Welcome to a feature where we sit down and talk to bands and artists about their latest albums to find out all about it. Today we speak to Ryan from Little King about the new album Lente Viviente.

Hello nice to meet you, tell us about yourself!

Good morning! Great to be with you again. I looked back, and we last spoke in 2023 when we released the single “Silver Tongue.” 2 years = Blink of an Eye.

Anyway, this is Ryan from Little King. Again! I have been with this band since its inception in 1996, and we are in the process of releasing our 8^th album. I play guitar and sing, and I also write the music and lyrics for the band. Produce, too. I also am a dad, son, partner, entrepreneur, and giant nerd. You’ll see…

Tell us about the new album

We released a couple of singles in 2023, but before that, the last album was Amuse De Q in 2021 and Occam’s Foil, which is really an EP, in 2019. Little King has been mostly working on shows and new material for the last couple of years, but the primary focus has been on getting as good as possible live. When we toured the East Coast in 2024, it felt like we had gotten close to that impossible threshold of “good enough.” Clearly, it was time to make another record.

I sold my business in 2024 and had some time to reflect on my life and how I choose to spend the rest of my working days. And yes, it is, at this point, a CHOICE. But I am an entrepreneur at heart, and the call to work on projects outside of music is almost as strong as the constant flow of Little King tunes.

So, I started a new company called LivingLens Memoirs, which translates into Spanish as “Lente Viviente,” and that bore some fruit for the new record’s themes. We focus on interviewing and editing beautiful memoirs of people who believe their stories should be told and preserved for generations. I live in Tucson, AZ, which is a notorious retirement community. There are plenty of folks here with amazing stories, and I have been the beneficiary of them for the past year.

As I reflected on the recurrent themes of these interviews, what struck me was that they all have such deep and reflective lenses through which they see their own lives and the things that have happened in their lives. Perception truly IS reality, and it is the way we all see the world is irrevocably altered by the experiences we’ve endured and, really, our DNA. Whether it’s a lens of nostalgia, a filter of drugs and homelessness, an approach to a new romance that you DO NOT wanna F*** up…all of what we see, hear, and do runs through the filter of our lives. Thus, Lente Viviente was born!

The music came together quickly. Our bass player for this record is Dave Hamilton, and he has been a part of live and studio Little King since 2019 as a cellist and arranger. His bass playing is MADNESS. He’s so damn good. Our engineers were all like, “Damn, that is sick!” Yup. Dave and I got together a ton in El Paso, where he lives, and here in Tucson, to sort out his parts and make sense of the direction we were trying to take. That path led me to the term micro-epics, as these songs mostly clock in under 4 minutes, but they FEEL longer. That is, they are involved and complicated but still flow in a way that pleases the ears. OUR ears, anyway.

Tony Bojorquez is the drummer on Lente Viviente. Tony splits time between San Carlos, MX, and Tucson, and he had posted something online about looking for a new project here in Tucson. When I spoke to him and heard some of his playing online, I jumped at the chance to work with him. And WORK we did. This is by far the most well-rehearsed Little King has ever been going into the studio, and the results clearly show it.

Favourite track in new album and why?

Oh, I hate to choose among my children! But if I must…

TODAY I would say “Pass Through Filters,” which is also by far the longest track on the record. It just grooves in a way that matches the lyrics perfectly. Credit to Dave and Tony for that, for sure. They’re such tasteful and intuitive players, and they GOT IT here.

The song is based on my experiences in downtown Tucson at my little studio. It’s smack dab in the middle of some serious madness – I’ve seen every law on the books broken in the last 3 years down here – and all I have to do is take a walk and I’m inspired. The blight of homelessness and drug abuse is rampant down here. I wish everyone with an ounce of empathy could see it and live it. We have a problem, and it’s NOT getting better.

Special mention also of the song “Who’s Illegal?” The tune is my observations on the identity politics along the border, as we are only 80 miles north of Nogales, MX. This land has changed hands so many times between the native tribes and the Spanish, Mexico, and now the US. Peacefully, mostly, although the Presidio fort down here by the studio had some nasty history. Tripping around the Presidio area of downtown provided ample fodder for questions like “Who’s really illegal here, and why? Are we going to be so ignorant of the passage of time and how minimal 100 or 200 years is? Why are we so angry at each other?”

Tell us a bit about the recording process, was it fun to do?

Since 2004, Little King has recorded with Eddy Garcia at Krank Studios in El Paso. In addition, Ed has been the studio drummer for LK since the Legacy of Fools album in 2008. This was the plan, initially…to do the same process and produce another great record. But I am TIRED of driving I-10 650 miles round-trip to make an album. And it’s not just one trip…it’s many. As such, I started to look for a fresh perspective that was also 20 minutes from my house.

Enter Ricky Wascher, who owns a studio called Cimamusic in the city. He and I are the same age, and when we met, we just hit it off. Much like Dave and Tony, Ricky is a good dude and extremely professional. He just GETS IT also – same pop culture references and upbringing make it easy – and we had a vision for how Lente Viviente should sound.

Tony recorded his parts in April of 2025, then I followed immediately with rhythm guitars. Dave came in May and rehearsed AGAIN with Tony and me, then he laid his magic down. Killer bass and drum parts are this album’s calling card, in my opinion. Finally, after working with Laura Sadie Bette on vocal arrangements (she also sings the choruses with me on “Kindness for Weakness” and “The Living Lens”), I went in and sang my parts.

Ricky is a genius at harmony arrangement. I’ve shied away from a lot of harmonizing in the past because it’s so important to me to be able to function as a 3-piece live, and the band I was in wasn’t fully comfortable playing Little King songs and singing complex harmonies at the same time. Manny Tejeda (bassist from 2018-2024) did some of that on the last couple of tours, but the arrangements didn’t require much of it. So this album has more and better harmonies, and that might be the other thing this record will be known for. I’m very pleased!

Tell us the idea behind the album cover?

The themes of shifting filters, light, reflection, and perception pervade the lyrical content of Lente Viviente. For the cover, we wanted to keep it simple and include all 3 band members in the lens. 

The artwork is, in a way, a metaphor for the scrutiny we are under as artists and performers. One is left to wonder what the world looks like from behind the band’s side of the lens…what do they see? How do we perceive the audience?

The crown is a bit off-center to reflect that imperfect balance between artist and audience, too…or as we sing in the song “The Living Lens,” the crown has “shifted 5 degrees/center left afield.”

This is the first time Little King band members have been featured on the cover of an album.

What one of your songs on the new album do you think will be the most difficult to rehearse for a live audience?

Great question! I am in the woodshed in earnest this week, and the toughest one so far is “Catch and Release,” which is also the first single. Fun little song mostly in 7/8 at like 152 BPM, which I decided to sing in an even odder time. The vocal accents aren’t on the 4 and 7 like the music, really. Once again, I’ve made it difficult on myself. Nice work, Ryan. This song has to kick off the set, as we are planning to play the record in its entirety, front to back, with a ton of visual enhancement. Can’t hit a clunker out of the gate, so back to the shed I go…

Why should people listen to the album?

What else are they doing? Seriously, I don’t have a great answer for that. I LOVE this album, and I can promise you that’s not what I always say when we are done. That’s not “interviewspeak.” I know that if people have a spare 26 minutes to take a musical journey in the car, on their daily walk, with their eyes closed in a chair with enhancement, that they will appreciate Lente Viviente. The songs function together as a set-piece, and the way that they push and pull and build to a conclusion is something we are very proud of.

We are all fairly accomplished players (Tony and Dave are both way better than I), but technicality is not what we are going for here. Yes, I get very bored very quickly with 4/4 time and minimal dynamics. This record IS dynamic and melodic. As I’ve been saying, the tunes feel like micro-epics. They stretch time…a song that might be only 3:30 will feel longer. We gave such care to the construction of the parts and the dynamics of the arrangements that if a listener is looking to FEEL something (and not just at one speed), I am sure that the album will be a go-to.

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