Sonny Falls

One of the Chicago scene’s last releases of 2020 finally hits the airwaves in full this week when Sonny Falls new album All That Has Come Apart​/​Once Did Not Exist makes its full debut on Tuesday, December 15th. A sixteen month journey that was hampered by restarts, delays, and of course the pandemic. Once the record was finished in April, it was released over the course of the summer and fall as singles and two EPs, with only three songs saved for the final record. But now fans can experience the full journey as it was meant to be, a rolling escapade of city life filled with personal experiences and emotive confessions; rocking guitar vibes offset by deftly stirring story songs reminiscent of Elliott Smith or Sun Kil Moon.   

The man behind the music, Ryan “Hoagie Wesley” Ensley has been a fixture in the Chicago scene for years, playing in numerous bands including Shiloh, with Old Joy’s Alex Reindl. Or as a member of Young Camelot, the infamous DIY space that helped turn the house show into the testing ground of the local scene. If you hit in the DIY scene, slots at clubs were never very far away. “It was really amazing, just a few doors down, The Flower Shop was on the same block,” he reminisced, “It’s crazy those shows happened and the cops weren’t there more often. There is one photo I reference whenever anyone asks about it. It’s on Instagram, under #youngcamelot, it was the biggest show we had. It was on New Years, when Twin Peaks played as the Chicago Bulls. There was like five hundred people in there. I don’t know how that happened. It was like some kind of magic, that it wasn’t just shut down immediately.” 

Growing up between Chicago and Northwest Indiana, where he lived with his Grandparents, Ensley remembers a childhood on the move, “ Back and forth, driving around; yeah, I feel like kind of all over the place,” he recollects. Something that is reflected in tunes throughout the album like “Swollen Summer” or “Plasma Kids.”     

Writing about childhood and growing up is nothing new but the honesty and clear-headedness of approach holds a candle to the great songwriters of the past. However, striving for sharing candidly can add a stress on an artist. A journey he has had to make himself: “It’s kind of nerve racking I guess. Well, it’s nerve racking the day I release it,” Ensley mussed. “Because I’ll write it, and I feel it’s exciting. It was very therapeutic...it was like putting music to a journal I guess. I’ve always been a fan of confessional songwriters and I just tried to...I don’t know...I’m getting a little older, and the songwriters I’ve enjoyed the most are the people I feel like I’m friends with. And this record is my way of allowing people to know me via the stories of my own experiences, and they just happen to fall out of my head really explicitly. Some of it came out a little bit more directly. I didn’t set out to write like that, it just sort of happened. Then it formed, and I just kind of went with it. I wanted someone to be able to listen to it and feel like they were sort of my friend afterwards. Like they knew me, or maybe they wouldn’t want to be my friend if they know me (laughs).”

Recording started last August but soon roadblocks began to show themselves, “In the middle of it, it went through a lineup change,” he said, as the musicians who made up the band on their debut Some Kind Of Spectre departed, “I had the group from the first record when we first started it, and in the middle of it some shit happened, and I got some new folks to play with.” Those “new folks” were his former collaborator Reindl and drummer Josh Snader of Canadian Rifle, Sea Of Shit, Tower Of Rome, and more. With his new compatriots in bound, most of the old recordings were scrapped and new sessions were worked through. “I started to feel like it was cursed,” Ensley commented, “It’s sixteen songs, I think nine of them are full band and the rest are kind of recorded acoustic and I studiofied them.”

Then the pandemic hit in the middle of mixing with Doug Malone of Jamdek. Completed over digital communication the record was ready to go, but releasing a project traditionally wasn’t in the cards this year so they slowly put it out over the course of the long summer months. Which may have led to more pressure on Ensley due to the personal nature of the songs, “[Sometimes] I’m afraid that they’ll hear it and get mad at me. It’s not like they are diss tracks...but some lines...I don’t know.” he pondered, “I feel like anyone who writes things that are really personal, you just never know how it's going to interface with the people that were around those stories. I think I succeeded, I didn’t say anything overly personal about anyone, but you never know how someone will feel about a story that maybe even someone they knew was around and they don’t like that. No one has called me mad yet, so that’s good. It’s honest, I’m not making anything up. If anything I don’t think anyone could really be angry. It’s just a bunch of shit that’s true and I tried to sing about it respectfully.”

Looking forward to his album release livestream Monday night (December 14th) he was hoping for a more informal atmosphere than most digital shows, “I have seven different friends playing a couple songs each, then I’ll play a couple songs. I haven’t done a ton of livestream stuff, I haven’t really watched a lot of them,” Ensley contemplated, “It’s hard to make it sound good, and it is a little depressing, that’s why I thought for this one I would get as many friends as possible and make it feel like a party Zoom call or something.”

Though he is looking ahead to the days when Sonny Falls can get back to playing live, something that has been lacking in life, “I definitely miss the community. But it’ll come back,” he said, “Maybe like a reset. I’m trying to view it positively as a once in a lifetime opportunity to recognize how great normal boring going to the bar nights are. Really appreciating the world not being shut down. Who gets the opportunity to really appreciate that.” 

A realization that some things are worth treasuring, “What’s it gonna be, maybe fourteen or fifteen months, even if it goes till August or September and there’s no shows, what’s a year and half in a lifetime? The appreciation we will have for it will make it well worth it,” as he says laughing “I never thought I would miss a crowded Cole’s.” 

You can find All That Has Come Apart​/​Once Did Not Exist for preorder on bandcamp and it will be streaming everywhere December 15th. 

The release livestream even is Monday, December 14th at 7PM featuring performances by MANEKA, lost boy?, Oceanator, Jordyn Blakely, Old Joy, Ester, Burr Oak, and Options. It’s not to be missed.