TWOTRACK is...

Ryan Bayless: acoustic and electric guitars, harmonica,                           violin, piano, organ, drums, percussion, vocals.

Todd Bayless: banjo, acoustic and electric guitars, lap steel,                            drums, percussion, vocals.

BIOGRAPHY

TWOTRACK is a band made up of twin brothers who grew up in the small town of Gainesville, Texas and have since lived and quit jobs in Denton TX, Dallas TX, Groveland CA, Taos NM, Olympia WA, Jewell OR, Aragon NM, Salt Lake City UT, Durango CO, and Flagstaff AZ.

Formally members of the bands The Barnstormers, Deep Blue Creek, and The Nightjars out of Durango, Colorado, they now live and work in Austin, Texas.

Multi-intrumentalists and multi-dimensional, Ryan and Todd Bayless of Twotrack have collectively penned over 50 songs and continue their quest for the Cosmic American sound.
 
   
 
A MUSICAL HISTORY OF TWOTRACK
 
      Ryan and Todd Bayless have always enjoyed a life filled with music. Ryan began piano lessons at the age of six, often competing in contests and even placing in a few. Todd picked up the guitar at age nine and instantly started learning Beatles songs.

     Throughout their youth they took turns learning new instruments such as saxophone, trumpet, and harmonica. This obsession with music never ceased, and the brothers continued playing casually through their adolescence (while fanatically collecting records which they still do today.)

Listen to two very early influences of the young Bayless brothers HERE and HERE.
 
    Attending college at the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas, the brothers focused on their other interests of literature and writing (Ryan) and biology and anthropology (Todd). But they never strayed too far from a life of music, their best friends always being musicians, frequently jazz fiends in the infamous jazz program at UNT. They also traveled frequently, often exploring the very locations out west they would one day call home.

    After college, the brothers separated for a while. Todd took a job in central California studying endangered raptors, while Ryan moved into a friend's small cabin in Taos, New Mexico to pursue a life of writing and isolation. A love of nature has dominated both brothers and has often found its way into their art as well.

Read two of Ryan's poems written in Taos from the winter of 1995. 		 
 
      Eventually Ryan found himself back in Denton in the fall of 1996 moving in with two close friends, Laura and Brad Dehart. There being an old guitar in the house (affectionately named 'Warhorse'), Ryan began learning how to play. Working and teaching in the Dallas school district by day and playing endless one chord songs and Neil Young covers by night, Ryan and Brad spent the next several months wood-shedding and writing songs together, often recording the results on extremely bad technology.

Listen to Brad's song 'Clex Bronson' with Ryan on backwards harmonica.
 
    Meanwhile, Todd had moved to Olympia, Washington and eventually obtained a job with Oregon State University as a wildlife biologist studying endangered spotted owls. Throughout his years there he often lived in a small trailer in the rainy forests on the Oregon coast.

     Having plenty of time on his hands, he bought a used banjo from his neighbor, a crazy vet self-named 'Crusty Dave', and began to teach himself to play. Working and driving survey routes at night, he listened incessantly to tapes of Appalachian music and emulated this style during the days inside his trailer. There is no better way to learn banjo, he thought, for no one else would have to endure his incessant and compulsive banjo rolls.

Listen to an early recording of Todd and Ryan playing the Roscoe Holcomb song'Little Birdie.' 		 
 
      In 1998, Ryan got the urge to move again. After an extended road trip through the southwest, he found himself in Salt Lake City, Utah at the home of his friend from Denton, Steve Smith. The two rented a house together in the Sugarhouse section of downtown Salt Lake and spent the next year between night shifts playing music in their basement and listening to delta blues and early Bob Dylan records.

     Ryan and Steve recorded the results of their improvisational song writing on a two track tape recorder, honing their style with lots of coffee and 3.2 beer. Over the course of several months they recorded over 40 hours of music in their makeshift basement studio, filling dozens of the cheapest cassette tapes money could buy.

Listen to the song 'Independence Day' recorded in the basement under Sugarhouse.
 
     Eventually, the twins found themselves back together again when they decided in the winter of 1999 to move to Durango, Colorado completely on a whim. They found a great house for rent 20 miles outside of town in the beautiful Vallecito River valley and commenced to obtain part time work in town while playing music at home.

     Ryan had by now picked up and taught himself fiddle and mandolin to accent Todd's now proficient banjo playing. Todd also began playing with Deep Blue Creek, a local traditional bluegrass band. Slowly the idea of forming a band of their own emerged as the two fused their instruments and harmonies together.

Listen to a four track recording of Ryan's song 'Want To Be Wind'

Listen to a late night home recording of Todd's song, 'Wishing Well' 		 
 
         By this time, Brad had also moved west to Taos, and the idea of forming a band took shape. Calling themselves The Barnstormers because of the way they swooped in to play shows from various locations, the band began playing live shows at Storyville, a bar in downtown Durango that Ryan worked at as a bartender. Here Ryan, Todd, Brad, and Steve teamed up with bass player, Chuck Brewster, and rehearsed and wrote dozens of songs.

Listen to the Barnstormers' version of Neil Young's 'Mellow My Mind.'
 

     The Barnstormers live performances were a virtual musical tour of American music, combining their many originals with covers from the likes of Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan and the Band, Willie Nelson, Steve Earle, Bill Monroe, Hank Williams, Gram Parsons, and Jimmy Reed along with Appalachian fiddle and banjo songs and bluegrass standards.

    From 1999 -2002 the band played numerous shows at Storyville and throughout the four corners region, all the while working meticulously on their own songwriting and musicianship.

Listen to The Barnstormers' cover of the Townes Van Zandt classic song, 'White Freight Liner' recorded live at Storyville in Durango, Colorado.

 
 

 

     At long last, Ryan, Todd, Brad and Steve decided to officially record an album of their original songs. Renaming the band, The Nightjars, they converged in the spring of 2002 in the basement of Steve's Salt Lake City home with instruments stacked roof high in the backseat.

    Their album, Seems Like Day, was recorded over four days, most of it live in one take. The ten original songs captured the sound of their live shows while showcasing the songwriting styles and playing of four distinct voices who had been honing their skills together for years.

Listen to tracks from the Nightjar's album Seems Like Day:

    Tell Me I Tried     Breeze      What It Takes     Bitter Tears
 
 

     Unfortunately the demands of work and life took the band members in different directions around this time. Ryan and his girlfriend of several years, Elizabeth, moved to Austin; Brad and his wife, Laura, to San Antonio. Steve remained in Salt Lake, while Todd found work in Flagstaff, Arizona and there married his girlfriend Mylea, another wildlife biologist.

    Although the Nightjars are dispersed in all directions, the four comrades manage to meet up and play often to this very day. The hard work and practice of these friends is what ultimately led to the emergence of the current incarnation of this musical history, the band you now know as TWOTRACK!

Click HERE to continue the story...