Fresh off acclaimed appearances at The Sundilla Concert Series and the Opelika Songwriters Festival, Arizona duo Ryanhood return to town, this time to perform their seasonal A Winter’s Evening with Ryanhood. The show takes place at Pebble Hill (indoors!) on Thursday, December 19. Admission will be $20 at the door, but $15 advance tickets are available at Spicer’s Music, Ross House Coffee, and online at www.sundillamusic.com. Auburn’s own Picktheria will open the show. (And again, this is an INDOOR show, in the “new” building.)
Ryanhood got their first break more than a decade ago as street-performers at Boston’s Quincy Market. It was there that Ryan Green and Cameron Hood were spotted by a college booking agent and thrust into the college touring scene, where Campus Activities Magazine would soon name them “one of the most requested acts by college buyers all across the country.”
The two first met in high school, where they were separated not just by a grade (Hood being a year older) but by a respectful rivalry between their two rock bands. Hood and Green would face off annually in the Battle Of The Bands, and although Hood’s band would ultimately win two out of the three competitions, Green managed to impress him and the rest of the school with his abilities on the guitar, which would ultimately earn him a scholarship to Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music.
Cameron enrolled as an art student at the University of Arizona, and they started what they would call “a long-distance musical relationship”, mailing each other minidiscs of new song ideas and getting together during academic breaks to rehearse and perform. Within weeks of graduating college, Cameron took a leap of faith and moved to Boston to join Ryan. Determined to make a living as musicians, Ryanhood became full-time street performers at Boston’s historic Quincy Market where they developed a rapport with audiences that has become a hallmark of their shows.
They soon took this high-energy, highly-interactive street-performers approach to the college market, where they quickly became one of the most popular bands on the circuit, playing upwards of 130 college dates a year. Cameron Hood’s rich and folky lead vocals, Ryan Green’s explosive guitar and mandolin riffs, and their airtight vocal harmonies prompted the Arizona Daily Star to call them, “a match made in radio heaven.”
They would go on to tour with Jason Mraz, record an album with Grammy-winning producer Ross Hogarth, share stages with the likes of Train, and even get tweeted about by Ellen DeGeneres. Ryanhood has collectively performed more than 800 shows in 45 U.S. states, where their cross-generational sound has been equally at home in colleges, coffee-houses, concert halls, churches, and living rooms.
And now, fifteen years after their street start, Ryanhood’s star is still on the rise as they were named “Best Group/Duo” in the 2014 International Acoustic Music Awards (IAMAs). Their sixth and newest album, Yearbook, released on March 3, 2017, and has been described as ““nestled in a great pocket, feeling all at once focused on storytelling and intimacy while not being afraid to wield a big musical stick” by For Folk’s Sake.
They currently reside in their hometown of Tucson, AZ, where they have won more than a dozen Tucson Music Awards including “Best Folk Band” and “Best Rock Band” (you can decide for yourself which is most accurate).
Ryanhood will bring their acoustic wizardry and impeccable harmonies to Auburn on Thursday, December 19, thanks to the collaboration of Sundilla and the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities. Picktheria will open the show. Showtime at Pebble Hill, which is located at 101 S. Debardeleben in Auburn, is 7:00.