Frank Ryder, a fifty something singer songwriter from Dublin, was disillusioned with record labels. Even the independents didn't seem to want to cater for older unknown musicians. So he started his own, Ryder Road Records.

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Frank is a singer songwriter from Dublin, Ireland who plays guitar and mandola. Frank says “I remember being fourteen years old and having a copy of a Lynyrd Skynyrd album, and seeing this gang of long haired’s singing about whiskey, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll and life on the road. For me growing up in suburban Dublin that was a glimpse of something outside. It excited me.” So, how did Frank escape the suffocation of a repressed Irish childhood? He travelled. Much of his youth was spent trekking around Europe, and he has lived for periods in France, Germany, Spain and Portugal. He read too: the anarchist writers and philosophers, the libertarians, anything to do with the Sixties counter-culture.

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In the early 1990s Frank returned to living in Ireland and then, (going by the guise of Frank X. Hibbet) was part of the band Far Canals, based in Galway. They released two albums and one EP with Hunter S. Records. The bands anarchic, anti-establishment ethos was reflected in many of their songs which railed against the police, drug laws, organised religion and political corruption. Influenced by punk and blues, the Far Canals combined unusual guitar arrangements and distortion pedals to produce a highly distinctive sound. The group disbanded in 1996.

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Frank also played many gigs as a solo act, he was the support artist for Julian Cope on his ‘An audience with the Cope tour’ of Irish Castles in 1993. Frank is also a sound engineer and in the 90s he worked with a number of artists in the Galway area as a live sound engineer at their gigs.

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In 2000 Frank moved to Barcelona where he was a DJ and made his own electronic music under the name 3Bass. He collaborated with other musicians, including singer and flutist Amy Ahern, to make some timeless tunes.

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In 2005 Frank moved to the mountains in central Portugal. There he formed a  band, The Rocking Horse of Oisin, with two friends and later went on to form Undying Heads with his partner Sam and friend Kev. Both bands have played lots of gigs and festivals in Ireland, the UK and Portugal.

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In 2018, using the punk DIY ethics Frank remembered from his youth, he and his partner Sam set up their own record label to record their own material and print their own CDs.

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Frank found that record companies were not interested in an older guy, in his present material or in his vast back catalogue of music. In 2021 Undying Heads released their second album on the label and in 2022 Ryder Road Records decided to re-release as much of Frank's old material as they can find including all the Far Canals back catalogue. This will include the albums, If You See K and Grey Slant, the EP All Fluffed Up as well as some old demo tapes the band released independently and two live performances. There will also be a release of 3Bass material.

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