Phil Ryan (entrepreneur)
Phil Ryan is an English musician, writer and entrepreneur. He has toured with The Animals and is co-founder of The Big Issue and The 12 Bar Club.
Music
Ryan started his musical career as a session guitarist, recording with various artists and headlining at festivals all across England throughout the 1980s. The early 1990s saw him touring Europe and the United States, with performances in Stockholm, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Barcelona, Munich, Nuremberg and Berlin, among others. In 1992, Ryan joined The Animals as lead singer and performed with them at the 'Children of Chernobyl' benefit concert in Moscow's Red Square in front of an audience of 100,000.[1] In 2001, he recorded his first solo album, Storm Warning, and toured European festivals, such as the Bardentreffen in Nuremberg, Germany, with it. He contributed the charity single "Thanks for loving me" to the Jack Brown Appeal.[2] Ryan is a featured artist at Rooftop Records where he mentors aspiring musicians.[3] In 2014 he is in the middle of recording and filming a new collection of songs for release in 2015 and planning live performances across the UK and Europe in 2015.
Business
Ryan was a co-founder of The Big Issue, a magazine written by professional journalists and sold by homeless people.[4] Ryan was taken on in the early stages of the magazine's creation by John Bird, who founded the project with Gordon Roddick.[5][6][7] In September 1994 Ryan started the 12 Bar Club with Lars Ericson. The music venue is located in central London and featured performances by artists such as Nick Harper and Boo Hewerdine as part of Ryan's music policy. The 12 Bar Club was awarded Live music Venue of the Year '95/'96 by Time Out magazine. Ryan also runs Storm Books, an online publishing platform set up in 2010 that intends to make the work of up and coming writers available to a wider audience.[8]
Stage
Ryan also turned his hand to theatre: his first stage play, The Blessed was performed at Theatro Technis, Camden, London in 1989. His musical adaptation of George Eliot's novel Silas Marner premiered in London in 2000, also at the Theatro Technis. The Arts Theatre was the venue for The Phil Ryan Show, a show that featured selected acoustic musicians and singer songwriters including Peter Conway, Art Fazil, Evi Vine, Baby Sol, Dean Dyson and Chris Newland, which Ryan launched in 2007.[9] In the following year Ryan wrote a song for And Then They Came for Me, an award-winning play which charts the lives of two of Anne Frank's friends who survived the Holocaust. Ryan himself has featured in John Bird's two-man show The Naked Bird, a critically acclaimed piece that has been performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2008 and most recently at the Theatro Technis in London in May 2013.[10]
References
- ↑ The Moscow Times. The Animals top bill at benefit event at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 26 January 2014.
- ↑ i-newswire. Song To Help Young Cancer Victims Released at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 26 January 2014.
- ↑ i-newswire. Archive copy at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 26 January 2014.
- ↑ Swithinbank, Teresa. Coming Up from the Streets: The Story of the Big Issue. Earthscan, 2001.
- ↑ "It's Time To Make An Exhibition Of Myself". The Big Issue. 25 April 2013.
- ↑ Darton, Michael (8 May 2013). "Naked Bird, Threatro Technis, London". The Big Issue.
- ↑ John Bird 'Some Luck' (2003), p. 410-413.
- ↑ "Phil Ryan". Storm Books.
- ↑ "Phil Ryan Live - Silvertip Films". Silver.andersonbirch.co.uk. Retrieved 2014-03-01.
- ↑ "Naked Bird review: A personal story that keeps you entertained". Big Issue. 2013-05-08. Retrieved 2014-03-01.