Hot off the release of their newest record The Brightest Days, vocalist and guitarist of Origami Angel, Ryland Heagy, sat down with us to talk about the band’s inception, growing up in Washington, D.C., Pokémon, the new album, and their upcoming tour.
In fact, some of Heagy’s earliest memories involve music. Vividly, he remembers when his mother used to sing and play guitar for him when he was a little kid. “Music was an important part of my upbringing. The majority of the memory of my life has had some musical involvement in it.”
Heagy’s lifelong love affair with music began at a very young age. Dabbling with music in their free time, his parents encouraged him, along with his other siblings, to pick up music. “I was kind of always around music,” he explains, “There was this one night, I remember I was, like, 7 or 8 years old; I kind of just decided that I wanted to try to play my mom’s guitar. She taught me a couple of chords; she taught me how to play ‘The Little Drummer Boy.’”
From there, Heagy took a serious interest in music, with it occupying his mind at all times. In school, he would fill composition book after composition book full of lyrics. He thought he hit the motherload when he discovered Garage Band, which allowed him to start creating music.
Around the same time, Heagy started to record videos of himself singing and playing the guitar. Gaining confidence, he began to share these videos with friends and family—all the while filling up notebooks with entire collections of songs he would later try and record.
Around the age of 14, one of his best friends, Jacob Burns, asked him to join his band Idle Empire, marking Heagy’s first experience in the industry. As time went on, the band found themselves in need of another drummer, so Burns called upon Pat Doherty, a friend he had toured with previously. From there, Doherty became a permanent addition to the band. Meanwhile, the majority of this had occurred throughout Heagy’s senior year of high school, though he says it felt like much longer.
Eventually, the band decided it would be best to part ways, but Heagy was just getting started. With a vision to start a two-piece emo band, he recruited Doherty, and the two have “been playing shows and rocking out ever since.”
With this partnership, Heagy and Doherty are free to explore whatever they please, which can be demonstrated most in the release of their third EP, Gen 3, a Pokémon themed release. Describing the process, Heagy says, “It was super spontaneous. I mean, I had the structure for ‘Ruby’ before Origami Angel existed, and I never really knew what to do with it. I thought it would be kind of funny, so we went with it,” he laughs, “It was the third EP release, so we thought Gen 3 would be fitting.”
Now, their collaboration with one another has brought about the release of the latest album from Origami Angel, The Brightest Days, which features “My PG County Summer,” a song which details what it was like growing up in the tumultuous political area of Washington, D.C. Named after their home county, the song deals with having one’s home being used as a political weapon to spread hate by those who don’t even live there. “D.C. is one of the most progressive places in this country in terms of the actual population of people (who live there). It’s an incredibly diverse area. I felt in my upbringing that I was very culturally aware, like, there is such a diversity and progressive feeling—an acceptance of ideas.”
“As you get older, you start to see the scope of the whole world and the whole country instead of just your neighborhood, and how Washington, D.C. is being used to further other’s agendas. Like, me and my dad went and caught a Nationals game when I was, like,13, and there were a bunch of people on it doing the March for Life. I started to understand what was going on: These people are not from this area and are just here to utilize it as a political tool.”
He continues, “My senior year, I had some free time and just rode around the city on a bus… and I would see Trump campaign shit happening, like this indoctrination of these adults and their children. It was crazy.” He felt as if his city was being stolen from him. Meanwhile, he says, “Teachers would tell us that we should be grateful about living by so much history. But the thing we were told to be grateful for became a tool for white supremacy or just regular conservative values.”
As for the rest of The Brightest Days, Heagy found inspiration in the unlikeliest of sources: Weezer’s White Album. “I was never really a Weezer guy, but there was one day where, like, the memory is implanted in my brain. I was about to take a shower; it’s, like, two in the morning. I threw the album on and was like, ‘OK, it’s pretty good.’ Like, I’m trying to get ready for a shower. I have a towel in my hand, and I keep pacing around the bathroom. I got to the last song, and I’m like, ‘No, fuck it. One more time.’ I spent an hour and 10 minutes listening,” he says. “The whole album is very beach, very surf.”
“It’s not like everyone likes that as their Weezer. You talk to someone, and they’re like, ‘Oh, I just like the Blue one and Pinkerton.’ To me, the pinnacle is the White Album. It’s very West Coast-themed. It’s a rockified version of this old West Coast summer, Beach Boys-era type shit,” he explains, “And I was like, ‘What if someone did that for, like, the East Coast? What if we wrote it about New Jersey?’
Funnily enough, his new love of Weezer helped him meet one of his best friends and front-of-house sound person. About a week into a tour, “Drew took the aux and said, ‘I’m about to put on the greatest album of all time.’ And, I shit you not, he put on the White Album.” At first, Heagy thought it was a prank, thinking that Doherty or the tour manager put him up to it. “When I realized he was being serious, I realized we had to do the record with him—He had to be involved.”
Locking himself in his garage, he wrote a track a day. Written during the summer of 2020 when he wasn’t sure if/when live music was ever going to happen again, Heagy knew he had to work to keep himself sane. “I haven’t seen anyone, so what the fuck was I supposed to like?”
Since live music has come back, the band plans to keep themselves busy. Just finishing up a tour with Sweet Pill and Pinkshift, Heagy says the experience was amazing, seeing both bands live every night and getting to know them off stage.
Later this year, the band will tackle their biggest challenge as a group yet: playing Riot Fest on Friday, Origami Angel will immediately go to the airport after their set and fly to Japan for the first time. Nervous and excited by the prospect, Heagy is most excited for the Pokémon Center. “I keep telling myself that it’s like some rock star shit, so I don’t actually lose my mind catching red eyes and getting no sleep,” he says with a laugh.
You can order The Brightest Days here. You can follow Origami Angel on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Photo courtesy of Origami Angel
