Songwriter prepares to say farewell to 30-year-old song

Ryan O'Toole, AKA Ryno, frontman of Seoul-based band Pretty City Lights / Courtesy of Park Jeong-seok at JM Studio

Ryan O'Toole, an American who goes by Ryno, wrote his first song over 30 years ago. Back in 1993, he created the first version of what would ultimately become "Please," a love song constructed around a blues riff in drop-D tuning.

"It never stopped mutating, so it never really fit well with my other songs," he told The Korea Times. "Nearly every songwriter I speak with has one of these 'lost songs.' It's a tune they might enjoy playing during soundcheck, or in the guitar store, but has never been shared as a formal release."

Originally, the 17-year-old Ryno named the song "I Like Elvis," and he shared a four-track recording of this version recently on his Substack page, despite calling it "embarrassing."

He is documenting the song's evolution over the decades in a five-part series of online posts and mini-documentaries, which he calls "Demotrons." He says he's doing this all in an attempt to retire the song.

"I've decided to say farewell to 'Please' in a big way," he said.

The most recent version of the song he introduced, "Please (Live)," was recorded at Space Hangang in Seoul with his band, Pretty City Lights, which includes Bang Song-gwang on bass and Jin Su-yong on drums.

Ryno started messing around with music in 1990, when he was a listless 15-year-old living in Phoenix, Arizona, "back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth without smartphones or internet."

"I remember being bored all the time," he said. "My skateboarding friends and I were hooked on punk rock (Minor Threat, fIREHOSE, Agent Orange) and decided to form a band. We were learning together, so it was acceptable to be terrible together. I was the drummer. My parents allowed us to rock out in the living room. It's nuts thinking about it now. All that noise had to stop when my father came home from work."

Throughout high school, he practiced drums three or four hours a day and played shows most weekends, usually at backyard parties.

"Someone's parents would go out of town and the kids would get a keg of beer, selling plastic cups," he said. "Our band would set up outside, usually near a swimming pool. Someone always got pushed in. The cops would show up about five songs in and everyone would scatter."

After high school, he put his music on hold and moved to Colorado where he went through film school. He ended up earning a master's degree in film editing from the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. He moved to the U.K. where he worked as an assistant editor at the BBC, and then wound up in New York in 2006 where he worked at a film lab.

"I've moved a lot," he said. "Truth be told, I've never felt like I belonged anywhere."

He returned to music in 2009, after what he described as "a total destruction of my life plans."

"I had to rewind my life back to the beginning. I was very lost and unhappy, trying to figure things out," he said.

He formed the band Amateur Blonde in 2009 and released its first album in 2012. For this three-year period, he focused on songwriting, recording at home and playing open mics. It was during this time that "Please" got its final lyrics. Also in 2012, he met his future wife.

Some of his songs ended up featured on TV shows, including his song "No Worries" which made it into an episode of "The Walking Dead" in 2021.

"There is a murky area between 2012 and 2021 where I was writing songs, but not sharing. I was playing in other people's bands, mostly as a drummer," he said. "I continued to write, copyrighting over 60 songs between 2012 and the present. I have kept them private, until now."

The third period of his songwriting began in 2021. He released a second version of "No Worries," recorded with a full band, coming out the day before the 2012 version was featured on "The Walking Dead."

In May 2022, after 18 years of living in New York, Ryno and his wife, a Korean, moved to Seoul.

Ryan O'Toole, AKA Ryno, frontman of the Seoul-based band Pretty City Lights, grabs onto a ladder rung at Cheonggye Stream in central Seoul. Courtesy of Ryno

"We had always entertained the notion of spending a couple years in Seoul. Living through the pandemic in NYC accelerated that idea," he said. "I am currently in love with Seoul. I'm still new to it and learning all the time. Of all the cities I've lived in, I've never experienced the kind of civility I feel amongst fellow city-goers in Seoul. I'm truly grateful to be experiencing it every day."

After arriving here, he decided to change his band name from Amateur Blonde to Pretty City Lights.

"Naming a band is not easy. I should have been more careful in 2009. The name I chose ended up working against me. Over the years I've found myself explaining it all the time. People had trouble spelling it. That's not how good band names should work. They should give you a correct feeling for the band," he said.

"Pretty City Lights does this for me. I'm inspired by it. The combination of the words conjures a spiritual feeling. I envision all the apartment windows that make up a cityscape at night. Everyone in the city is a light, turning their lives on and off, for a chance at another day."

Between Amateur Blonde and Pretty City Lights, he says the songs may feel similar, but he's changed tremendously.

"I write songs with a lot more hope now," he said. "Since moving to Seoul, I’ve reconciled some deep internal conflicts that have been holding me back. I've charted a course to get these songs recorded and released."

As he goes through this journey, he's been sharing various steps and other reflections in writings, videos and podcasts on behindthelights.org.