[Hype Hype Hooray] Musicians After Music – Vol. 1: Jon Ragel

HypeHypeHoorayNEWThis is the first installment in a series that looks at the lives of musicians as they walk down new paths in life. Whether for family, health or other creative endeavors, the choice to take time off from music is never easy. 

Jon Ragel sits in his southeast Portland kitchen, gazing out the window. We’re eating tacos and drinking beer, talking about his recent transformation from musician into writer. “It just seems like a natural thing to do,” he says at last. “You gotta do it.”

Ragel has spent nearly his entire life playing music. He’s played in several bands, but split off on his own in 2005 to become Boy Eats Drum Machine, a solo project that earned him a strong following across the west. Acclaim followed – most of his records have been well received by critics, and a pair of songs have found their way into the mainstream subconscious by way of GoPro and Major League Soccer.

But this past winter, sometime around his 39th birthday, Ragel suddenly decided to change his direction. “I still don’t know why,” he tells me. But that’s not entirely true. He knows all too well what drew him away from music: the allure of the novel. One day a story fell into his head, he says, expanding and swelling, quickly outgrowing the space in his mind. He had to write it down.

His story is set in a future dystopia, one where society has made the prison population into a viable commodity by turning their blood into something farmable. The narration follows a man who gets himself imprisoned to steal the technology that makes it all possible. It’s sharp, sociopolitical science fiction – a far cry from Ragel’s songwriting.

Still, the story shows Ragel’s hallmark creative flair. The prison where much of it takes place is a surreal facility laid out in the shape of a human body. To get there, shackled prisoners trek across the vast, empty landscape of eastern Oregon. And while this world is clear in Ragel’s mind, the process of getting it out has been tricky.

Continue reading [Hype Hype Hooray] Musicians After Music – Vol. 1: Jon Ragel