Ryan Ross
Ryan Ross is not a native of Brookfield and doesn’t live there now but he still considers Brookfield to be home.
“I always say where you finished is home,” said the 1999 Brookfield High grad. “I’ve lived a bunch of different places but Brookfield’s where my best friends are from, and my family. I’m a Warrior.”
Ross, a singer and guitarist, hopes his 8 p.m. concert Nov. 29 at Jimmy Neno’s Pizzeria and Taproom, 7172 Warren Sharon Road, Brookfield, turns into an “all Brookfield reunion.”
“We’ll talk about my town and things that Brookfield has, tell Valley View stories,” he said.
And, sing songs by the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Bryan Adams, the Beatles and ’80s metal bands, whose songs he’ll perform on acoustic guitar. If you have a request, he’ll try to sing it.
Ross performs “when they ask me to show up,” but his day job is teaching guitar.
Guitar playing is something he came to later in life. Growing up in an athletic family, he got into coaching football for Brookfield after high school, but lost the job after a year when school officials decided to reset the program.
“I was just kind of lost,” Ross said. “I went back to something I always wanted to do (playing guitar) and that’s what I did. I didn’t start until two weeks before I turned 20. I went down to King’s Music (in Sharon) and I took lessons from Max Schang.”
Schang became a mentor and second dad to Ross.
“He (Schang) got me my first job teaching guitar,” Ross said. “My first time I ever played on stage was with him. He was a big influence.”
Ross started teaching two years after he started playing, but don’t assume that meant he was a quick learner on the frets.
“I knew I was a page or two better than everyone I was teaching, so I was OK,” Ross said. “I didn’t pick it up good at all, but I knew I was gonna do it. It was one of those things – the moment I put it on my lap, I knew.”
He broke into teaching at King’s, and then at New York Music in Youngstown until he headed to Hollywood in 2005 to study at the Musicians’ Institute. He played a ton at the institute but not much outside of it.
“I didn’t really start playing out until I came home,” Ross said. “L.A. was a rough town. Most of the work in L.A.’s done by one or two or three people.”
He headed home and resumed teaching, eventually forming the band Ryan Ross and the Whitetown Syndicate, which put out a record in 2011.
He returned to New York Music until he went to Motter’s Music in Youngstown from 2010-22 and is now with the Music Gallery in Canfield.
Ross said he gets “everything” out of teaching.
“There are few things better in the world than sitting in a room and watching someone going from zero to their first song and knowing that your communications allowed that to happen,” Ross said.
He teaches kids with their first guitar and successful business people looking to capture a childhood dream or find a creative outlet.
Ross, who estimated he has given 60,000 individual guitar lessons over the years, said he tries to impart life lessons into his guitar lessons, talking about the struggles he’s had learning the instrument, looking for ways to draw on the positive aspects of his students’ personalities to give them the tenacity to keep going, and creating a safe space for them.
“At the end of the day, you’re trying to teach them to be successful people,” Ross said. “There’s the adults that didn’t play when they were kids and have a lot of that pent-up negative energy that you’re trying to get them to release out so they’ll be better business people, colleagues at work, husbands, fathers. There’s adults whose marriages have been saved by them taking guitar lessons just to have a release.”
Ross is distilling his teaching process into an online, subscription series, the Ros Angeles Guitar Method. He has started posting short videos on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook in which he plays a lick and talks about his life.
“My first, probably, 20 or 30 students wrote the program because they let me talk through it 20 years ago,” said Ross, who also teaches a drum class at the Fairhaven School in Champion two days a week. “I teach a how-to method, how to get your hands to work.”
Playing guitar is not something you get and then you’re done, he said. There’s always more to learn.
“The light at the end of the tunnel is to be pursued, not caught.”
Anyone interested in studying with Ross can reach him through his Facebook page, by calling him at 330-507-0714, or the Music Gallery, 847-432-6350.
