Preview: Ryan Miller and Pinkish
Pinkish is an experimental jazz ensemble from Portland, Oregon consisting of: Andrew Jones (Upright Bass), Ryan A. Miller (Electric Guitar, Electric 12-string Guitar), Kyle Shipp (Electric Guitar) and Grant Pierce (Drumset). Ryan Miller describes it this way: “We formed out of mutual admiration of the improvised medium in 2013. Our sound is the culmination of every member creating an environment where we can feel comfortable singing to one another.”
Table & Chairs is very excited to be collaborating with Pinkish and the Portland-based Creative Music Guild for our October 24th show at the Columbia City Theatre. T&C artist Neil Welch met with guitarist/composer Ryan Miller of Pinkish to discuss the fully creative world that his music occupies.
The Interview:
Many of our T&C artists have recorded in more natural environments like the woods, or maybe just a craftsman-bungalow dugout basement. I know you’ve recorded in both of these Northwest treasures. I’d love to hear how you approach to composing and ultimately producing your music.
My approach to composing and producing my music is simply to grow as much as possible everyday. This includes growing my relationship with the guitar and making every attempt to stoke my imagination. Improvisation has always been a vital element of composition for myself and every group or project that I’ve been involved with. New and exciting environments absolutely make for an exciting performance experience which absolutely influences whatever compositions I’m working on. I recorded all of the acoustic guitar tracks for “Hex Fortunes” entirely in my bathroom because I loved the sound of the room!
Your band Pinkish will be playing at the October 24th Apparitions show. How did all of you meet and come to be a band?
I’m incredibly excited for Pinkish to perform this month in Seattle. I’ve been playing with the incredible Andrew Jones for the past year playing mostly duo and our own compositions. Andrew is wonderful, we played as a duo for the Creative Music Guild’s Outset series in January and I sincerely hope that it was one of many collaborations with Mr. Jones in the near future and in my lifetime! I met the amazing Kyle Shipp and Grant Pierce at a house show in Portland not more than 6 months ago. The lineup was Anteater, Grammies and The Wisherman - As it turned out we had many friends and musical aspirations in common (also we all studied at PSU). There was very little time before we all played together and formed Pinkish.
Pinkish uses much more space and fewer grooves than a lot of your other projects. As a band, are exploring these open textures something that you have discussed, or is this more your natural approach together?
I think that the space that is created in our compositions simply comes from a place of wanting to leave room for each member to explore their own sound while rising and falling with each other. It is absolutely the natural approach to our collective writing but we have so many ideas and new tunes in the works do that may change soon!
You describe Pinkish as an experimental jazz group. Ryan, in your own music I hear many different influences but experimental jazz isn’t one of the first that comes to my mind. Is this specifically a musical area that Pinkish talked about wanting to explore, and is this an area that you yourself work in fairly often?
This is a tough question! I guess I will start to say that I think genre classifications are really not of the greatest importance to me. I get a bit perplexed at the notion of classifying the music that I’m a part of! I’ve never really felt like the music I’ve made has been particularly tied to any one specific genre. That being said, I have listened to and studied “jazz” and “experimental” music much more so than any other genre. I think I’d be safe to assume that the same is true for the other members of Pinkish. Grant Pierce, Kyle Shipp and I have all studied Jazz performance at PSU (although we didn’t meet at PSU). Andrew Jones also studied jazz performance at ASU. I think that while we have never actually talked about the kind of music that we would make as a collective - it just made sense to call it “experimental jazz.”
Many of our readers know that Seattle’s T&C artists work closely with the Racer Sessions weekly series here. Could you talk a bit about the Creative Music Guild in Portland, and how this collective has influenced your work?
The Creative Music Guild is amazing and I am forever grateful to be a part of the organization! I am inspired by my friends and local performers more than anything. It is utterly astounding to get be such an intimate witness to so many amazing CMG performances and to be involved with the guild as a board member! In my opinion, CMG shows are some of the most wonderful shows that happen in Portland! I am honored to be witness to our performance planning efforts and to be a part of our amazing organization! I am inspired by friends more that anything and since I have been a part of the CMG I have gained more amazingly talented friends and acquaintances than ever. The CMG has absolutely influenced who I am as a musician, and I dearly wish that it continues to do so forever.
Coming back to your own music now, I know that many artists are reluctant to pigeon-hole themselves into a genre, but I’m curious to know where you hear yourself fitting into the scheme of it all. Right now I’m personally in the middle of a long-term, daily recording project thats really re-defined my playing. I wonder what similar landmark moments you or your bands have had over the years?
I’ve had many “landmarks” in my playing and in my confidence as a composer and performer. I spent the better part of a decade writing, recording and performing with drummer Michael Dillon (With Eyes Abstract). Michael and I began playing together when we were both 17 years old and we recorded two full length albums and two EP’s together. We spent an incredible amount of time playing together at an early age and grew up very much in influence of each others playing. He is undoubtedly my biggest influence to date simply because we grew up composing together. Mikey and I discontinued With Eyes Abstract (WEA) in 2010 and since then I have been concentrating primarily on composing and performing with Phil Cleary (drumset) and Jon Scheid (electric bass) in our group U SCO (usco.bandcamp.com). Jon and Phil are absolutely incredible musicians and they just happen to be my best friends in the world. U SCO is an entirely collaborative effort and our compositions are completely the result of the sum of our exhaustive rehearsals and live performances. U SCO is recording our second full-length album in December and I’m incredibly excited about it!
In many of your own songs one rhythmic cycle morphs into another in really captivating ways. You also blatantly cut from one rhythmic world into the next. This brings to mind math-rock bands like Battles to me as much as it does the minimalist music of Steve Reich. Could talk about the strong persistence of rhythm in your music? Where is this coming from?
Some of my earliest influences are in-fact “math-rock” bands! I discovered Don Caballero’s “Don Caballero 2,” “American Don” and Hella’s “Hold your Horse Is” at a very developmental stage in my playing thanks to a mutual friend and wonderful guitarist and recording engineer, Stephan Hawkes. Needless to say - I fell in love. The “math-rock” format of rhythm changes and sheer intensity of playing shook me then as it does now. I can indeed say that I was just as infatuated with Steve Reich’s “Music for 18 musicians” not more than a year later. Rhythm comes from so many different places, it is the pulse of one’s thoughts and the beats in our imagination. The persistence of rhythm in my compositions simply comes from my relationship with the guitar and the intensity or feelings that I had at the time when I wrote the piece!
See Pinkish live at the Apparitions show this month.
October 24th, 8:00pm at the Columbia City Theatre.
$10 advance / $12 at the door.
Bands: King Tears Bat Trip, Pinkish (PDX), Burn List, and the debut of the Jacob Zimmerman & Gus Carns Duo!
Check out more music from Pinkish and Ryan Miller.