“I miss those brown eyes and that flowing hair / I miss the way you showed how much you care.”
Ryan Wayton began writing his song, “Samson,” when a previous girlfriend asked him to write a love song for her.
“She wasn’t very supportive of my music, or just music in general,” Wayton said. “She’d get upset when I’d go to play, and she said, ‘Why don’t you write me a love song?’ I thought that asking for one kind of defeated the purpose of writing a love song. It just seemed so forced.”
Wayton began writing the song anyway, but the two soon broke up. When they separated, she took his Pomeranian with her.
“She was pretty ruthless about the dog and tried to use him as leverage,” Wayton said. “The hope was that she would eventually hear this, be flattered, and then realize the song was about the dog. It’s like my last ditch effort to get my dog back.”
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On the “Red, White & You, Too!” CD, the song is performed by Wayton’s band Tropic Bombs. Wayton began Tropic Bombs with Jon Hammond, who helped Wayton in the songwriting process.
Wayton began his musical career by playing drums before he picked up singing, and he played in multiple bands before Tropic Bombs came together.
“It’d been a couple of years since we had played together, and we just got together to jam,” Wayton said. “We didn’t think we’d form a band. It was actually an accident.”
While playing one day, the group switched from playing rock to reggae, but Hammond forgot to put a pedal down. The sound that came about was still reggae, but with a twist, Wayton said.
“At first it was kind of a joke,” Wayton said. “We laughed about it. But then we realized that it was a really cool sound.”
Now the band performs live and produces all their recordings. Hammond is no longer part of Tropic Bombs, but the remaining members took on several other musicians, including Steve Dwyer on drums, Nick Archer on bass and Justin Crumley and Ben Snyder on guitar.
“I don’t think we can be judged by just one song,” Wayton said. “We’re really a live band. We always want to play in Toledo and have people come and have a good time. We do everything ourselves. Our goal is to bring people together to have a fun time in Toledo. We’re really about Toledo.”
