I learned to play the guitar on a vintage nylon-string that the whole family shared. It wasn’t mine in any official sense. It lived wherever it landed — on the couch in the lounge, leaning against the piano, or resting on its stand like it was waiting for someone to notice it again. That accessibility mattered more than I realised at the time. You could just walk in, pick it up, and make a sound. Continue reading Behind the song: Thanks To You
About a year after Better Days hit the local shelves (and my parents’ CD player on repeat), the phone rang.
On the other end was Pedro Carlo — a kind of local music Yoda, minus the lightsaber but with the same knack for cryptic wisdom. Pedro had the final say in the lineup for Splashy Fen, South Africa’s legendary music festival tucked away in the Drakensberg mountains. Every singer-songwriter within a 500km radius dreamed of playing there. Continue reading The Birth of The Ryan Calder Band: How a Festival Lineup and a Stubborn Dream Created RCB
Long before the world of online streaming, Patreon perks, and podcast mics, there were long nights, my Larrivée acoustic, and a 1975 Audi 80 that smelled like pizza. That was the beginning. That was Pietermaritzburg — a small town in South Africa where the music dream first took root. Continue reading Better Days: The Road to That First Album
