The hilariously self-deprecating musician speaks about his third album ‘Deafman Glance,’ and premieres its driving second single “Opposite Middle.”

Ryley Walker is sipping a cappuccino at Gaslight Coffee, a pricey but cozy coffee spot in Logan Square, one of Chicago’s hippest neighbourhoods, when he starts telling me how things used to be. “This whole block used to be empty,” he says. “I’m getting to that point where I’ve lived in this city long enough that I’m that doing that jaded fogey thing: ‘I remember when this was a mom and pop restaurant or an empty storefront! It wasn’t always brunch!’” He asks if I ever went to a now-shuttered underground venue called the Mopery, which was located just blocks away from us.

“The first fingerpicking show I did was there,” he continues. “It’s now a gym. It’s funny to look up and see people running on treadmills exactly where I’d literally rip gravity bongs. Now these people are bettering their lives there?”

Times change, and while Chicago’s neighbourhoods have gentrified and familiar storefronts have been replaced with bougie brunch spots and four dollar coffee shops like the one we’re sitting in, Walker has also drastically changed since he moved here from Rockford – a quiet but unmotivating Illinois city 80 miles northwest known for being home to Cheap Trick – 11 years ago. Though he came to the city at 17 for college, he quickly dropped out of both Columbia College Chicago and University of Illinois Chicago to, in his words, “become the scene’s annoying little brother” and make music. “I just feel like I rolled the dice and became an indie rock dude,” he says. “It’s just dumb luck. By all means I should just be a fat load on a couch with my career choice being the check from a truck company that hit me or something.” [ . . . ]

Continue reading at NOISEY: Ryley Walker Is Experimental Music’s Merry Prankster – Noisey