Ryan Monroe hadn’t considered himself a control freak by nature. Then he found himself at Redstar Recording in Silver Lake, Calif., with its myriad instruments scattered around, just begging to be fiddled with. For a guy who can play just about anything, it was impossible to resist. So Monroe took a breather from his continuing role as the 34-year-old bastion of versatility in Band Of Horses to record A Painting Of A Painting On Fire (RCM). Monroe hopes to tour this summer behind A Painting before things get too busy with Band Of Horses, which is finishing its fourth album with producer Glyn Johns and eyeing a September release. Monroe will also be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new feature on him.
Monroe: Edisto Beach, S.C.—I ’ve been here a handful of times by my lonesome to clear my head, write music and plop my human ass in a beach chair, sometimes simultaneously. It’s just a bunch of really affordable beach houses for rent, some golf (if that blows your skirt up like it does mine), small, locally owned shops for essentials and a few streets or whatever. The lack of neon lights, billboards, sky-scraping hotels and expensive prostitutes makes Edisto the least cheesy beach that you’ll ever find. Unless you get a huge box of cheese crackers from the tiny grocery store, which brings me to a short story about my last Edisto trip. I was eating a box of those white cheddar crackers (you know the ones) and watching the sunset from my back porch. It was so gorgeous it took me second to realize that the texture of one of the crackers from one of my many handfuls was very cold, had a much lighter crunch and was moving in my mouth. It was a white cheddar cockroach. I have not eaten any white cheddar crackers since that evening two years ago. Anyway, if you want to go the beach, try Edisto, but make sure to turn your lights off at night so the turtles won’t be drawn to them and stray too far from the ocean. If you want to be seen, heard or party with strangers, don’t bother.
Video after the jump.
