Maggie and Miller strike a happy chord

By Will Morris, The Daily World

Spend any time at all around Maggie Ryan, and one thing becomes pretty obvious — she loves music. Big-band jazz, blues-guitar-driven classic rock and even the occasional song by the ubiquitous Lady Gaga — she loves it all. If you spend any more time around Ryan another thing becomes clear — she loves kids. So when Ryan graduated high school, it seemed almost preordained that she would become a music teacher.

“I think I always wanted to be a teacher,” Ryan said, noting that her passion for music started in junior high school. “And I first got into music at this age.”

Ryan, 25, is the newly minted band teacher at Miller Junior High School. Hired at the beginning of this academic year, she is one of the latest additions to both the school and Aberdeen District’s staff of musical educators. As part of this, she has taken over the highly regarded World Rhythms Percussion Ensemble at Miller.

Ryan is a long-term Washington resident. She grew up in Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island, raised in, what she described as, “a musical family.” As soon as she was old enough, she began picking around with instruments. She remembers spending many hours with her father and brother playing blues and jazz in a family garage band. Her father played the guitar, her brother, Mike was on drums and Ryan’s weapon of choice was the standing bass.

“Basically we jammed on blues all the time,” she said.


Booker T & the M.G.’s influence

One of the first things the family learned to play together and one of her favorite songs was “Green Onions,” a 1962 hit by the rhythm and blues band, Booker T. & the M.G.’s.

Ryan’s father, Larry, once a professional musician, remembers the jamming sessions fondly, “You don’t know how awesome it was for me as an aging guitar player, to have my own rhythm section at home with my son and daughter as developing musicians,” he said.

Ryan chose the song because Booker T. & the M.G.’s played as the rhythm section for Stax Records, an influential R&B label then in competition with Motown Records. Stax’s roster of artists included Otis Redding and Rufus Thomas.

“They were a very influential rhythm section,” her father said. “I thought it was a good song for Mike and Maggie and I. To me it was roots of rhythm and blues.”

Musically, Ryan seemed to gravitate toward bands with bass and rock guitar players that borrowed heavily from the blues like Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin and Eric Clapton of Cream.

Read more: http://thedailyworld.com/sections/news/local/maggie-and-miller-strike-happy-chord.html