Before 2025, I had only known of the name “Ryan Davis” from State Champion’s Bandcamp liner notes for their 2018 remarkably underrated album, Send Flowers. I was in the throes of my second or third wave of obsession for Silver Jews after discovering them in January of 2022, and was desperately on the lookout for more bands like them. Through some random Reddit comment in response to someone pondering the same question, I discovered the existence of State Champion, and thus, Ryan Davis. I had no idea what he looked like, how old he was, or how many other people were even in the band, for that matter. I didn’t really know where they were from officially, or any sort of history regarding anything about the band. All I knew was that their song “Death Preferences” was the most Silver Jews sounding non-Silver Jews song I had ever heard, while still strongly upholding its own unique flavor of alt-country and twangified indie rock that sounded far more artistic and technically proficient than most of what I’d heard up until that point.
I became obsessed with their album Send Flowers and really didn’t dive deep into the rest of their catalogue until sometime in the last year. Although only releasing four albums, State Champion, to me, is one of the best to ever do it. They don’t have a bad album or a bad song, and yet they are likely the most criminally underrated band in their genre, especially considering how well-known Ryan Davis’ most recent musical endeavor is quickly becoming. Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band released their debut self-titled record in 2023 to great acclaim, but it didn’t make much of a splash outside of a few choice critics and lucky fans. Fast forward two years, and Ryan Davis drops the album that would eventually come to sit at the top of almost every end-of-year list from Pitchfork to Rolling Stone to The Wall Street Journal. I had a friend send me the song “New Threats From The Soul” when it was first released as a single back in May, and it didn’t hit me till about halfway through the song that this guy sounds just like the guy from State Champion. Lo and behold, it was the same Ryan Davis, and I was simply floored that not only was there a new album coming out so soon, but he also had an album out in 2023 that I completely missed! It didn’t take long for me to prop up “New Threats From The Soul” as not only one of the best songs of the year, but as one of the best songs of the past many years, and that was even before the album officially came out.
Although I hesitate to call New Threats From The Soul a perfect album, songs like “Monte Carlo / No Limits”, “Better If You Make Me”, and “The Simple Joy” make it really hard not to. Some of the most fun I’ve had listening to an album in recent memory has been not only listening to this new album but also catching up on their self-titled debut, which I hesitate to say is even better than New Threats From The Soul, but I’m still largely on the fence about that. Over the moon that I had my dear, dear State Champion song man back in my life with new music, I began chomping at the bit to see him and his band live before the end of the year, and I’d say I was quite successful. I managed to see them not once, not twice, but thrice, with my first show being at Milwaukee’s legendary Falcon Bowl and my last two being the two back-to-back sold-out shows at The Empty Bottle I’ll be discussing here shortly, all within the span of a month. Although Falcon Bowl is a beautiful and wonderfully eccentric venue, I had issues with the crowd that seemed to perpetuate itself no matter where I moved within it. Sure, there might be a Chicago bias or two at play here as well, but I sincerely think the last two 2025 shows Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band played at Empty Bottle were some of the best shows I’ve seen this year.
Although I was at both shows, I’ll mainly be discussing Sunday night’s show since that was the night I was there as a reviewer, not just a fan. I wasn’t in the thick of it Saturday night, with me taking a more passive role, standing in the back by the bar letting Ryan Davis and his Roadhouse Band play out to me more like a raucous 2 am dive bar house band than the alt-country powerhouse stallions that they undeniably are. That may sound like an insult, but it was really enjoyable to experience them in that way, like I just happened to wander lonesomely into some random bar while this band was crooning their roadworn stories of heartache right to me under those harsh and blistering stage lights.
I, unfortunately, happened to miss both openers Saturday night, but I made it up Sunday by being so accidentally early for the show that I actually caught the tail end of Styrofoam Winos’ soundcheck. Don’t ask me how I wasn’t kicked out for being nearly 40 minutes early, just ask me how I somehow managed to lose track of time so greatly in the first place. I first saw Stryrofoam Winos open for MJ Lenderman at Lincoln Hall in July of 2023, and although I enjoyed their DIY indie folk style at the time, I did not remember them being as fun to watch as they were Sunday night. I don’t think a single song went by without all of them switching instruments in this cyclical alternating pattern, where the guitarist went to drums, the bassist went to guitar, and the drummer went to bass. They were all so proficient at each instrument that it was almost frustrating seeing them flaunt such musical expertise throughout every song right in my face. During the song “Master of Time” from their 2024 album, Real Time, the drummer was playing harmonica, singing, and drumming all (relatively speaking, of course) at the same time! It was simply insane. Songs like “Master of Time”, “Magic Mind”, and the downright boogie feel of “Don’t Mind Me”, with its double-time switch up halfway through, were big-time highlights for me that elevated them in my mind from a decent small-time DIY folk band to an incredible modern alt-country outfit that more people, including myself, need to pay attention to. Even more impressive, two-thirds of Styrofoam Winos were in Ryan Davis’ Roadhouse Band, pulling serious overtime with back-to-back shifts.
Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band have only fourteen songs in total across two albums, and they played nine of those songs Saturday night and ten of them Sunday night. I had heard eleven in Wisconsin, which included every song they played at the Bottle, but I couldn’t care less about that because hearing these songs live three times over the course of a month is a ninth cloud I would prefer not to descend from. The only difference between the two setlists, besides general ordering, was that we got “Bluebirds in a Fight” as the opener Sunday night. I got the setlist for Sunday, and they were supposed to close with “Bluebirds Revisited”, but apparently ran out of time (I’m guessing something similar happened Saturday night, too, if they only played nine songs). From the moment they came on stage and started playing Saturday, I could notice a major difference in vibes compared to the Milwaukee show. The band felt more energized, less tired, and maybe a bit happier to be at Empty Bottle, a venue Ryan Davis said he’s probably played more times than anywhere else in the world. Having gone to college in Chicago and immediately working at Drag City Records upon graduation, Ryan Davis said on stage that Chicago was pretty much ground zero for his songwriting, likely writing a lot of the first State Champion debut there, if I had to guess. I can’t lie, I now love Chicago a bit more after knowing he went to school here, worked at the record label responsible for spreading the word of Silver Jews throughout the world, and really started his whole professional musical journey in this place I call home; it’s nice to know that I might be hearing little bits and pieces of Chicago in each song he writes.
As was the case in Milwaukee, Ryan Davis brought along famed Chicago poet Thax Douglas to bless his band before taking the stage Sunday (he may have also opened for them Saturday, too, but I arrived a few minutes into their first song of that night) with a poem entitled “Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band No. 2”. I don’t remember much of the poem now, but I love how Douglas has made a name for himself, throughout the many, many years opening up for band,s reading his poetry, and just getting to share something so personal and special with patrons who would be the most into it; it’s a really cool way to introduce a band and intermix different artistic mediums into one big, happy pot.
As I mentioned earlier, they opened with “Bluebirds in a Fight”, a seven-minute-long twangy slow burn that on record features no drums, but live is a different story. Davis builds and builds for seemingly five plus minutes until the drums barrel in at the end, akin to a musical ballistics test, before settling back down into quiet as the song comes to a close. Having a seven-minute introduction would not work for most bands, but Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band are not your everyday schmunks off the street, and “Bluebirds in a Fight” brilliantly set the stage for “Monte Carlo / No Limits” as the first main course for the evening. I love this song and this band to death, but if there is one constructive piece of criticism I could give to their performance of this song, it’s that the breakbeat that happens a little less than two and a half minutes into the song (and again towards the end) does not transfer that well live. On record, there is so much more energy, power, and movement that I feel is not present during its live rendition. Still, then again, I can only imagine how difficult it was to pull off in the studio, and that it’s not easily transferable into a live setting (probably why “Mutilation Springs” has yet to be played live, too). However, even if that one section of the song was a tad disappointing live, the other 90% of it is so much damn fun live that it really doesn’t matter.
“Better If You Make Me” is one of my favorite songs of the year, and it absolutely kills live. I think my favorite thing about Ryan Davis is how he writes verses and litters his songs with about four or five of them, leading to all these songs being around seven plus minutes long. His lyrics can be so intoxicating and fun to the point that five verses in a single song feel like too little, but I’m not complaining; I just want more. The way he physically embodies his songs live with his various humorous facial mannerisms, old-school Rock ‘N’ Roll power stances, strenuous headbanging, and blistering head shaking consistently elevates each song he’s playing, and I think gives each audience member that much more of a rush. Songs like “Flashes of Orange”, “Learn 2 Re-Luv”, and “Junk Drawer Heart” are prime examples of this to the point you would swear he just played a three-minute song when he just played a damn-near ten-minute-long song, but you couldn’t even tell the difference because you were having too great of a time watching all of them rocking the hell out.
Each time I’ve seen Ryan Davis play, “New Threats From The Soul” consistently gets the biggest reaction out of the crowd. Both nights at The Empty Bottle, he situated that song towards the backhalf of the set somewhat randomly, which I thought was rather strange. In Milwaukee, he played it second right after “Bluebirds in a Fight”, which I thought worked to great effect, but having “Monte Carlo” second works just as good, too. Any time I try to talk myself out of “New Threats From The Soul” being my favorite song of the year, I fail miserably. I may have lapses in judgment here and there, even with songs off the same record, but each time I hear that song again, I’m simply reminded of how special, how fun, and how almost groundbreaking it truly is. It’s a musical and lyrical spectacle of biblical proportions that almost no other song can measure up to. It all sounds like such hyperbole, but I end up convincing myself of it every time I listen. It’s also such a fun song to see live because the band pours every ounce of their being into the performance, because they know the song not only expects it, but the audience demands it.
They closed their pre-encore set down with performances of “The Simple Joy” and “Crass Shadows (at Walden Pawn)”, finishing the set eerily similar to how they started it. “Crass Shadows (at Walden Pawn)” reads a bit happier and more leisurely than “Bluebirds in a Fight”, with its methodical drum machine sounds and chipper melodies, at least until it ends up erupting into a beckoning pinnacle of pent-up energy that is way louder and more unhinged live than on record.
It’s funny, they left the stage for the encore on Saturday night but stayed on stage Sunday night and just took an extra long pause with some big puppy-dog-esque stretches to get ready for the grand encore spectacle that is “Free From The Guillotine”, the opening track off Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band. I know I said “New Threats From The Soul” is the best Ryan Davis song there ever was, but my God, if “Free From The Guillotine” doesn’t give it a run for its money. From the opening line, “You got a new tattoo of an old tattoo”, to the build-up of the last chorus, this song just has it all and then some. It pulls no punches, takes no prisoners, and is the perfect embodiment of what an encore should be: both a rallying cry for what is to come next and a bombastic reminder of what all came before it. It’s a song, much like many Ryan Davis songs, that I know I’ll be listening to till the day I die, and it’s never not a pleasure to hear it live, or in any capacity for that matter.
These two shows were the best way to cap what has been quite a problematic and exceptionally hard year for so many. To have Ryan Davis back in the city where he started his songwriting career, playing a venue he’s played more times than many of us might be able to count, all in a year where he played more shows than he did in all his 20s and 30s (his words, not mine), felt really special to experience with his most devoted of Midwest fans; the fact that I was able to snag the one setlist they had to give out, too, was the cherry on top of this junk drawer of a year. I won’t lie, I would have loved a cover song or two to spice up this Ryan Davis end-of-year double header, but I’ll let that one slide and count my lucky stars I was able to see this band before they get to the point where venues like Empty Bottle can no longer support them. Before long, mark my words, they’ll be headlining Thalia Hall, and there will be no looking back.
All photos by Lorenzo Zenitsky.
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