Ryan Potter

If you're looking for someone to do some tracks to your mix, I play guitar (6 & 12 string acoustic or 6-string electric), resonator, slide, bass, keys (piano, organ, etc), or mandolin (to a lesser extent). At the moment, I'm big on acoustic folky stuff but I do all kinds of different genres. I'm open to trying new things and old things so send a message my way if you're interested! A little about my background:

I started out playing solo jazz piano. Eventually I picked up a guitar and started teaching myself to play. In early highschool, I started jamming (me on keys) with a couple of guys. We started a little band in '98 and called ourselves the Soul Merchants. It was mostly blues tunes and rock covers. Toward the end of the year, we merged with another band, The Blueskies Band and entered the Ottawa Citizen Bluesfest Blues in the Schools contests. We were an 11-piece band with horn section (me on trumpet and keys). We won the contest that year and went on to play at the Ottawa Bluesfest on Canada Day.

For a couple of years, I played keys for both The Soul Merchants and The Blueskies Band, gigging in the Ottawa area. Eventually, Blueskies split up as some members left Ottawa. There was some shuffling within The Soul Merchants as well. I started playing bass and we acquired a new drummer. We changed our name to The Liquorstore Bandits (LSB). We played more rock covers and wrote a few of our own tunes. LSB went on for several years and we still play every once in a while. The band is scattered across Eastern Ontario so it's rare that we're all together anymore.

In 2005 I was sitting in as the bass player in Hothouse, the blues/rock host band for a weekly open stage at the Rainbow Bistro blues club in Ottawa. In the spring of 2005, I sat in on bass with Bobcat Gray for a couple of shows including NXNE in Toronto. In 2007, I did some bass and piano session work for the band Bluestone at Phase One Studio in Scarborough, ON. I have done some live shows on both bass and piano with Bluestone as well.

In between projects, I've been working on an entirely solo project. I bought a resonator guitar early in 2006 and started writing some tunes on it. Most songs are in open D tuning, so I thought it apt to call the project "Songs in the Key of D." More recently still, I bought a mandolin and have been learning how to play that. It makes an appearance on some of my more recent tracks. The record is only about half done but I'm not pushing anything. It happens when it happens. None of it is hi-fi since I'm not a pro, but it's been a fun and enjoyable experience regardless.