Words by: Carla Louise Gailey 

aka. Ryan Morris uses his music to take you on a wild trip down memory lane. 

C: Ryan thank you for chatting with me! You grew up in KZN right? Tell us a bit about your fondest memories of living in KZN. 

R: I did indeed, I grew up in the Berea area until I was about 16, and then we moved to Ballito. My fondest memories were definitely going to the North Beach promenade, learning to surf and skateboarding on the road outside my house.

C: What are your favourite things to do in KZN?

R: Living in London is such a hustle, that it makes me appreciate the relaxing lifestyle in KZN more and more every day. Everybody really knows how to chill in KZN, I mainly love going to the beach, hanging with family and catching up with friends at bars. 

C: Speaking of London, when did you move to the UK? 

R: I moved to the UK in about 2005 with my band What Now. We wanted to take things further and we felt there wasn’t a big enough rock scene in SA at the time, but I love going back to SA every year to visit family and friends. 

C: What inspired you to become a musician?

R: I was just drawn to it from a young age, I didn’t come from a family of musicians. It was just something that I naturally felt connected to and I knew it was something I could never let go. 

C: What instruments do you play? 

R: I can play most instruments to some degree, I’m an all-ear musician. I don’t know how to read or write music, I just go with what sounds right to me. I started off playing guitar, then started singing, then a bit of drums and now synth/keyboards. 

C: How would you describe your musical style?

R: I grew up mainly on pop punk bands like Blink 182 during my teen years and that had a big impact on my songwriting. I’m also heavily inspired by 80s sounds which these days is called synthwave, so together I call my genre of music ‘Blinkwave’. It’s like retro 80s synth meets early 2000s pop punk. 

C: What is your creative process like when writing new music?

R: I go with a particular mood, I think of a movie scene or an old memory and I start from there. It’s all about the mood and overall feeling for me, I like to have a clear vision of the song beforehand otherwise I just end up noodling into nowhere and I just waste time.

C: Who are some of your biggest musical influences?

R: Green Day, Blink 182, Vanilla Ice, RUN DMC, INXS, Van Halen and Offspring are some that come to mind. I like a lot of different styles of music, especially rap, punk and a host of 80s bands.

C: I’ve seen some of the incredible comments saying how nostalgic your music is and so accurately narrated – what has the response been like to your music and what does this mean for you? 

R: Well, that’s exactly what I was going for, I’ve always been fascinated by nostalgic emotions and I wanted to create the most nostalgic music ever. Music that makes you think of past memories and childhood. When I get comments like that it makes me happy cause that’s what I wanted to achieve all the time.

C: How does it feel to see your music being used all over the world as the backtrack to people’s videos/reels on social media? 

R: It’s very surreal and I sometimes have to step back. Some days I don’t think much of it and other days I’m like ‘This is crazy’. 

C: Can you talk about a specific song or album that is especially meaningful to you and why?

R: Oh, definitely Blink 182’s ‘Enema of the State’, their sound completely blew me away at the time and it was what made me finally start a band. 

C: What has been the biggest challenge you’ve faced as a musician?

R: How the industry changes all the time, in the last twenty years it has changed so much because of the internet. Also, music styles and genres will get popular and then unpopular in an instant. You eventually get to the stage where you are just like, I’m just making music for me, I don’t care if you like it or not.

C: How do you stay motivated and inspired to write and perform new music?

R: It’s in my blood, it’s always there, I’m always thinking about it and so I’m always motivated. Movies can help though if I’m having a bad day