This longtime Tucson duo ends its year with homecoming show

It might be confusing at first when you look at the lineup for Ryanhood‘s Rialto Theatre show on Saturday, Dec. 21.

How is Ryan David Green — the “Ryan” in the Tucson acoustic folk-rock duo — opening and headlining the duo’s final show of 2024?

Simple, says Green’s Ryanhood bandmate Cameron Hood: Tucson audiences need to hear his longtime musical partner’s solo debut.

“I’m the biggest fan of this record,” Hood said of Green’s debut solo acoustic guitar album “Off and Running.” “To me, a lot of time guitar records are a little unapproachable. They are impressive, but not emotional. (‘Off and Running’) is incredibly melodic. It is a work of art. It is hands down my favorite record that came out this year.”

Hood’s understandably biased; he and Green, both 43, have been making music together since high school.

But Acoustic Guitar magazine had no such bias when they said the album “carries over the singer-songwriter sensibility — focusing on melody above all. The result is a relative rarity: A hummable guitar album.”

Americana Highways‘ John Apice said it doesn’t take a musicologist to realize after listening to the album that “Ryan David Green is a guitar-singer. Period.”

During his opening set on Saturday, Green will play several of the 11 self-penned songs on the album; all but three are instrumentals.

Green said he toured the album after its release in July.

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“It’s just been really fun,” the father of two sons, 12 and 14, said, although he admitted “it was terrifying at first” when he went on stage without Hood.

“It surprised me that I can have done 1,500 shows in front of audiences with Cameron and still feel so wildly naked performing solo,” he said. “The first couple of shows I was incredibly nervous.”

Meanwhile Hood, who recently married, has spent the past couple years collaborating on a rock musical with Saguaro City Music Theatre. “Voyagers,” the story of two rockers in the late 1970s, will be Saguaro City’s first original production.

“Voyagers” follows the story of two musicians who make a record and go on tour right around the same time that NASA launched twin Voyager spacecraft with noted astronomer and planetary scientist Carl Sagan’s golden records. The “Voyager Golden Records” were a time capsule of the Earth, including sounds and images showcasing the diversity of life and culture on Earth. The idea was that should intelligent extraterrestrial life forms find them, they would get to know their celestial neighbors.

“It’s going amazing,” Hood said of the project. “We are absolutely building it. We have a Broadway director who is directing it. I am having the time of my life.”

“Ryanhood is cozy home for both of us,” he added, “but we are experimenting with things at the edges of our comfort zone. I think (the duo) will always be a home base from which we go out and do other things.”

Saturday’s show, which starts at 8 p.m. at the Rialto, 318 E. Congress St., returns them to their comfort zone.

“A Winter’s Evening With Ryanhood” will include songs off their 2017 “On Christmas” album as well as songs from their nine career albums going back to 2003’s “Sad and Happiness.” Tickets are $22.50-$36 through rialtotheatre.com.