pneuman bassist, Mark Menconi opted to alter our sound and construct a line up for the new sound.

Elsanore was that bastard childs name and went on to have much more success than Pneuman did. Elsanore was a garage rock band that was more of a cross between Clinic and Joy Division. We opened for bands such as Eyes Adrift and Mike Watt on a couple of occasions. We played all over Los Angeles and Orange County and sold about 500 CD’s through that time. That lasted well into 2004 which is when my second child was born and thus thrusting me into fatherhood and marriage. Since organizing the band and rehearsals and shows became to much to bear. I broke the band up to start working on my song-writing craft and the types of songs I really wanted to write which are more of a folk, indie, even alternative country music.

As my influences of Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Elliott Smith, M Ward and electronic music with “shoegazing” production reached an all-time high, I started to craft my own sound (hopefully) and Spider and I was the moniker with which record that sound under. Spider and I can be heard on MySpace, I’ve released 2 LP’s, and am currently almost done with my 3rd, but haven’t played much due to the fact that I currently don’t have a band. I’ve written and recorded well over a hundred songs and Spider and I seems to be picking up steam as I continue to write, produce and engineer all my own material out of my garage. I like implementing great melodies over experimental soundscapes. Melodies and song structure have always been a strength that I like to employ along with an avant garde perspective to sound and story telling. I can only hope you enjoy listening to my music as much as I enjoyed making it for you.