Ryan Primack: bagel stealer and distributor, your local sushi restaurant employee, Bad Brains fanatic, and long time guitarist of Poison The Well. Poison The Well is currently touring on the 10 for $10 tour along side the likes of Bane, Madball, Terror, and a slew of other great names.
I was lucky enough to catch time to catch up with Ryan before he began the 10 for $10 tour.
“Its going to be awesome. It’ll be a lot - a lot of fun. I’m super stoked to be playing in a club. I’d rather play to a room of 400 people. I’m a little too insecure for the big crowds.” Curious to any tips for surviving the long, potentially sweaty, road of touring he advised me; “BABY WIPES. Tooth brush, tooth paste. I can’t live without gold bond. The feet, they turn rank quick. I’m telling you, ALWAYS have clean socks.” Personally, I think that sounds like a great quality in a band mate, a man who handles his hygiene. His favorite place to play had to be Philadelphia, he decided. “That’s where my mom lives. She goes out to my shows because she’s pretty cool.” Growing up in what he describes as a really large family, he’s extremely close them.
Ryan has been in the band from the get go. “It’s been a core group of people for a long me. For us, most of the members that came and went, were in the earlier years of the band. We sort of found a relationship that works for us. If cool people come in our band, awesome. If they don’t we try to look for someone who sort of works for all of us.” In high school, Ryan was in a punk band called Last Minute. I found online recordings of his band available, but hadn’t yet listened to them. “Don’t! Just don’t do it! That band was horrible! It was terrible… I was really young, and it was just a really bad punk band. It was the mid 90’s… and you know, it was just shitty.” Ryan has grown up surrounded by music; his dad’s major in college was music. He said at a young age, he started raiding his dad’s music collection. “All of my life, music has been around. Ever since I was a tiny child, I always had random instruments to make noise with.” When I mentioned a bad Avril Lavigne stage I experienced mid 7th grade and elaborated on a time I once attempted to play guitar… very poorly. He encouraged me to pick it back up. “It’s never too late to learn.” Ryan said.
Ryan is also a criminal with good intentions; “Me and my friends were just out of high school, we’d break into the dumpster of Einstein’s where they used to throw away all the bagels. It was all the bagels that were left over. Hundreds! We used to go to the dumpster and go feed the homeless. I can’t tell you how many times we got ‘hey you want some food?’ and the response was “I don’t want no food mother fucker, I want money!”
Ryan said growing up, he listened to hardcore before he knew it was hardcore. ”At the time, I listened to a lot of post hardcore like Fugazi, or really early hardcore like Bad Brains, Dag Nasty, stuff like that. I just had mix tapes friends made from when I lived in Philadelphia and Florida. I mean, I didn’t really know anybody. I didn’t know it was hardcore. It was just some music I had gotten from my friend’s brother.”
Poison the Well has been a very successful band of the course of their existence. At one point they signed over to the major record label Atlantic, but the time on the label was short lived, soon leaving the label with gossip of “creative differences.” We talked got about the transition from an indie label, to a major, and back to an indie label. Ryan described the trade off as comfortable; “ I didn’t really enjoy my time on a major record label… in any way. It was awesome at first because they put on an attitude ‘Yeah we just really like your band and believe in what you’re doing. Do whatever you want.’ My initial thought was ‘COOL! Fine by me!’ And you know, as soon as the second record it was like ‘Oh you have to do this, this, and this.’ And we said ‘Yea, no. Were not doing any of it. See ya later.’ For me, it’s not about the money. None of us started this because we wanted to get money. If that were the case, we all picked a horrible career if that was our goal.” I asked him about the state of music these days, is hardcore the new biggest trend, or is it really about the music? “I don’t really know. I don’t really have an opinion whether that’s untruthful or not. I would never want to say that and I have faith to say people go for the music. I just choose to say yes, it’s about the music. I don’t really want to accept the other answers as a possibility.”
“For us, I guess you could say the bands on 10 for $10 have a different sound - little more traditional sound than us, but for us especially regarding hardcore. For us it’s TRYING to be different. It’s sort of how we preserve ourselves being in the hardcore scene. We kind of push the boundaries. It’s like the hardcore band Bad Brains. Even though they had a lot of reggae stuff, everyone still considers them a hardcore band.” Ryan also mentioned Bad Brains is his favorite hardcore band, ever. “Even Fugazi or that band Void that did a split in the early 80’s, very very different sound than traditional hardcore.” He likes to keep a relaxed atmosphere at their shows; “We’re always walking around during the show. The only time we’re rushed is after the show when we have long drives ahead and we’re trying to get out their really quick. I think all of us really enjoy interacting with fans at shows.”
July 7th, the band just released Tropical Rot. He’s curious to what people will say about their new record. “It’s kind of a common trend for our band to change it up on each record. So you can say, it’s definitely different. It’s nothing crazy, it’s no polka record.”
Ryan bides his time off touring working at a sushi joint with a couple of friends. We all know food industry has it’s ups and downs. “People in the food industry, working at restaurants all seemingly are out of their minds,” Ryan said, laughing. When we spoke, he had been working there for 7 weeks and said there are always ” love/hate relations involved in his job.” When asked what he would be doing if he wasn’t currently making music, Ryan told me; “I hope to be involved in a music related career, such as building guitars or something along those lines. I always want to work in music.”
When asked about his musical preferences and favorite bands, Ryan was quick with to reply. “Between the three bs: It’s a cross between Black Sabbath, The Beatles, and the Bad Brains.” Asked if he was forced to listen to one song from his band over and over for the remainder of his life, what would it be and why? After pausing for what seemed like a decade , he sneakily decided “There was a pressing mistake once on an album. I would want a copy of the pressing mistake one because they put reggae on the cd on accident for the first 1,000 copies. That’s my loophole, right there.”
Make sure to check out Tropic Rot, which is now out for your listening pleasure on Ferret Music. Ryan says his goal for the 10 for $10 tour. which is well on it’s way. is to “have fun and hangout. It’s going to be fun.” He wants to continue touring and mentioned at the end of this year, he’ll be touring with Rise Against and Thursday. “Im excited for Tropic Rot to come out. Hopefully nobody will hate it.” Ryan and I bid our goodbyes as he promised to say hi at the 10 for $10 Tour date in Los Angeles. “I’ll be the creepy girl in a dress and cowboy boots lurking around merch tables giving out hugs. Maybe I’ll tackle you.” Ryan retorted with “I’ll be the guy who looks like crap, enjoy trying to pick me up.”
Maybe I’ll ask for bagels instead.
Be sure to check out Tropic Rot, now available.
Sick article. Love ptw, good interview, good job YPA
I like this band