BRONCHO is an indie rock band from Oklahoma, known for hits like Class Historian and Sandman. They rocked out at Zanzabar on April 13. Lead singer and guitarist Ryan Lindsey sits down to talk about touring in dreams versus touring in reality, life since BRONCHO’s last release 7 years ago, and his favorite parts of playing in Louisville.
LEO: You mentioned in another interview that you dream about touring. What’s been your favorite part about touring recently?
RL: I would say the dream versions of the tour are very dreamy and they’re always at night, and that’s kind of the backdrop. When you’re actually on tour, you deal with a lot of daylight and then you realize you’re actually in reality.
I have 2 little kids now and I’m way more into taking advantage of the times when I’m in physical reality, you know? So it’s kind of nice realizing how I am in the real world, I’m not in the dream, even though the dream is so fun.
The dream can be stressy too, because there’s times where I know in the dream we’re supposed to go somewhere and you can’t quite make it there, or you make it there and you don’t have something you need. It’s nothing too scary, but just like ‘oh, I can’t find the thing’. Then you finally find the thing and then it doesn’t work. I don’t know. Those are the bad, scary versions of tour dreams.
Then the other half or more are the hang. You’re going from here to there, wherever. Those are fun. I really like those moments of the dream and the real tour. Does that make sense?
My mom and I actually talk about this a decent amount. We both have recurring dreams and its sometimes where I wake up and I’m like ‘Oof. Was that real?’ I can’t really decipher which is reality and which is my dream sometimes.
LEO: We’re going to move out of the dream realm into reality now for the next question. It’s been 7 years since you released an album. Did you always know you’d come back with a new one or was there a part of you that wasn’t sure?
RL: No, I was always kind of working to that next record. I think the pandemic and then having kids just kind of like I was still doing the things that I normally do to make a record it was just kind of stretched out I guess.
I mean I also never fully know either. It’s more just kind of slowly it turns into a record. I think there’s a song or a group of songs that will come. I’ll just have those on repeat in my head or on loop, or we’re working on them in some fashion until at some point it feels like there’s a record there. That’s usually the experience for me.
I’m kind of in that currently. There’s some songs I’ve been writing and some songs we’ve been working on slowly that I could see turning into a record in the next however long. I’m scared to say how long because it tends to take triple of whatever that initial statement is.
LEO: What are the hardest and easiest parts about returning after 7 years both personally and creatively?
RL: It’s hard for me to think of. That time was such a blur. The COVID time. I think being stuck inside and being away from friends. That was hard.
But who knows? I like that I had a bunch of time to myself to just relax into whatever was going through my mind, which ultimately led to the record. Maybe if we’d all been on normal schedule and the world had been operating as normal, we probably would have had to get on the road a little quicker, so maybe we would’ve put out the record sooner. The amount of time the record took to make made sense in the end.
Getting your equipment to work. Maybe that’s the hardest part. It’s like ‘Oh s**** I haven’t used that in forever, my subscription’s gone.’
LEO: You recently performed in Vegas with The Strokes. Can you tell me a little bit about what that experience was like?
RL: That was great because we flew out the day of. Then there’s that little bit of are we gonna make our flight? It’s day of. There’s no ‘we’ll catch the tomorrow flight.’ It’s like if I know I have a flight going on it’s like I can’t really stop thinking about it. It’s just a hard deadline in my life that I don’t have. I mean, I got to pick up my kids from preschool, that’s a time that I gotta hit. And also the flight. Those are the two moments that pop up. That’s besides the point.
The Strokes were great. Being able to play with them was a complete honor on our part. We were pumped to play with them. Adding in the fun travel to Vegas, it was just kind of perfect for the mission at hand. They were great. They were really nice.
Also, it was very cool to hear them. They had a practice room by us and they were playing through the stuff. They’re a great band.
LEO: So, what should Louisville expect to see at your show and what would you want to tell someone who is experiencing you all for the first time?
RL: I would like to welcome you to Zanzabar, one of our favorite places to play and that we haven’t played in awhile. I personally requested that we play at Zanzabar. They’re just great people. We’ve always had a good time there.
We’ve got friends in Louisville, Guest Room Records- Travis and Lisa. They put out our first record on vinyl, so it’s always good to come. Then they moved to Louisville and that’s right when we started playing at Zanzabar. It’s always a good time. All my memories have been nothing but great.
This show in particular a friend of ours did a documentary on the recording of the record. We’re gonna play that before because we already placed a few infomercials. And we’ll include the documentary. When you enter Zanzabar, there will be some infomercials, a mini documentary, maybe a few more infomercials, then we’re gonna play Double Vanity straight through, and we’ll play more songs after that.
[Playing Double Vanity straight through] is honestly fun to do, because working on the record, there’s a lot of listening through it a bunch, like front to back. So sometimes in shows when you’re bouncing around you lose some of what the original goal was for the original version. It’s fun to just kind of play through it.