Ryan Mannix

Five years later, I was gifted a guitar. I learned to play from a few months of lessons, jamming in basements with friends, and occasionally translating what I knew on guitar to piano. I also spent a lot of time poking around music production and recording software in an amateur home studio I stuffed into an empty basement office.

After moving to California for college, I hosted a radio show and live music blog. My professional career in music and events began when I connected with an aspiring event photographer (quickly turned pro) in a Lyft. She and I joined forces to pitch and contribute content to established local outlets like SF Station and SF Weekly. This led to a role with SF Station as a nightlife blogger. Soon, I was covering festivals all over California at a pace of about ten or more each year.

Here’s the most terrible clichè of the story—I lost my marbles to Dubfire delivering a peak-Dubfire-techno set at Coachella. It was dark and wobbly and it felt like he was pulling all of Indio, CA through a black hole with a smirk. Needless to say, with my mind blown, I was thereafter addicted to techno and house music.

I procured a beginner DJ controller with Traktor and began obsessively jogging between beat match practice and scouring the internet for the types of sounds I heard that one time at that thing.

In a few months, I was booked to play my first gig. A friend asked me to DJ his record release party on a thrift shop patio in Oakland. It went off and I was hooked. All my attention and hunger was now aimed at dance music.

I got plugged to co-host an existing radio show, Loud & Local, on a community station called Best Frequencies Forever—BFF.fm. Meanwhile, my editor at SF Station sent me to write a story on a warehouse venue opening—the warehouse now known well by Bay Area clubbers, The Midway. At that time, the forthcoming rave staple was positioning its debut to an already competitive club scene. When the story published, I was offered an opportunity by the venue owners to hop aboard their team as a night manager of their other baby, the iconic SF club, Public Works. It came with a promise to move me to The Midway’s team once it was up and running more regularly.

All this experience—interviewing DJs, promoters, club owners, festival producers, and more while managing a top club in an international city—it supercharged my growth and trajectory. By 2018, I was producing my own monthly event called Deep Sea Disco, highlighting local DJs and ocean conservation efforts, while guest DJing at least once or twice monthly in clubs, undergrounds, and even non-profit galas and fundraisers. By this point, Loud & Local had grown into the events space, as well. We were showcasing local artists—one DJ or DJ collective, and one live act—each month at a pub in SF’s Mission District.

Now, it was time to pursue a dream long on hold—to work in a recording and mixing studio. So I enrolled in an Audio Engineering program and The Midway moved me to their sound team. In my second year of studying sound, I was chosen by an instructor to intern for him at his recording studio. At about that time, a good friend introduced me to his band-mate, a studio owner, and I was given a job and the keys to their studio.

All of my life-long dreams were coming true within a matter of three blurred years that moved at break-neck pace. Then, I met a mesmerizing and impressive woman who came to The Midway for a Bonobo DJ set. She moved in with me and I proposed to her while we put finishing touches on a massive bamboo manta ray in Thailand. We built that structure by hand with an incredible team to host ocean conservation talks and demos (and after-hours renegade raves) at Wonderfruit Festival 2018.

Upon return I landed a recurring job with a premier event audio company in San Francisco. Fun fact for Burners: I was working for the guy who runs sound for Robot Heart. This also meant I wound up learning how to clean playa dust—the real menace of Black Rock City—off loudspeakers and bass cabs before even going to Burning Man. He paired me up with his most senior engineer to run sound for a client on a weekly basis. The client was 1015 Folsom—a club with legendary status in SF. Now, I was helping run sound for The Midway and 1015 Folsom, building a house and disco music community around ocean conservation with my Deep Sea Disco events, and hosting local bands and DJs on the Loud & Local show and monthly live showcase at the one and only Pops Bar; *takes breath, with keys to a 3 recording facilities available to record and mix demos for those local artists.

So how’d that go? Well, my partner and I felt called to bring new life into the world. So enters Mako Kai, and so exits Ryan from the music industry, for now. I stepped away from all I built, because any DJ, promoter, venue or studio owner can tell you—these are passion projects that would add an element of scarcity of either time, money, or both when factoring in a kiddo. So, the last four years have been spent in the default world, providing what I believe to be more than I could on my previous path. I never truly stopped DJing or producing music, though. Now, I’ve hit a stride in fatherhood and partnership which I feel allows me the chance to share my energy with you again. I deeply hope you enjoy what I bring you.