Music not only moneymaker on menu for Julien-K frontman

Without a hint of sheepishness, Ryan Shuck enthusiastically recalls turning off his brain like some sort of cognitive light switch.

It was for a good cause, though.

"I would almost purposely dumb myself down so that I could party and have fun, do drugs, have sex with girls and do all sorts of crazy stuff," the ever-excitable frontman for electrorockers Julien-K says with a chuckle. He comes across as Red Bull incarnate in conversation.

Shuck is speaking of his time as guitarist in metallic New Wave revisionists Orgy, who went platinum in the late '90s with androgynous, impeccably dressed, digitally enhanced hard rock.

Shuck, a hairdresser before Orgy took off, bought a restaurant with some of his Orgy earnings and launched a clothing line, but by his own admission, never fully committed to a business agenda.

It was that age-old conundrum for a musician: the artist who just wants to be an artist and not be distracted by commerce.

It's a false dichotomy - one can do both.

Shuck began to learn this upon becoming pals with Henry Nicholas, the billionaire co-founder of Broadcom Corp., a highly successful semiconductor vendor.

"It was really strange, a Fortune 500 CEO who acts like a rock star hanging out with a rock star who started acting like a businessman," says Shuck on a recent Wednesday afternoon while walking his dog. "I think that he really just devastated that idea in me, this cultivated ignorance that artists seem to study. When I had that attitude and I would exhibit those types of behaviors, he would just look at me and go: 'Why are you acting like an idiot? If you followed your instinct and let your business sense go and took it more seriously, you'd be deadly.' "

It'd take a few years for the message to sink in, but eventually it did.

To wit, Shuck recently opened another boutique eatery, his fourth overall in the Los Angeles area, with designs on a fifth.

"With the restaurants, they're no different than music to me," he says. "I'm still creating a space, a vibe and a decor. It's not so unlike setting up a tour or creating a record."

Shuck's heightened focus on his business acumen has manifested itself in Julien-K's career, too.

"We turned down a lot of major-label deals and some big publishing money because we looked at the deals and it was like I almost had different glasses on," Shuck says, noting that the band is promoting their current record, "We're Here With You," on their own. "We're doing exactly what a label would do, except that we're hiring everyone ourselves. We're paying for the whole thing, and by doing that, we're paying much, much less than a label would. If a major label were doing what we were doing right now, they would be spending $125,000. We're doing this whole thing for about $50,000. And we own the success if it is successful."

Julien-K started as a side project with fellow Orgy bandmate Amir Derakh during downtime from that band. The group's 2009 debut, "Death to Analog," was largely an extension of Orgy's cosmopolitan concussiveness.

Since then, Julien-K has become their main focus, as they have not-so-amicably split from their former band, with Orgy frontman Jay Gordon carrying on as the only original member of the group.

With Orgy behind them, and Shuck and Derakh also further branching out with Linkin Park frontman Chester Bennington in their Dead By Sunrise project, they've crafted a more distinctive, dance floor-friendly sophomore disc, the aforementioned "We're Here With You," issued in January.

Although the album's title cut and current single "Cruel Daze of Summer" still wield a pronounced guitar edge, it's propulsive electronic beats and celebratory synth lines that power songs such as "Colorcast" and "Flashpoint Riot," which roar by in a dramatic, full-contact digital throb.

"I think the first record was a whole lot of figuring out who we were outside of Orgy and also respecting the fact that a lot of our fans are going to come from that world, so you kind of want to build a bridge," Shuck says. "On this record, all of that has come to a head and it became really, really focused. How can we do something that isn't so depressing and dark but has still got that edge that makes it serious, but still fun? That was something we really, really set out to do."

As such, "We're Here" feels like a release, an exorcism, by turns revelrous and cathartic.

Hey, when times are hard, party harder.

"People don't want to be brought down right now. The economy's crappy. There's enough to be bummed out about," says Shuck, speaking like the market-savvy businessman he's become. "People want to dance. They just want to have some fun."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at
jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.