Ryan Roxie

Ryan Roxie
Roxie performing with Alice Cooper in 2015
Background information
Birth name	Ryan Rosowicz
Born	(1965-12-01) December 1, 1965
Origin	Sacramento, California
Genres	Rock, Indie-Rock
Occupation(s)	Musician, songwriter
Instruments	Guitar, vocals
Years active	1977-present
Labels	Wax-Tone Records
Associated acts	Alice Cooper, Gilby Clarke, Slash's Snakepit, Roxie77, HappyPill, Casablanca
Website	Official website

Ryan Roxie (born Ryan Rosowicz in Sacramento, California, December 1, 1965) is an American guitarist/singer-songwriter currently residing in Stockholm, Sweden, and is best known for his guitar work with Alice Cooper and Slash's Snakepit.^[1]

Early life

Roxie was born in Sacramento, California and grew up in the East Bay in Pleasanton. Ryan's father, Polish, used to play trumpet and his mother was a drummer in her high school marching band. Around age five Roxie picked up the guitar but was more interested in drums. It wasn't until he was around eleven or twelve that he started taking guitar seriously.

Roxie learned to play guitar from an old record player and invented his own form of scratching, going through many records in the process, picking out guitar parts. He was influenced by albums like Van Halen and has had many guitar heroes including Brian May from Queen, Steve Stevens, Elliot Easton from The Cars, Neil Geraldo from Pat Benatar and Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick.

Career

Candy

Candy were a band featuring original members Kyle Vincent, Jonathan Daniel, John Schubert, and guitarist Geoff Siegel. Gilby Clarke replaced Siegel after 6 months. They had an album release in 1985 titled Whatever Happened To Fun. Later that year, Gilby Clarke replaced Kyle Vincent as lead vocalist, and guitarist Roxie joined the lineup. After Gilby parted to form his own band Kill for Thrills the rest of the guys joined up with new lead vocalist Shane and became the Electric Angels.

Electric Angels

Roxie formed Electric Angels with Shane, Jonathan Daniel and drummer John Schubert. They moved to New York where they signed to Atlantic Records. The show they are signed at is opening for Dogs D'amour and Mother Love Bone (some of whose members went on to form Pearl Jam) and their self-titled album is released in 1990 produced by Tony Visconti (best known for his work with T Rex, Bowie and Thin Lizzy to name a few). The band works on a second album to be called New York Times but is dropped by Atlantic before it is released.

Hired Gun

Between '94 and '96 Roxie worked with various artists. He provided guitar on Gilby Clarke's albums, Pawnshop Guitars, Blooze, The Hangover and Rubber. Roxie also lent his guitar styling to the un-credited work with Tal Bachman. Roxie's guitar work is displayed on the hit single "She's So High" produced by Bob Rock. Roxie played guitar on James Michael's (from Sixx AM) Inhale release as well. In 2000 Roxie also wrote and recorded on Slash's Snakepit's second album Ain't Life Grand.

Dad's Porno Mag

In 1997 Roxie joined up with long-time friends drummer Mike Fasano and bassist Will Effertz and created the band Dad's Porno Mag. After Effertz left, guitarist Keri Kelli and bassist Stefan Adika joined. The album was released on Wax-Tone Records. This item is now out of stock but was re-released in 2000 from Robinson Records. Produced by Jim Mitchell of Ugly Kid Joe fame and Mark Schulman (Simple Minds) with additional production by Alex Woltman and friend Gilby Clarke. The album has fourteen tracks and one special hidden track entitled "My Bad Knee" on track 77. It is currently available at this site: ()

Alice Cooper era

Roxie began working with Alice Cooper in 1996 after a few good words were put in for him by Gilby and a shady character known as 'Bobby from Mates' while proving himself in an audition. He was offered a 'one year tour' playing with Alice. His first show with the Cooper band was at Sammy Hagar's Cabo Wabo club in Cabo San Lucas.

In 2000 Roxie recorded his first studio album with Alice Cooper, Brutal Planet. Through 2000 to 2005 Roxie collaborated with Cooper on several albums including Dragontown, The Eyes of Alice Cooper and Dirty Diamonds, co-writing a number of songs on the latter two albums.

In March 2012 it was announced ^[2] that Ryan Roxie was rejoining the Alice Cooper band for the forthcoming 2012 tour. He will be joining Tommy Henriksen and Orianthi on guitar, Chuck Garric on bass and Glenn Sobel on drums.

Roxie 77

R77 formed in 2002 and wrote a bunch of songs whose influences lie somewhere in between The Beatles and the Beastie Boys. They played the usual suspect clubs around the L.A. area for the next year, and then recorded their debut CD.

Roxie 77's 11-song debut CD is entitled Peace, Love & Armageddon and is released under the small indie Wax-Tone Records label. The spectrum of music and song subject matter span from acting like a punk-ass kid to facing the reality of actually having a kid.

A new album "Two Sides To Every Story" was released in July 2009 - available as downloads only through the band's webspace at bandcamp.com . The band added a new song every week, so that it comes to a total of 24 songs. Each song is downloadable as a regular and also as an acoustic version.

In 2014 Roxie 77 released a 6-song EP entitled 'The Ameriswede'. This is a unique release out on Bellyache Records and is available in a package that includes vinyl, CD, and digital download. The album's two sides feature a slick 'radio-friendly' mix of the album called 'side American'is mixed by Tommy Henriksen whereas the flip-side (the Swedish side) is mixed by Jon Bordon with a more garage-indie sound.

Casablanca

Roxie has also recorded two records with the Swedish Stockholm-based band, Casablanca. The first record is titled 'Apocalyptic Youth' and the second album is called 'Riding a Black Swan'

Other projects

Big Rock Show Podcast

On July 7, 2005, Roxie aired the first Roxie 77 podcast – Roxie's Big Rock Show. There were seven Podcasts in total which featured interviews with long-time friend Stefan Adika, as well as Calico Cooper, Damon Johnson, Eric Singer, Alice Cooper and Cheap Tricks Rick Nielsen and Bun E. Carlos. The podcast also featured Roxie's favourite songs, some rare tracks and two unreleased Roxie tracks including "Consequence of the City" with ex-Alice Cooper band member and friend Eric Dover on vocals.

Media

October 2006 saw Roxie hosting his own radio show on Rocket 95.3 FM (The Rock Home of Stockholm) The show ran every Wednesday from 2pm to 4pm (Stockholm time) and played a variety of music. The website featured live streaming, an online chat and webcam of Roxie in the studio.

March 2016 Roxie currently hosts a web-based Blab show called Big Rock Talk. The show features special guest interviews along with music videos. Some have compared it to the early days of MTV style programming.

Discography

Albums

With Gilby Clarke

With Alice Cooper

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ryan Roxie.

• Official Ryan Roxie Homepage