Tucson Weekly Music Editor Stephen Seigel invited Dan for a Nine Questions interview after his legal work led to a Supreme Court hearing and decision that led to a 9-0 victory for the case United Student Aid Funds, Inc. v. Espinosa.)
Photo: Jamie Manser
Daniel J. Rylander is a bankruptcy attorney with Robinson and Rylander PC, a firm that fought a case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and won a 9-0 ruling in March (United Student Aid Funds, Inc. v. Espinosa). An avid fan and supporter of the local music scene, Rylander also serves as the emcee of Second Saturdays Downtown’s main outdoor stage on Scott Avenue.
What was the first concert you ever saw?
According to my mom, it was Leo Kottke in 1969 at a Unitarian Universalist Church in Waite Park, Minn. I was the 10-year-old son of an English professor who had Kottke as an undergrad student. The floorboards rang in the one-room converted school!
What are you listening to these days?
Loren Dircks, Killing the Magic; Trevor Hall; The Gourds, Bolsa de Agua; The Swigs, Let It Come Down; Jakob Dylan, Seeing Things; Fourkiller Flats, Treasure and Trash.
What was the first album you owned?
Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.
What artist, genre or musical trend does everyone seem to love, but you just don’t get?
I don’t like Danzig or “Nashville Rash” country (i.e., pop-country).
What musical act, current or defunct, would you most like to see perform live?
Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, circa 1970.
Musically speaking, what is your favorite guilty pleasure?
I don’t feel guilty about music. My wife, Jamie (Manser), took me to see George Michael in 2008, and it was a top-10 live experience for me.
What song would you like to have played at your funeral?
Frank Zappa’s “Rat Tomago.” A chair must be broken at the appropriate moment.
What band or artist changed your life, and how?
Seeing Son Volt live in the mid-’90s on PBS’ Austin City Limits, I suddenly realized that their sound connected modern alt-country with the roots-rock that I had listened to as a boy. … I was struggling to find something that hit the core of me—and it did that.
Figurative gun to your head, what is your favorite album of all time?
I’ll say The Band, “The Brown Album.” Tomorrow it may be something by Zappa, or Greyhound Soul.
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