William Ryan Key Vitals DOB: December 17, 1979
Age : 30 years old
Place of birth: Jacksonville, Florida
Currently resides in: Athens, GA
Education: Some college education.
Significant Other(s):
Tattoos/piercings and other notable features: left arm: tattoo sleeve ft spiderman,wonder woman,green goblin, scrolls that read "magic" and "tragic" sail boat and reads "son of a sailor", a yin-yang styled half moon half sun - right arm: tattoo on wrist that reads "The world has turned and left me here" - in reference to weezer's song.

Trademark look: Bleach blonde hair & Hot Live Performances Eye color: green mixing brown
Height: 5'9
Nickname(s): Mr. Key, RyRy, Will.
Hobbies/outside interests: Football, Ryan is a huge fan of the Georgia Bulldogs
Charities/causes: Supports JDRF
Got more to say about Ryan? Contribute to his thread! | | Artist Biography Born William Ryan Key on December 17, 1979 in Jacksonville Florida. Began to play piano at the age of 7 and guitar at 13. He attented Douglas Anderson Performing Arts High School which he graduated from. Ryan attended Florida State University for a while before dropping out to move to California to play in a band called Craig's Brother. When that fell through he moved back to Jacksonville and took a shift at Chili's. When Ben Dobson (the previous lead singer of YC) decided to quit, Ben Harper asked Ryan to come and join their band Yellowcard. Ryan then convinced the guys to move to California and so became Yellowcard. "The piano when I was probably about 7 or 8 years old." Ryan Key to http://www.musicpix.net
Ryan has moved on to a band named Big If. Although it is not an official "break-up," he does not look as if he'll do more work with Yellowcard.
Career Highlights
Background in music: Douglas Anderson School of the Arts
Instruments: Rhythm Guitar, vocals
First band/big break: Yellowcard
Former band(s): Craig's Brother
How he/she joined the band: Friends with the guys in high school
Musical icons/influences: Ben Folds, Weezer, Foo Fighters, NofX
Best known for... great live guitar performances! being rad and ridiculously good looking.
Awards: MTV2 Award for Ocean Avenue at the 2004 MTV Video Music Awards 2006 - VGA AWARD
Key milestones:
Upcoming plans:
Side projects: Official Sites
How to contact this artist: www.myspace.com/yellowcard www.ycunderdogs.com
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Artist Trivia
- He is the frontman of the band.
- Ryan Originally went to Douglas Anderson to study theatre.
- Ryan has a George bulldog named Otis.
- Ryan lives with his sister in their house in California
- Ryan worked at Chili's with Sean Mackin before he began to play full time with Yellowcard.
- Ryan wears a medical alert bracelet, because he is allergic to peanuts.
- Ryan has always worn a silver band on his right hand.
- Ryan is a huge fan of Jack Daniels.
- Ryan's house was featured on MTV's Cribs
- Ryan was a coach on MTV's SuperMade.
- Has had surgery due to a cyst in his throat.
- Before joining Yellowcard he wanted to become an actor.
| Quotables
- "At the end of the day there’s a collaborative energy again, that feeling of what Yellowcard was in the beginning when we didn’t have the distance that success created. We feel like we’re the luckiest guys in the world to still be able to do this, and I think that shows.” Ryan Key on "Paper Walls"
- “The words I wrote to go with it seem to pale in comparison to hearing him speak. It’s coming from a man who has been in World War II, traveled the world and seen and done it all. He’s been married and in love with the same woman for 58 years, and you can hear it in his voice.” Ryan Key on "Dear Bobbie"
- “If you really love each other as much as we do, you want to knock those walls down and get back to the place where you enjoy being with each other and making music together,” says Key. “The song is basically saying let’s get back out there and remember why this is important to us, why we love being on stage and why we love making records.”
- “If Ocean Avenue was about finding your place in the world and Lights and Sounds is about realizing that you’ve gotten lost, Paper Walls is about what happens when you find yourself again,” Key says. “Before we started this record everything in our lives was changing, but after a it of struggling I finally found a place where I’m comfortable in my own skin. We know who we are and who we want to be.”
- "I would like to play with Ben Folds. He’s such an inspiring songwriter to me. Not so much musically but more lyrically…as I got into my late teens, I found out about that band, listening to those records really opened up something inside of me that I was able to express myself differently than I had before and that’s when I really started writing songs that people would say, ‘oh, wow, that’s a really cool song.’ For me, I would really like to be a part of something –to collaborate and write songs together. He’s five or six years older than I am but we grew up in the same area in the South and I think that we would have a lot of similar stories."
- " I hope that one day I have a family…a good looking woman by my side by my side that loves me with a couple of cherubs running around. My deck on the beach, on the Atlantic Ocean in Florida near my family, is kind of what I’m shooting for here."
- "I love the music part of it. I love our fans. I love playing live shows. The question answers itself…What part of the music business do you love & hate? I love the music, I hate the business... as we go into our late 20’s and I’ve been playing music with these guys for ten years and we know each other better than anybody…even our own families. We know each other. When you put that much business and so much work that goes into it, it’s hard to sustain that same feeling that you had when you’re 19 years old and playing in your parents garage…the world didn’t matter and what the world thought of the band didn’t matter-there were no bottom lines, no advances and no managers-[the business] it changes it and everyday we remind ourselves that we’re the luckiest people on earth. We have to keep having fun doing it and you can’t let the business part of it overrun what we do. You just have to keep yourself in check."
- "Yeah, totally. It applied to a lot of things and not just music. I put this character into a few of these songs because I didn’t have a character in my own life at the time. I didn’t have a relationship at that time, there wasn’t a whole lot of turmoil with other people, it was more with myself. I had to create something that I could have that relationship. I had to define that relationship within myself that’s why she’s appeared in a few of the songs. That duality is like being in love with someone…there’s always a good side and a bad side to all of that. Having someone to be with but there are always freedoms that you have to give up. You can apply that double –edged sword perspective to many aspects of your life."
- " I don’t know. I just do my best to be a good leader and make keep us all on the same page and try to keep everyone equal. I never want anyone to feel that I’m abusing the position of the face of the band, or the frontman or whatever it is I am. I try to do the things that hold the trust of the other guys in the band and I truly believe that I can’t do this without them. I couldn’t go off and start some other project on my own and be successful because I fell into this band many years after they started and I found the right people to play with. I don’t think that I could do it with other people or by myself. I’m the primarily writer, but it’s still a team effort. I don’t think that it’s any different than being a captain of a team." Ryan Key to http://www.musicpix.net
- "We feel that we have something to prove because of the success we've been given and the opportunity that we have, so we definitely stepped outside of our boundaries with the new album. We want to be a band that matters to people, not just a band that got a stint on 'TRL' because they were a bunch of good-looking kids. So we had to make a record that mattered, a record with staying power for people. And maybe the younger fans who like our band are ready for that and maybe they're not. But either way, we're really proud of it." -- Ryan Key on success and their 2006 album, "Lights and Sound"
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"I don't know if you've ever seen one of those before, that's called a toilet." - "I was born with it .. I don't know .. wish I could turn it off sometimes. You know?
- "Thousands of Japanese people were screaming for Yellowcard. What more could a young boy ask for?"
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