Ryan Kinder Band

Ryan Kinder has been performing live for close to half his life. Born in Knoxville, TN, Kinder grew up the youngest of three in Birmingham Alabama. As a child, Ryan learned to play the guitar. “I had nothing to do,” he remembers, “so I poured it all into guitar. I remember hearing John Mayer’s Room for Squares, I learned that whole album, and then jumped into Dave Matthews and Keith Urban.” By 15, Kinder played anywhere he could, be it church, school, or bars. “I would drive to Auburn, then drive back to go to high school in the morning,” he says. “I had to grow up really quick.” Upon his high school graduation, Kinder headed for the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, where he played gigs for Music Garden three to four nights a week to help cover tuition. While at college, a friend of a friend introduced him to award-winning producer Keith Stegall (Alan Jackson, Zac Brown Band). After their first meeting, Stegall invited Kinder to come up to Nashville, a trip he started making once a week. “I would play gigs Wednesday through Saturday. On Sunday I would drive up to Nashville to write, drive back Monday night, and then school Tuesday through Thursday, over and over,” says Kinder. The schedule was unsustainable, and his grades suffered as a result. Stuff had started moving forward with Keith and we were talking about a record, about signing with a label. I went all in.” He signed his first publishing deal and kept his busy schedule of bar gigs until 2014, when his burgeoning success in Music City forced him to stop. He even signed a record deal, releasing “Kiss Me When I’m Down” to radio before enduring yet another blow when the label folded in the middle of his first radio tour. In the aftermath, Kinder had promised shows to stations who’d already added the song, so he self-financed the rest of the trip. “I promised I was going to come play,” he shrugs. Finances dwindled. With $20 left in his pocket, Kinder began preparing for reality. “I thought I was getting a job driving for Uber,” Kinder says. “I literally cleaned out my car, had the meeting ready to go... and then we played the CMA Fest and [Warner Nashville president] John Esposito came backstage. He said, ‘Hey Ryan, I’m going to sign you in two weeks.’” After everything he’d been through, what was Kinder’s reaction? “I laughed at him,” he says. But the signing was no joke. Shortly after, He signed a publishing deal with Warner/Chappell, built relationships, including songwriters like Ross Copperman, Josh Osborne, Tom Douglas and kept a busy touring schedule scoring opening slots with Zac Brown Band, Brett Eldredge, and Tim McGraw. Says Kinder- My voice and the way I play guitar wouldn’t have been acceptable five, ten years ago – but honestly and inherently, country is blues. And being able to tell your story through a song? That’s country to me.” Most of all, says Kinder, he wants his music to be there for the joy, the heartbreak, and everything in between. “I want people to have memories about when they heard my song for the first time,” he says. “I want to make a soundtrack for people’s lives.”

But the band will play parties for college crowds that include cover music. After all, Ryan Kinder Band has been performing in live music venues across the south for over years, Look for the Ryan Kinder Band at a college nightclub, fraternity or sorority party, or festival soon.

Ryan Kinder Band from Tuscaloosa, Alabama is a high energy country and Jam band that plays Funk, Southern and Classic Rock, Groove and other types of music. This band is perfect for all events. To book Ryan Kinder Band, call Music Garden today at 800-689-BAND(2263) or email by clicking on the "request more information" tab on this page.

Past BIO
Ryan Kinder brings a wealth of life experience to his debut album, Room to Dream. He launched his performing career as a teenager in the clubs around his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, and his music has since carried him to Nashville and a tour with two of his musical heroes.

Kinder has accrued more than 95 million streams by steadily building a fan base through electrifying live shows, exceptional musicianship, and a sound he describes as “riff-roaring rock with a side of sweet Southern soul.” The dream awakened in him during a family vacation in Destin, Florida, when he was roused from a backseat nap by his mom’s John Mayer CD.



“As a kid, so many things can catch your interest, and they’re fleeting, but this enraptured me. I was locked into these lyrics,” he remembers. “I took the record from her and listened to it and listened to it. There was a guitar class at my middle school and I switched classes to take it as an extracurricular activity, because I needed to know how to do this. I thought maybe I could learn a couple songs of this new artist I found, and it ended up just taking over my life.”



Because his parents weren’t well off, Kinder borrowed a guitar to prove that he was serious about learning to play. Soon, he learned Mayer’s album, Room for Squares, front to back, and proved his talent to his mother by playing her The Beatles’ “Blackbird.” Not long after that, Kinder acquired a Takamine guitar and lined up some gigs at local bars, where the owners could see his potential. Because his parents had to be in attendance for legal reasons, his dad would sit by the door with the bouncer while his mother slept in a booth because she worked the early shift of a nursing job.



His mother favored ‘70s artists like Jackson Browne, The Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, and James Taylor, and his dad preferred Marshall Tucker Band. Meanwhile, Kinder absorbed all of those sounds. “I didn’t realize how much I was taking in the songwriting aspect at that point,” he says, “but once I started playing bars and frat parties, I realized how much of an impact certain songs had on people, and I was like, ‘Ah, I need to write something like that.’”



As a teen, Kinder also picked up a part-time job as a gaffer for a local church. His boss’ best friend knew the Nashville producer Keith Stegall from high school and sent him a Facebook message telling him about Kinder. Stegall asked to hear more and soon became a mentor.



When Kinder enrolled in college in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, he carved out a schedule of going to class on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, then playing gigs on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. Then on Sunday, he’d drive up to Nashville to write songs with Stegall and other songwriters before driving back to Alabama on Monday afternoon to start the whole cycle again. When a tornado devastated Tuscaloosa in 2011, sparing his own house but destroying everything behind it, Kinder took it as his cue to drop out of school and move to Nashville.



“A tornado is a jarring moment of your life in more aspects than just realizing that life is too short, but I had the blessing of knowing what I wanted to do with my life. I just needed a good kick in the ass to go do it,” he says.



Kinder signed with a short-lived independent label first, which folded on the day his single was going for adds at country radio. A subsequent deal with a major label yielded a few singles but no album. In 2018, he landed a spot on tour opening for ZZ Top and John Fogerty. Although he came away with countless stories, Kinder especially remembers having his soundcheck interrupted by Fogerty himself, who imparted this wisdom: “Don’t play to the empty seats.”



“It took me a couple of days to figure out what he was talking about,” Kinder says, “and it was as simple as playing to the people who are there, who care enough to come early and hear the guy that nobody knows about. I think about that every time I go on stage. That was the sweetest thing anyone could ever do. That tour was a big moment of feeling like I am doing something right. I’m on the right path.”



Kinder now uses his tour dates to bolster his charitable organization, Kinder’s Kids. One image from the Tuscaloosa tornado stuck with him – a neighboring child clutching her teddy bear, surrounded by wreckage where their house used to be. Seeing how that toy brought her comfort, he created Kinder’s Kids to personally deliver provide toys to children in the aftermath of national disasters. In his tour riders, he asks each venue to supply a toy for the foundation.


Beyond his music career, Kinder has immersed himself in training for triathlons and Ironman competitions. He completed his first distance cycling ride on the Natchez Trace in memory of a friend who had recently died of cancer, ultimately riding 444 miles. On that ride, he talked to his late friend’s racing buddy, who introduced him to the Ironman – where an athlete swims 2.4 miles, rides 112 miles, and runs 26.2 miles. Being told that his late friend had always wanted to do one, Kinder took it upon himself to achieve that dream in his honor.


Today, Kinder is a proudly independent artist and he’s ready to share Room to Dream. “I had a lot of time to figure out what I wanted to do after a certain time in my life, and all these songs came together with different aspects of who I was when I wrote them,” he concludes. “It was a beautiful realization that some of the bad things and not-so-fun situations led to the opportunity for me to have the room to dream, and to really be myself.”