Ryan Dahle wants musicians to take their hands off the wheel

Local Limblifter freaks are no doubt getting psyched about the band's gig at the Biltmore this Thursday (March 19). It's been a while since the group's quirkily infectious brand of melodic power-pop has been rolling off a Vancouver stage.

In advance of the show, Ryan Dahle—who's led Limblifter since day one—dropped by the Georgia Straight and talked about a bunch of stuff, including his other band, Mounties, and Limblifter's new album, Pacific Milk, which drops next month.

Knowing he has produced several bands, and was co-owner of his own recording studio, I also Dahle what he thought his main skills as a producer were.

"I think facilitating people," he said, "getting people in the right frame of mind, and not controlling too much. A lot of people want to control everything, they want to talk too much, so I get people in a music zone so that they're not discussing things. Discussing arrangements and over-talking about things is not a good idea, because it's not where music comes from. Music's in your subconscious; it's not in your conscious, you know. So I try to get people to take their hands off the wheel a little bit, and let everybody not control and let music happen.

"But it comes out of empathy," he added, "being able to put myself in their position. I don't want people to come in [to the studio] and have a bad experience. I want them to have a good experience based on their skill level and their talent and their voice. Which kinda led to me developing ways of writing with people, you know. When people turn off their mouth and turn off their brain a little bit, it's amazing what can just come out of the air. So with the Mounties we just kind of continued that tradition by writing a lot via jamming and cutting it up. Cause when you only have a couple of melodic instruments and drums you can do that. When it becomes a full band it becomes more difficult for people to stay on the rails, so to speak, because there's too many instruments trying to guess what the next note is, you know."

For more from Ryan Dahle see the feature story in this Wednesday's issue of the Georgia Straight. Read it on paper for that old-school Age of Electric vibe.