Episode 39: Ryan Anderson (Bendigo Fletcher)
Ryan Anderson, songwriter and frontman for the Louisville based band Bendigo Fletcher is our guest, in a conversation recorded at SXSW in Austin. We hear about working with producer Ken Coomer (Uncle Tupelo, Wilco) on their amazing 2021 release “Fits of Laughter”, playing a gig at Willie’s ranch, and the element of surprise in music making. Also covered: sword fighting with rock stars, and which is better for songwriting ideas-digging trenches or mowing grass? Ryan also politely requests that we call our mothers.
The full-length debut from Bendigo Fletcher, Fits of Laughter is a collection of moments both enchanted and mundane, sorrowful and ecstatic: basking in the beauty of a glorious lightning storm, waking with a strand of your beloved’s hair happily caught in your mouth, drinking malt liquor while bingeing “The X-Files” on a lonesome Saturday night. As lead songwriter for the Louisville, KY-based band, frontman Ryan Anderson crafts the patchwork poetry of his lyrics by serenely observing the world around him, often while working his grocery-store day job or walking aimlessly in nature (a practice partly borrowed from the late poet Mary Oliver). When matched with Bendigo Fletcher’s gorgeously jangly collision of country and folk-rock and dreamy psychedelia, the result is a batch of story-songs graced with so much raw humanity, wildly offbeat humor, and a transcendent sense of wonder.
