Ryan Miller of Guster and Brett Newski live
GUSTER frontman Ryan Miller and Brett Newski discuss making friends that'll stick with you for life, creating a TV show, starting a podcast, energy boosts, is Target good or evil, and getting black-balled from Myspace.
More on GUSTER: https://www.guster.com/
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SNIPPET:
Brett: You kind of talked about finding yourself, finding your groove. What were, for lack of a better term, the “dark ages” of Ryan Miller like? Before you found yourself and figured out who you were?
Ryan: Well it’s been a constant process that’s ongoing, so it’s not like I’m at the top of the mountain by a longshot. But I always had good people around. I was really lucky. Even with the band, we met 30 years ago this year. So those two dudes, Brian and Adam, they are really good people.
That’s not even just part of it, it’s why we’re in a band. Because I wouldn’t get in a band with a fuck up or a horrible person. We all were just kind of good dudes, and we were able to grow up around each other, and help each other grow up.
But the seed was there. I think my radar, even back then, was good. And when I think about my friends in high school, they were all really good people too. So, I don’t know. There weren’t really super dark times.
College was just me becoming...like, I lost my virginity when I was really old, like after college. College was just very big for me to be cool with who I was. Not knowing how to talk to girls, and maybe trying really hard. So I wouldn’t say it was dark. I just hadn’t locked into being confident. And I think the band was able to help a lot. Once I was able to say I was in this band, even though the band wasn’t super great in, whatever, 1995, it gave me the confidence to not have to try as hard, and I was able to get into the geschalt of the thing.
But something happened in the last 15 years where I sort of got into the idea of being around the right energies. Even my wife, on paper was not someone I was going to marry, she doesn’t do drugs, she doesn’t like to go out, she’s not hyper social, she wanted to live in VErmont, her favorite people are her family. And that’s not me, I want to go to Burning Man every day, you know?
Brett: Every day.
Ryan: But what I loved about her, she had that blue energy or whatever. So even though on paper we don’t share a lot in common, that sort of energy was what I wanted to be around. So I think I started to clue into that, even though I couldn’t articulate that even when we met.
Brett: Well I want to ask you about something—sometimes when I have close friends in my life, I think we’re going to be best friends for life, but they fall away, or you drift apart from people, and sometimes I don’t expect that and feel let down by it. Do you have any advice for maintaining long, life-long relationships?
Ryan: I saw something on Reddit the other day that basically said, “See this group of friends you hang out with in high school and college? That’ll never happen again.” I will say, my relationships, as I’ve become an adult, especially in the last 20 years? They’re relationships that don’t require a lot of maintenance.
They’re people that you’ll see, and then you pick right up. You don’t feel like you have to maintain them, they’re people you can just pick back up with. Those are the relationships that endure in life, because when you find a partner, have kids, have crazy work stuff…
You know, I travel around the country, and I have a list of people I want to see in each place, and it’s like, “Cool, I’m gonna see someone today, and meet this person for coffee” and if that doesn’t click in, and feels like, “I...don’t know how to talk to you, it’s been so long, what is going on”, the relationships that endure are the ones you don’t have that. You can pick up on the run. So my advice, per se, is to cherish those people, the people who don’t require maintenance, the people you love seeing and just picking right back up.
*full audio at link above.
