Drummer Ryan Sawyer started out in the Texas emo/punk scene as a founding member of At the Drive-In, and now also plays in rock trio Tall Firs and big band outfit Stars Like Fleas.
Ryan Sawyer also plays in jazz trio Eye Contact, also featuring Matt Lavelle on trumpet and bass clarinet, and Matt Heyner on bass.
He used to play in The Fiery Furnaces, Big Numbers, and Galaxian.
Ryan Sawyer's work as a sideman has included gigs with Tony Malaby, Daniel Carter and many more.
He has a solo project called Lone Wolf.
Ryan Sawyer has studied the "ways of music" with Bobby Previte and Thurman Barker, but here he evolves in the hectic trails jointly opened since the 60's by Sunny Murray, Milford Graves, Rashied Ali, Steve McCall and some of their American and European disciples. He is skilled at thwarting expectations, and uses a percussion both aerial and dense, energetic and seething, generating on all the levels of the acoustic spectrum halos and vibrations propagated in multiple wavefronts between the skins and cymbals.
René Engel
