Today we’d like to introduce you to Tad Ryan.
Hi Tad, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
Disappointing Joseph started with three friends who grew up and went to high school together. I (Tad Ryan – piano/vocals) had piano lessons from age 4-14, but grew weary of daily practicing and weekly lessons entering high school age. Eventually after becoming friends with Carl DeSiena (guitar) and knowing he was learning guitar, I decided I’d rather play guitar too. My grandma had purchased a yard sale acoustic for me on a trip to Florida, just thinking it would be something I might like, so I started working on teaching myself how to play. Over time, we started writing some tunes of our own for fun, and recording to tape on a four track recorder Carl ended up with. When that got to the point where it didn’t sound half bad to us, we recruited our friend Luke Kirkendall (Kirky – bass) and started trying to teach him the bass. He got so into it that eventually I ended up helping his dad buy him his first one. After finding a drummer at my church, we gathered up enough songs to record a demo album, starting off calling ourselves Some Friends of Mine. That eventually led to a few early shows that we put on ourselves…and then over time meeting new friends and musicians.
We started playing the weekly open mic at Java Joe’s in Ocean Beach, and challenged ourselves to write a new song each week. For fun, b/c we were looking for a new name, we’d make up a new name each week (Inside Voices, Drunk & Unprepared, etc). In that stretch, at one practice we had at my old church (I used to be a worship leader in a different life), one of us came in, during the holiday season, and said, “I just walked past the nativity season, and Joseph just shook his head at me”…which led almost immediately to, “so, are you saying we’re disappointing Joseph?”…and that was about 25 years ago now.
We eventually recorded a new 4/5 song demo with our new drummer Danny Hambrick who Carl met at work, and ended up playing all over town for a few years (Winston’s, Casbah, Cane’s, several Rock n’ Roll marathon spots, etc).
After that stretch came a few down years as some of us moved away for a stretch, and started families, jobs, life. We came back together about 2012 for another Rock n’ Roll marathon, met some new friends, added new singers, and started a stretch playing 3-4 hour spots around the county as mostly a cover band, playing many styles/genres, and less original music. Somewhere, in that timeframe, I ended up stepping back from playing guitar as much, and got back into the piano, learning more how to play in a pop/rock style using the foundations I had built in my times studying classical as a kid. We had a good run in that iteration for several years, and then comes Covid.
I stepped away almost entirely for a couple years, taking care of my family, but also finding the song-writing bug again. After losing my mom in 2022, the floodgates opened up and I ended up with more new songs then I knew what to do with. Started meeting up with the original DJ again (Carl & Kirky) and finding that we all still liked working on new material together, and wanted to record…we just needed to find a drummer that was available and wanted to work with us. Cue Dean Osuna.
Dean is the drummer for several other local bands, including Natural Selection, a band that Carl had joined after I had stepped away from performing in the Covid era. He asked Dean if he’d be interested in trying some things out for fun with our new material, and gratefully Dean was willing to take a shot. From the first rehearsal we set up, it was very clear that we were gonna make an album. We rehearsed and refined from late 2024 to mid 2025, and ended up with our first full album release, The Reasons for it All, which we released to streaming in December of 2025. Produced and engineered by Danny Trujillo at his studio in our home town of Ramona, it turned into something we’re all very proud of, something we can leave behind for our kids, which was truly the reason for it all in the first place.
That lead to more shows and more fun, and to now, where we’ve got a new crop of tunes we’re working on, and shoot for the stars one more time by recording a follow-up album in 2027, adding our friend Charlie Rosolino on guitar to the mix (Charlie’s been our “rapper” and hype man on cover gigs all along the way, and a great song-writer in his own fashion as well).
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It’s never easy getting people and schedules aligned when everyone has the busy lives we all do to navigate. We’ve had times where there just wasn’t a chance to practice/rehearse as much as we’d want, but the shows must go on. We’ve had times where we’d need to find a fill in musician to make a show happen that was on the books already, when someone’s life threw them a curveball as it often does…but we’ve made it work. I’ve had times as a songwriter where I’ve not been able to express myself in an effective enough way to translate what I’m hearing in my head to my friends who are trying to learn the songs, but they’ve always, in the end, helped make everything better.
Regardless of what life has handed us, over the years, we’ve always found the desire, and the effort, to get back together, and put on shows, and make new music. Starting out as friends, I think, has been crucial. Music isn’t the reason that we still exist in each other’s lives, we’ll always be friends. But sharing that passion has certainly been a big part of why we’ve been able to keep at it all these years. As we’ve gotten older and more introspective…leaving a record of our passion definitely became a bit of an obsession…and that’s a big drive to keep going while we can. We really want to leave something behind that our families can be proud of…and hopefully find some like minded listeners along the way who can find some things in the music to relate to.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’ve worked in the credit union industry for basically my entire career at this point, starting as a teller in branches, to various roles along the way in the back-office. For the past nine years I’ve moved to the IT side, now in a role covering cybersecurity as an analyst. I was always the one that people would reach out to for help with tech, probably b/c I was good at troubleshooting things before I even really knew what troubleshooting meant. Much of my focus now is around audits, along with security awareness. I get to blend the analytical, detailed side of my brain, with the part that’s always been creative, trying to help tech speak be less daunting, and support people in their ability to spot the dangerous things in their daily roles. AI has come in and made it so much easier for the “bad guys” to do their thing. Helping people know what’s out there and what to look for, as well as offering a friendly ear for questions and concerns is very rewarding. There’s nothing better then knowing someone was comfortable reaching out to you for a question that they might feel would be looked at as “dumb” by others…but that you’ll help teach them, support them, and not make them regret they reached out.
What matters most to you? Why?
At work, I want people to feel empowered, and safe. I want people to feel supported, and comfortable asking for help. I want people to recognize what they’re capable of, and not have as much self-doubt as I often do.
In the band, I want everyone to own their talent, and feel comfortable making suggestions, trying new things, and making things better.
At home, I want my girls to feel loved, supported, and never afraid to reach out to me no matter what. I want them to know that I might not always react my best during super stressful times, but that I’m good at apologizing, and will always drop anything in life to make sure they’re aware that they’re truly my reason for it all.
I want to be someone that can be relied on, but also that teaches people how they can better rely on themselves with the resources they have available…empowerment is key.
Mostly, I want everyone to know that they’re not alone, in a world that increasingly seems to want to tear things apart, and isolate people…I want them to know that we’re all so much more alike in our drives and our goals…humans are humans are humans…and we need to allow for our differences, but rally around our humanity to find ways to make life better for everyone.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.djbandsd.com
- Instagram: @djbandsd
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DisappointingJoseph?mibextid=wwXIfr&mibextid=wwXIfr
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCkDKT-kO59vvSWPhx6T-7xw?si=nml_04grVwBGdcev
- Soundcloud: https://on.soundcloud.com/t6uZYxuu9rlq67Zcum
- Other: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/disappointingjoseph/the-reasons-for-it-all/?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio
