Wausau band flocks to UW Oshkosh music fest

Ryan Flannery and the Night Owls is one of the many talented bands playing at WISCO! the music event on March 9 in the Reeve Memorial Union Ballroom. They are an indie/rock jazz trio from Wausau, Wisconsin.

All three of the band members have been involved in music their whole lives. Ryan Flannery plays the piano, John Burgess the drums and Tom Kallio plays the guitar.

"Me and John met at UW-Marathon County and started playing music together in 2008," Flannery said.

The band became a trio when it added Kallio in early 2010.

"I started learning music when I was eleven," Kallio said. "And two years later discovered British rock from the ‘60s and ‘70s and began to teach myself to play guitar," Kallio said.

Their lyrics are somewhat difficult to categorize into one specific genre.

"I guess I could say that they're not your typical ‘pop love song' type of lyrics," Flannery, who writes all of the band's songs, said. "They're a lot of word pictures and symbolizations for different aspects of life, that are often meant for people to interpret for themselves."

Mitchel De Santis, a close acquaintance of Ryan Flannery and the Night Owls, was one of the first agents to book them. The band played at Why Not Wausau?, a summer music festival in Wausau. De Santis has been an avid fan ever since.

"I'm extremely impressed with Ryan's vocal ability and how is he able to reproduce it on stage so well," De Santis said. "It's almost as if Elton John and Ben Folds had a love child."

Flannery writes most of the band's lyrics. They are about Flannery's life experiences and his reactions, whether good or bad.

"Ryan's songwriting strays far from repetition maintaining one clearly defined sound or genre," Kallio said. "With every song he tries to find new sounds and territories to explore, resulting in a unique sound which is hard, especially for us, to categorize."

The band doesn't like to market itself to a specific age group, and wants its love of music to be recognized, so anyone, whether young or old, can relate to it, Kallio said.

"I think if they stick with this project they could easily be making a career for themselves," De Santis said. "If not a career then perhaps a really fond memory. They're doing what they love, and they have a community that supports them, and in my book, that is success."

WISCO! the music event is the last show Ryan Flannery and the Night Owls will be playing for a long time. The three are all going in different directions, in both location and career.  Flannery is getting married this summer and hopes to move to Nashville, Tenn. within the next year. He plans on continuing to write and perform music.

"John and Tom will always be very good friends of mine," Flannery said. "They plan to continue their musical endeavors as well."

Ryan Flannery and the Night Owls will be playing in the ballroom at 9:30 p.m.

"We're going to be putting our heart and soul into this show as well as having as much fun as we possibly can," Flannery said. "There will be a lot of energy, and we're hoping the crowd will enjoy the experience as much as we're all planning to."