Jelly Roll Team Profiles - Ricky Barkosky

 

Ricky Barkosky

My day job is a freelance English teacher. I have a B.A. in Global and International Studies with a minor in German language and culture from the University of Kansas and have been actively playing music for over ten years now. The latter is what defines everything about my day-to-day life. I love discovering and listening to music and I really can’t imagine being anything other than a musician and artist. 

I luckily found music and art at a young age. My mom is a painter and always had records on, my dad is a drummer, my uncle a guitar player, and my step mom and step dad always encouraged creativity and individuality. I would always go along to my dad’s band practice and remember being simply transfixed by how everything appeared—I loved how the drums looked when they were set up, the posters of maple-like leaves on the wall, and how the silver grill of the Fender amp face glistened everywhere except the cigarette burns. 

I started playing drums at sixteen and at nineteen moved to Seoul, South Korea with my family. I joined a band called On Sparrow Hills, which happened to be formed by English teachers, and recorded an EP, The Sitting Choir, in 2009.
 
In the midwestern college oasis of Lawrence, Kansas I met and became friends with Ron Miller, drummer for Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds, and formed the garage rock and roll band Up The Academy. We recorded numerous times at the Harveyville Project and released a selftitled 7” in 2012 on Replay Records. Additionally, we played numerous shows, including two years in a row at the SXSW festival in Austin, TX, and toured the States.  

Some years later, I joined the psychedelic, shoegaze band Psychic Heat and continued to play rigorously—including another year at SXSW. I toured with Psychic Heat and recorded the album Sunshower at the Harveyville Project, which was released in May 2016 on High Dive Records.  
I’ve been extremely lucky, knock on wood, in convincing the woman who is now my lovely German girlfriend to be with me and in finding so many other amazing people in Germany. In other words, I call Hamburg my home nowadays. I’m working with my new band The Wayward Howls and continue to write and play music daily. 

I’m really pleased to be working with the extremely talented and diverse individuals on The Jelly Roll Factory team and look forward to see what the future brings.