The website of Ryan Steele

Jay Dunphy and the Religion is playing with The Shine On from Vancouver this Saturday at Steamers. Doors at 9 pm, cover is $5. Great poster by Brandon of Metropol.

I’ve never been able to draw to save my life. I can’t complain too much, I’ve got other talents, but yesterday I had a great idea for a cartoon, à la The Far Side. Perhaps someone else can do something with this. Scene: Two Native Americans, a man and a woman, stand in front of…

Here’s an expression that needs to die: “It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread!” I can think of a million inventions that are better than sliced bread. Say, for example, toilet paper. Whatever people were doing before toilet paper was invented, I can pretty much guarantee it was worse than slicing bread.

If you haven’t checked out the new Neko Case album, Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, I highly recommend you do so. This is her fourth solo studio album, though you may also know her from her work with The New Pornographers. I picked this up on the recommendation of an email from Amazon.ca, despite not…

Well, I promised a final update about the tour, but I don’t really have much else to say. We made it there and back, the van never broke down, nothing got stolen, only one show got cancelled (and even then it wasn’t really cancelled). Parts of the tour were somewhat trying, but I guess that’s…

Well, it’s done. We played our final show last night in Vancouver. Today Josh, Allan, Jay and I returned to Victoria, and to our “normal” lives. The tour had its ups and downs, to be sure, but on the whole it was a success. I’d like to write more about it, but I’m pretty much…

We made it! The hours of driving have paid off, we are in the T-dot, aka TO, aka Toronto. We arrived at the house of Mr. Orynoman at around 3 p.m. Josh, Allan and I said a quick hello to Greg (and his dog) and wandered off in search of an Internet cafe. The Winnipeg gig went well.…

Hello Winnipeg! I come to you today from an internet cafe on Osborne St. The drive in was interesting, with large pools of water along the sides of the highway. I guess they’re due to the flooding of the river. I can now say I’ve driven through Portage and Main, the most famous intersection in Canada.…

Man, the prairies are dirty. Dust, grit, grime, and mud everywhere. We’re in Regina. We’re staying in the basement of a talented singer-songwriter named Carolyn. So far we’ve only had to stay in a hotel once. We went to see Cuff The Duke last night at the venue next door to where we will be…

On Sunday we made our way to Jay’s sister’s house in Cochrane, AB, just outside of Calgary. After spending the night and enjoying delicious smoothies for breakfast, we continued on to Calgary, where we set up camp in Jay’s other sister’s basement. His family’s generous accommodations are much appreciated. Yesterday’s show at the Karma Local…