Ryan Lewis was born in Columbia, Maryland. He grew up between Maryland with his father, and New Jersey with his mother. He attended high school at Saint Andrew’s boarding school in Delaware. Ryan moved to Athens right after graduation, drawn in by the local music scene of the ‘90s. He studied photography and sociology at UGA before leaving college to pursue music. He co-founded Kindercore Records, an independent record label focused on local music, in 1996. In 2017 he led the group that revived Kindercore as a vinyl pressing plant before investors sold the business to Classic City Vinyl Works.
Today Ryan is the Georgia Music Curator for UGA’s Special Collections Library, where he spends his days hunting down music artifacts – everything from costumes and stagewear to instruments and show posters – for use in research, instruction and exhibition at UGA and around the state.
Ryan, a nearly lifelong musician, has played in numerous bands throughout his life. In the early aughts, he toured with The Agenda. He currently performs with Molly’s Lips, a Nirvana cover band, alongside his partner, Noelle, and others. He is a die-hard comic book fan and collects Star Wars and Marvel toys and comics. He lives in Forest Heights with his partner Noelle, his daughter Poppy, their dogs, Pickles and Hambone, and cats Estrella and Honey Lemon.
What do you love most about the work you do?
I love exploring, and I love history and storytelling. For me, the most exciting part of my job is finding connections between things. There’s nothing cooler than realizing, “wait a minute—this guy who was in the Atlanta Rhythm Section in the ‘70s was in the Classics IV in the ‘60s.” It’s little things like that that I love putting together.
I’ve always had a fascination with historical objects – historical guitars, outfits, things like that—so I get a lot of enjoyment out of finding those things and preserving them. Sometimes I feel like I’m trying to hunt down all the artifacts before they get taken away by the Nazis like in Indiana Jones. I love storytelling and making connections, and finding these objects and preserving them. It’s really wonderful to do all this work and then have people see it and learn something from it. It’s really fulfilling work.
When you’re not working, what do you like to do in and around Athens?
Well, I’m 49, so I don’t go out as much as I used to. For years I used to go downtown every night. I still have a great affinity for the west side of Downtown Athens— the 40 Watt, Flicker, the Manhattan, Cine, Little Kings—I love all those places and still go when I can. My daughter has gotten really into collecting vinyl so we spend a lot of time at our local record shops Wuxtry and Low Yo Yo Stuff, and we go to a lot of concerts in Atlanta. We are looking forward to the Classic Center Arena opening in the Fall so that some of those concerts can start coming here!
It’s crazy, I lived in New York City for two years and everything is there at your fingertips, and yet Athens is still better. Of all the places I’ve played, I’ve traveled to 48 of the 50 states, and I’ve never been to a place that I liked more. I could do without the traffic that we have some days, but then I drive to Atlanta and remember it could be way worse. And something I like about how the town has changed over time (alongside the things that I don’t love about it) is that, back in the ‘90s, if it wasn’t downtown, nobody was doing it. So I love the fact that we have areas like Normaltown now. We go to Normal Bar, Automatic Pizza, Hi-Lo, Old Pal; there’re so many great local businesses that our friends run and that we get to experience.
If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go and why?
My immediate answer when anyone asks me is always Disney World. I’ve been going since I was a kid and there’s just something magical about the place as cheesy as it might sound. It’s something I love doing with my daughter. That said, I’ll shoot for something a little higher. I’ve always wanted to visit Southeast Asia. One of my brothers has gone to Vietnam a few times and it sounds amazing. I’d love to travel in Europe more, too. I’ve been around England and Wales and to France once. I’d love to go there. Being in a band, I found one of the coolest parts was touring. I’ve seen things I never would’ve seen before.
If you could see any band anywhere, any time, who would it be and where?
This is really hard. I generally would say The Beatles because they’re my favorite band. But they stopped playing live before they got to my favorite period of their career. So my new answer would be the Jimi Hendrix Experience, in ‘67 or ‘68. He was a huge influence on me as a guitar player. I’d see him at the Fillmore East. My step dad always told stories about seeing shows there, he saw the Allman Brothers there when they recorded their live album. That place holds a lot of mystique in my mind.
Do you have a favorite book, or one you often reference or reread?
When I was in high school and read Catcher in the Rye for the first time, like everybody else, I loved it. But as I got older I realized he was a total dirtbag. I reread that book many times throughout high school. I think going to boarding school in the Northeast, there was definitely a connection I had to that. But then I realized that he was actually a pretty terrible person and not someone to emulate. I was an angry teenager, I was Gen X in the ‘90s. I haven’t read that book in probably 20 years. The last time I tried to read it I was like “oh, maybe never mind.”
But I also love comic books, and a lot of what I read is graphic novels and comic books. Spider-Man, Captain America, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men are all favorites. I love the Stan Lee style of alliteration and his bombastic writing was a big influence on me growing up. Now, with my job, I read a lot of books about music. A great one is Cool Town [by Grace Elizabeth Hale], about the start of the modern Athens music scene. It’s a great overview of the early scene and it explores what it was like to be a part of it from diverse perspectives.
Do you have a favorite movie?
The Empire Strikes Back. My first memory is of seeing A New Hope when I was 2 years old— back when it was just called Star Wars. I think that a lot of my sense of justice and need to push back against authority came from the lessons I took from Star Wars. The reason Empire Strikes Back in particular is my favorite though, is that it was shocking at the time to have a cliff-hanger ending where the good guys don’t win. There’s also a great tone throughout the movie, interesting emotional stuff happening throughout, and the humor is great. I could watch that movie a million times. George Lucas went back and changed the movies in the mid-90s and took out parts and added things, etc. and for a long time the only versions you could see of those movies were the edited versions. I just recently finally found some bootleg versions of the original movies that I grew up with. That’s been really fun.
What advice would you give to your younger self?
Don’t take yourself too seriously. That’s something I’ve definitely learned over my life and that I’m sure is a common answer. Also, everyone isn’t out to get you. Nobody cares. They have their own lives to deal with. As you get older I think you become more conflict-averse and pick your battles. When I was younger I was ready to fight every battle I could, whether it was my parents or an authority figure at school. I still have that anti-authority bent that my friends point out to me and are like “hey maybe don’t say that in front of a cop!” I think I’d tell my young self to relax. There’s things I did that I certainly enjoyed, but I wish I had taken more time to appreciate them as they were happening.
If you could have lunch with anyone dead or alive, who would it be and where?
I have two people in mind. Walt Disney who, although he was a terrible man in a lot of ways, he was also really inspiring and incredible. I’ve read a lot and watched a lot about him. I’d love to be able to experience what that sort of energy was like. But we would not talk about politics… or race. Or religion for that matter.
My second answer is Ray Bradbury. He and Walt Disney actually worked together on the 1964 World’s Fair, which is where some of the rides for Disneyland and Disney World came from. It’s A Small World and the Carousel of Progress started out there. Ray Bradbury would write the dialogue for the rides. I’d love to sit down with both him and Disney and have a good vegetarian meal— some dim sum maybe.
If you could put any message on a billboard, what would it be?
I was thinking about what I’d say for this one— trying to think of deep things. But there’s this quote that always comes back to me from one of the funniest movies of all time, This is Spinal Tap. At the end of the movie they ask one of the band members, Viv Savage, the keyboard player, what his philosophy is, and he says, “Have a good time, all the time.” It’s dumb, it’s ridiculous, but it’s also really true. I really do try to live my life that way now. I want to enjoy myself and spread that joy to my daughter, and not worry about what we don’t have.
What three words or phrases come to mind when you think of the word home?
Family, comfort, animals.
