All in Time Due ((Part 4))

Since I’m not labeling these posts very well, let me begin with a listing of what this series is about so far:

1. My life as a student
2. My life as a runaway, with Kelly
3. My life as an idiot, by way of bad hiking

From here, I could go anywhere. This is ALWAYS the case. Well, maybe not ALL the way to the top. That stuff is reserved for those who didn’t start life so underneath society itself. Personally, I started from BELOW THE BOTTOM. Let’s call it NEGATIVE SOCIAL PROGRESS. Each of us has such a score, whether we realize it or not. Some measure of making it to some point in life. AKA: It’s easier for the kids of movie stars to make it as movie stars. Trailer folk, like myself, not so much. Double AKA: The American Dream has a fee required that some of us cannot pay, no matter how much money we ever fall into. In spite of all of this front matter, social commentaries, let me talk now of my life as a musician. This road of notes and tones did not come naturally. My parents didn’t play musical instruments, were fond of bland 80’s Pop Bands, like The Eagles and Bon Jovi. This isn’t bad music, but they weren’t musicians, didn’t listen to jazz. Couldn’t understand jazz, man.

Oh, and I don’t mean THOSE MUSICIANS, I mean the parents.

My first musical memory comes in the form of recording myself singing into a webcam, using an early and cheap computer, one that probably conducted itself on the power of those AOL disks that Mary Booker was asking me about in the mid 2000’s. By then, those things didn’t work anymore. At least we couldn’t get them to work, by then. I don’t think she even had a working internet connection of any kind. Those disks weren’t magic, and so Mary Booker, while a nice woman, went without the internet. She instead painted her house all sorts of awesome colors. Like a dreamcoat, with doors and a water supply. But, let’s not get side-tracked, though. This is about music.

Well, I recorded myself singing some random N’Sync song into the computer. In spite of my being able to “crush” the same track today, this recording was shit. I didn’t have a clue how those guys could make those sounds. Maybe they didn’t either. Much of what we hear in recorded music is polished beyond what those making the sounds actually sound like. When my little sister, also named Mary, found the file, the recording, she suggested that I never take up singing. She had been weaned on pure aggression and psychosis, by my abusive father. As such, she has become those things. This is largely why I don’t talk to her today, at all. She’s mean, and mean-spirited, too. She’s the reason I would wait almost a decade from then to start playing music.

My reason for starting this piece with such depressing information is to prevent you from doing the same. I’ll suppose that you’re some age, have friends and family, and are susceptible to the things they say. Well, don’t listen to them. Try, and sing. Pick up the guitar. Play those drums. You’ll sound like total crap at first, but eventually you won’t, sound that way. Some of us aren’t very good at the things we try and do, but this is never to say that we shouldn’t do them. You should try, and fail. Try again, and fail again. Improv taught me these things. Imagine being in front of a whole room full of people and bombing it, and not being brought to the depths of depression so deeply that you feel as though you’ll never make it out.

This is embarrassment. And it’s OK. It’s OK to feel embarrassed.

When I finally left home, sometime around 18 years old, I started playing music. This came at a time when I was mowing lawns for slave wages with the rather docile Joe Simone, my ex-girlfriend’s father. He ran Lawns By Joe, which largely operated in Pinellas County, in Florida. I would ride my bike, while listening to things like Brand New, Taking Back Sunday, and Northstar; to work, where I would dawn sweat in magnitudes, some 10-12 hours a day. Mostly, I was in charge of the weed-whacking and edging. Joe would take care of the mowing. He was the older, more privileged man, and so got to ride the sit-down mower. Either way, we worked in the hot-ass Florida sun. We had fun, but I should have probably been doing something else with my time, like working in a mall. At least there the AC would have been on, even if the clientele wasn’t as forgiving as those, the ones, we experienced.

After some time, I had acquired enough money to start buying things. I bought a mountain bike, to ride more comfortably to work, one that Joe, in a bit of rage about me sleeping with his daughter, locked into a storage unit, forcing me to walk all the way home. Beyond this bike, and before he had any clue, I used my wages, as paltry as they were, to buy my first musical instrument, a drum set, a TAMA Super Star. Eventually, Allan would damage this drum set, in a fit of inadequacy and psychosis, but before then it served me well. I was living with Ashley, and his rather mustachey father. We started a band. We sounded like garbage. Ashley had purchased a guitar, Chris a bass. me the drums. We began by playing things like Blink 182 and AFI. In considering this now, we should have probably started with something more along the lines of ACDC. But, we didn’t do that. So, we struggled to make The Used sound like The Used. We had no clue what we were doing.

But, fast-forward some two or three years, and we had, by then, formed a hardcore band, were playing shows, writing songs, and having special lady friends as a result of music ITSELF. How cool. But let’s not go too far too fast. My point is to let you know that sometimes you have to sound bad before you sound good. Sometimes you have to ignore the psychos and just sing, IT. I should have started singing with the N’Sync. Not a decade later. Actually, more than a decade later. It wasn’t until I left a major teaching job at USF, in my 30’s, that I started singing. That puts my Mary-Set-Back at something like two decades. All is not, however, sadness. We played, mostly covers, until we sounded decent. Then, one day, one I can’t remember at all, we started writing songs. They were good. They made people come to our shows. We had named our band Deathbed December, and any hardcore kid growing up in Largo in the early 2000’s could very well know about us. At peak, we had a show with over 100 people in attendance. We played an outdoor festival in St. Pete. We even toured, sleeping all-members, in my mini-van, one I barely paid for. Thank you, Tim Carr, for being one of the coolest people I’ve ever met.

Tim was a bassist, in his 40’s. Tim’s daughter was Ashley’s girlfriend. Ashley, in case you haven’t realized it yet, is a dude. Him and Chris now play grind/weed core in New York City. Last time I saw them, they were living in Brooklyn and had formed something filth-dirty by the name of Mary Todd.

And all of this from nothing.

We played until we sounded good enough for the slightly musical. We could never have handled jazz at that time, but we did our best. Following Deathbed December, which included Shane and the late David Anderson, Nate Schmidt, etc., we, most of us, went to college. Ashley ended up at FSU, in Tallahassee, me at USF in Tampa. We had eventually chosen NOT to pursue music as our sole life pursuit. Whether this is a mistake, I still cannot tell. Here I am, now, trying to make it as a solo artist, a so-called singer-songwriter.

So, who knows.

Between NOW and the disbandment of Deathbed, which came in the form of a final show in December of, I think, 2005?, I have done a lot to learn music. I wouldn’t pick up a guitar and some singing until 2019 or so, but before then, I tinkered all the time. I had learned to use Garage Band in 2007, had made some insane songs with Chris, including some rap music that absolutely never should see the light of day again. We were so fucking offensive. Either way, and in spite of the filthy language, we were, once again, musicians.

My next official-unofficial musical venture came in the form of something my close friends have classified as “Constant Neural Firings.” This stuff consists mostly of instrumentals, usually with some sort of odd element(s) to it. In one case, I allowed the snare’s placement to creep away from the piece’s overall structure. In another, I would mess around with odd time signatures to the point that even I grew tired of it. And, for a metal-head, this implies A LOT. I would say I’m proud of this stuff, but not for the reasons you think I might be. I am proud of this stuff for keeping music close to me while I completed my studies, got A’s in many-most of my classes, and pursued whatever girlfriends I have had since then. I wasn’t busking and singing at the top of my voice like I do now, but I was attached, to music, through structure, notes, and tones. This, as a result, is where my knowledge of music theory, primary beat structures and other rhythmic qualities, really took off. If you listen to how I play the guitar now, you’ll hear the results of this time.

I even once had a guy at an open mic say something like:

“You use rhythm as melody!”

Thanks, dude. And thanks to Constant Neural Firings. These songs have never been published, so you won’t know them. That is, unless you’re Austin or Lauren, or some other close friends of mine. Next came actual bands again. I had a hankering for being in a band. And this was like ALL THE TIME. There’s something to practicing with a group, to putting up with others in this way. You can’t just walk away from the project and so the winds at your tail keep you going. And it’s nice. It’s nice to have friends too. So, I joined some bands.

The first of these was something we tentatively referred to as Particle Motion. This band consisted, at peak, of me, Austin, Nate, and even Bowl-Mullet, which is to say some Nu-Metal dude in Seminole that the others knew from work. He LOVED Nu-Metal and so we ended up sounding a bit Nu-Metal. Of course, I brought odd measure elements and a general levity of structure to the whole thing. Austin brought whatever you call the early stuff from Incubus and bands like that. Nate, as always, loves picking at high manifestations of each chord. I think it’s a D-Minor that he chooses most often, come to think of it. We all have our center points, our so-called tonic centers. And that’s even when we aren’t playing any music. As for Bowl-Mullet, man could he make our break-downs sound heavier than they needed to be. And that was cool AF.

We ended up with about an EP’s worth of unreleased material. Later on, and in a much more normal fashion, Nate and Austin recorded (and released) some of this stuff with Matt Poynter, who is now a member of the band The Hip Abduction. It’s funny how famous some of us become. Me, not so much. No one knows who the hell I am, even if they should. Call it folk famous. And, that’s OK with me, man. Still, they recorded this stuff and released it, I believe as Silas, which was their band before that point, collectively speaking. Silas is and was quite good. This is, in my opinion, the height of Austin and Nate’s playing. Since then, they have become men, doing things like being chefs and fixing high-level medical equipment. I have suggested that Austin, still one of my best friends, start a pedal company, but I don’t think he’s so receptive to it yet. Perhaps he’ll need to begin his mid-life crisis in force before this becomes a reality. I would sell his pedals, in a suit, if only for the irony of it.

After this band, Austin and I formed a band with a rather smoky dude by the name of Greg. That’s it. That’s all we called him. His mom was nice and made us snacks and commented positively on our playing. She was cool. Greg was smoky. And that’s OK too. Some people are. Like Bogie. For this one, we played something along the lines of Ben Folds Five, which, of course, was a 3-piece band from the earlier days of modern pop. Later, I would see Ben Folds in a fancy venue, with a symphony. It was good to see him make it, and not in the folk sense. We had so much fun playing these songs. We still talk about them to this day! Greg played piano, while Austin played bass, and I the drums. I always played the drums before Rythur. Well, before I became Rythur. In this case, the beats were close to Motown, the bass lines too. The piano, now that I can look back at the tones more accurately, were pretty good. Mostly, these songs were in major keys. Why this band didn’t press on to the point of a stage is and was a,,,

Good question. I was taking classes and doing well in them. I didn’t have a lot of time. I was often working too, doing high-level things like STATISTICAL ANALYSIS. As such, it was hard to keep a band going. ANYTHING, and I mean: ANYTHING made for a good excuse to stop doing it. Maybe that’s a sign that I should have kept doing it. Either way, we disbanded over minor things. And that, too, is OK. And, seeing as I next started a band in 2016, after a decent amount of time off, I would place these two bands somewhere between 2009 and 2014, give or take. Some of you reading this may have been in diapers, others changing them. We all have our time. And this was mine. It felt good to play grooves, to not showboat like I did in Deathbed. It felt good NOT to do blast-beats and double-pedal all the time.

Next, in 2016, I formed a Nu-Metal band by the name of Dirt Circus, with a former student of mine. In a way, Chris and I are still friends. And, no, I don’t mean Chris Day. Hanni. Man, we had a lot of fun, mostly outside of the band. That, the band, didn’t last as long as the good times we had partying along the river of his property. He had a wife and some kids, but ALWAYS made time for a good time. He, too, studied all the time. Still, we had fun. In this case, Chris played guitar and did vocals, while I played drums, and Keith (?) AKA WHY CAN’T I REMEMBER THIS GUY’S NAME played guitar too. Come to think of it, we were a Nu-Metal band with no bassist. How weird. Overall, the structure of our songs was a bit like jam-band meets dirty, grungy bar-rock. These songs could have, and maybe SHOULD HAVE been written while wasted. That’s how Nu-Metal works. Substances are almost always involved.

Even if that means: “”MEDS””

meds can be quite important if you need them. Otherwise maybe leave them alone. If they’re not prescribed to you, then yeah, probably leave them alone. This is not some sort of medical confession by me. It’s just a reflection on the nature of Nu-Metal and how many of the songs are about pain, dying, loss, and other super depressing stuff. When packaged well (SEE: Linkin Park, Fuel, Slipknot, and SYSTEM OF A DOWN), Nu-Metal can be quite good. When not, well, it’s shit. Either way, that’s what we played. With songs like “Beer, Beer, Beer,” we might have been on our way to either a stage or a rehabilitation clinic. Who knows. We were having fun. I should have started singing here. But, I didn’t. Mary [(NOT BOOKER)] continued to echo through my mind, preventing me from ever taking part in something that would later become so central to my life. In terms of regrets and disappointments, this would be one of my favorites. I almost hate that I didn’t start singing until well into my 30’s, when I should have been singing for 25 years. Oh well. I eventually did it and that’s what matters I guess.

Still, had I started singing earlier, I may have stood a better chance of being on a stage instead of being ripped off by Allan. I wouldn’t have taught so many awesome people math, so maybe all is not lost either.

This was all mostly in the Summer of 2016. Dirt Circus. It’s what I did before I started hitting the road in force. Little did I know, I was learning valuable life skills by camping out of my car all the time. Today, it’s how I live, so I kind of needed it, I think. On second thought, NO THINK. I did and still do need it. I now know how to NOT look like I’m living out of a-my car, give or take some. I’ve learned, instead, how to look like I’m camping, instead, which is a much better way to live. Less bother, less judgement. And, Seeing as I began working on my dissertation process in 2014, all of this was probably, give or take also, a form of procrastination. Like everything useful I have ever done.

I AM A MASTER OF PROCRASTINATION

SO PROFESSIONAL IN IT

THAT IT is ME

The next five years would see A LOT less music, a return to Constant Neural Firings and making music on my own, mostly in Garage Band. Then, once I left a-my teaching job in the College of Business at USF, I finally made the leap. I finally told the Mary in my head to shut the fuck up. And so she did. By then, Mary, the actual one, not in my head, may have encouraged me to sing. But, I won’t ever find out. I’m still too upset about the whole thing, you know. It’s not entirely her fault, or even hers at all, but it DID set me back, even if it’s me who allowed that to happen, to me. Once again, you should learn from me. Do not let others drive your boat. Do what YOU feel is right. Unless what you feel is right is holding up a liquor store. In that case, go grab a copy of some highly addictive video game and play it until you forget about being such an ass. AKA Just don’t be an ass. Find something else less ass-inducing. Maybe that means ACTUAL ASS. I won’t judge you, dude.

I won’t judge you, cool-lady-cool.

So, in 2019, after having dealt with business students taking statistics for a year and a half, I bought a guitar, learned some chords in about a month, and started writing songs. Then, one time, when on a trip, I started singing. It sounded good. I had no clue that I could sound so good. And this is not hubris -conceit. I realized that I have a really good voice, can stay in key often enough to call my pitch DECENT. I can recall, vividly, singing to Fall Out Boy when the notes started making sense. Then, I could sing just about anything. I messaged Lauren and told her that I probably had a brain tumor. I mean if I could sing like this AND MARY WAS RIGHT, then how could I NOT have a brain tumor? Of course, it’s far more likely that Mary was wrong, and just being a psycho. And that sucks. Once again, don’t do that.

Like he says in Good Will Hunting.

A GREAT film.

Either way and having left this job in January, I was writing music, actual songs, ones I play to this day, in February. Sometimes, it takes no time at all. It’s what we were meant to do. To add beautiful sounds to the environment. To sing along with the birds. To make songs so quickly that we often play them only once. I kept going. I didn’t let music go this time. I played often as I finished my PhD. I performed at open mics. People REALLY liked the stuff. I couldn’t understand this at the time, but it’s true. They told me so. Yet, for some reason, I still heard “you can’t do it.” Man, how badly can a bad family life ruin you. Being surrounded by toxicity should be retained to the reigns of trash bags, not those who end up singing like Josh Groban.

And speaking of Groban, I have seen him thrice, and even once joked about having a Groban voice before I could even sing, at a party, while standing in a kiddie pool in someone’s living room. I was wasted and this was the night I genuinely missed my opportunity with Lizzy. I double-genuinely liked Lizzy. Then, having missed my chance, I was at her wedding only a few years later. So it goes, Vonnegeto. That’s Vonnegut plus Magneto in case you’re trying to make sense of the phrasing. I wouldn’t become Rythur until a few years in. I played Rythur’s songs but I wasn’t him then. Oh, how cringe to speak like this.

As always, I don’t care.

When, might you ask, did I finally become Rythur? This was at an open mic, when writing “Ryan Matthew Thurman” started to feel so stupid. What WAS I? A christian artist? No, I wasn’t. So, one night, I wrote Rythur. And people liked THE NAME. They liked the music TOO. I can see that, now, following therapy. And self-reflection. An accuratization of my eyes, so to speak.

More recently, I have pivoted from PURE FOLK THAT MOST PEOPLE DO NOT WANT TO LISTEN TO FOR TOO LONG to MORE POPULAR FOLK THAT MANY PEOPLE DON’T MIND LISTENING TO FOR TOO LONG. Call it selling out, I guess, but really this just meant losing some of the tension in my chords. When I feel like using exotic chords now, I save them for the bridge. Use them as chords are meant to be used, resolve them somewhat the same. The result is songs like those you find on my debut album. These are POP songs. That is a POP album. And that is also OK. And while I haven’t sold too many copies, I did have fun making the whole thing, pushing it like I mattered more than I do. Maybe some day I’ll realize that I DID MATTER and that I should have pushed it like I genuinely understood that.

Now, from where I sit, now, I can look down at my shirt and see that it has been tarnished, not by me. I am reminded that I am being chased and stalked, that I can’t relax like I used to. My life is a mess. Yet I still play. To wit, and through this depressing reality, I wrote one of the best choruses of my life recently. An R&B song with the kind of chorus you could sing for hours, without getting tired of hearing it. I busk much more often now, something like several days a week. If this were a survey, that would be my response to your frequency question. I practice every day. Well, when my hands and/or voice don’t feel so bad from the day before that. People tip me well, 5’s and 10’s. It used to be a dollar here, a dollar there. One smile a day. Now, so many people smile as I sing their way into the future. This makes me happy, in case you’re not picking up on that.

MUSIC MAKES ME HAPPY

MAKING OTHERS HAPPY MAKES ME HAPPIER

AND KNOWING THAT EVERYTHING EVIL EVENTUALLY DIES

AS ALL EVIL THINGS EVENTUALLY DO

MAKES ME THE HAPPIEST

Oh, how macabre. But-Once again: I don’t care.

Now, in case this has turned too harshly into a sales pitch for my voice, let me provide you with a recap. I started playing music when I left home, at 18 or so. The drums. My friends and I formed a hardcore band, wrote some songs, toured a bit, and generally had a good time. We met so many cool bands, like Underoath, who happened to be practicing in the same place as us, in Largo. Tim came in to our practice and commented quickly on how we were covering one of their songs in the heaviest of fashions. We were. Ashley played in Drop C, while Underoath plays in D, I think. So, he was right. It was cool to meet Underoath, regardless of Tim having been right. But, back to the program.

PS — We PLAYED with BURY YOUR DEAD!

Following these years of playing so officially, meeting so many cool musicians, both inside and outside of Florida (here’s looking at you CHEVY CHASE STABBED THE KING of Savannah), I focused on my studies, while still making a point to learn music, to keep it as close as I could, with everything going on. Then, with an itch for performing, I played in some other bands, learned to keep a different kind of time. One less odd, and more popular. Finally, after years of educated distraction and lackluster attempts, I formed Rythur, which is how I currently see myself. I am a musician. I finally know this to be true. Sometimes, it takes so long to see it. If you play music, maybe give this a try, right now. Stop reading, go look into ANY mirror, and say it:

I AM A MUSICIAN

If you don’t play music, maybe try this with whatever you SHOULD feel you’re good at. Maybe its being an animal doctor. I don’t care. Well, I do but I don’t. Who knows. Perhaps I will someday look back at this, from the perch of being a touring musician and laugh at how little sense THE PATH made. All paths are random, give or take, but life’s path reigns supreme. I COULD end up looking upon these words someday, with tears in my eyes, for not knowing how close I actually got to the whole thing. Then, and finally, I may feel nothing at all. There’s no telling. What I can say is that YOU should do what you feel is right. Do not listen to Mary. She’s wrong. She was wrong for me. And she’s wrong for you. You’ve got a flute in your closet, that you look at each time you open said space, and think about playing. Well, play. PLAY YOUR FUCKING FLUTE.

In closing, and so as to not end up sounding too inspirationally forced, let me conclude with some lyrics. My own. From that recent chorus of mine.

From my newest song, Away (From Everything):

AGAIN I GO INTO THE VIOLENCE OF DAILY LIVING

GIVING EVERYTHING FOR EVERYTHING, ON TOP OF ALL THAT GIVES

ALL THAT GIVES IS HEART-ACHE HOTEL’ED AWAY, TUCKED AWAY

AWAY FROM EVERYTHING, WE FIND NOTHING

Like I said, this thing could go on forever.

And cheers.