Asheville, North Carolina’s The Dead Tongues, moniker of folk singer/songwriter Ryan Gustafson, is no stranger to our neck of the woods. He’s played 118 North in Wayne numerous times, last year he headlined MilkBoy [with our buddy Louisa Stancioff, with whom I recently spoke (keep checking the site) and who will be returning to the Center City venue on October 16th for a trio show with Molly Parden and Eliza Edens], he made a 2022 stop at Johnny Brenda’s, and in 2019 he opened Sellersville Theater for River Whyless. However, his return to MilkBoy tonight, September 25th, will be a little bit different from his most recent shows in and around the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection. “This is the first full-band tour in a few years. The last two Philly shows were solo. I tour solo more than I do with a band, so this’ll be a special opportunity for people,” Ryan tells me during a recent phone chat.
The Dead Tongues’ current live band actually features a longtime phriend of PHILTHY, Mipso fiddle player Libby Rodenbough, who will be opening the show with a solo set, prior to playing as part of The Dead Tongues’ live band. “I love Libby. She’s such a solid musician, performer, and person… I’d seen her solo set maybe two or three times before this and it’s really cool,” Gustafson tells me, before saying he’s also excited about what she’s bringing to his own sets: “Libby will be playing fiddle with me, and I haven’t toured with a fiddle player before, so that’ll be really cool.” At the time of Ryan and I’s chat, the band were one date into their current run, which he tells me was the first time this lineup actually played together: “Last night was the first time we ever played together. Everyone’s been getting sick, so people got stuck where they were, so there were no rehearsals.” However, he admits that that didn’t slow them down on their first show: “It was fun to get onstage and start feeling it out… It’s fun to do it in that way!”
This summer The Dead Tongues actually released two albums — Body of Light, which dropped in June, and I Am A Cloud, which hit shelves last month – which will apparently be the focus of tonight’s show. The albums are companion pieces and explore a wide range of Gustafson’s musical interests, including instrumentals, improvisations, and spoken word/poetry (and feature the artist working with a horn player for the first time). “On some level, I could see maybe people who had just been listening to a handful of my songs thinking it’s different, but I think there’re hints of a lot of what I was doing across my records, like instrumentals and songs stretching out. I just pushed further in all the directions I was leaning into a little harder,” he explains of his evolving sounds.
The albums feature collaborations with a plethora of noteworthy musicians, including Mat Davidson (Twain), Matt Douglas (The Mountain Goats), Joe Westerlund (Califone, Megafaun), Jeff Ratner (Bing and Ruth), and more. However, the artist who appears on the albums that I was most excited to hear about was Jenn Wasner, co-founder of Wye Oak and the woman behind Flock of Dimes, who has been on Gustafson’s radar for a while now: “I’m a huge fan of Jenn’s music, Flock of Dimes as well as Wye Oak… We’ve played a little bit together and we’ve been friends for a long time, but we’ve never worked on each other’s projects, so that was awesome.” Ryan also tells me that there was something he was especially excited to try out with Wasner: “I really wanted to mess around with vocal pads, like on those old 4AD records like Cocteau Twins, and I thought there’s no one better to try that with than Jenn!” And he doesn’t hesitate to sing her praises on all of her work: “Anything she’s a part of, you can see and hear her impact on it. It’s so direct and clear when she’s working on something… One thing about her, is she doesn’t seem to waste time doubting herself.”
Body of Light and I Am A Cloud have been drawing acclaim from a number of critics, but when I ask about Ryan’s favorite reactions the new work has gotten, he tells me that he’s especially appreciated the way fans have been reacting to one particular song off of I Am A Cloud (sort of the title track): “I’ve been feeling really good about people’s reactions to ‘I’m A Cloud Now,’ because it’s a longer song, a little under eight minutes, and it’s just nonstop singing… It’s, I hesitate to say relentless, but I shove a word into every second, and once I start it, there’s no breath of not singing. It’s kind of this trance tune and a lot of people seem to be falling into the trance with me.”
I’m always curious to hear about how singer/songwriters – who often split their time between “listening rooms” and barrooms – like playing different settings and, like many, Ryan tells me that the setting itself rarely determines how well a show goes: “I’m fine with it all. It’ll always just depend on the people that are there, and at my shows generally every single person who is there is someone who already knows and likes the music.” However, he does admit that he generally prefers barrooms to listening rooms/eating rooms (They hate it when I call them that, but Ryan seems to be on the same page as me…)
“I will say my least favorite is if it’s a seated venue with food in front of them. It’s weird to eat and listen to someone play. And you can’t eat in the dark, so when you’re playing you can see what people are eating, like, ‘I can see you’re eating mashed potatoes with A1 Steak Sauce… I feel really at home in a barroom.”
*Get your tickets here.