Ryan Young
Ryan Young has played fiddle in Trampled by Turtles, the string band from Duluth, Minnesota, since 2007. He came to the band from Pert Near Sandstone, an old-time and bluegrass group he had helped start, and from a background in rock, punk and jazz rather than fiddle music.
Guitar was his first instrument. When his elementary school started an orchestra program in the fourth grade he asked for a viola, and he was given a violin instead, which taught him to play melody parts. He grew up listening to rock and roll, punk and jazz, named bands such as Ween and Mr. Bungle among his influences, and before Trampled by Turtles he played drums in a speed-metal band. He has said his fiddling sounds closer to what a guitar or saxophone player would do.
He was playing with Pert Near Sandstone when that band shared a bill with Trampled by Turtles; the Duluth group asked him to sit in for a few songs, then for a whole set, and then to join. He was the last of the five-piece lineup to join, four years after Dave Simonett formed the band in 2003, and leaving Pert Near Sandstone, a band he had started with friends, was hard. His first album with the band was Duluth (2008), which reached number eight on the Billboard bluegrass chart and includes the traditional “Shenandoah.”
With Trampled by Turtles he has played on the bluegrass-chart number ones Palomino (2010), Stars and Satellites (2012), Life Is Good on the Open Road (2018) and Alpenglow (2022). On Wild Animals (2014), produced by Alan Sparhawk of Low, he overdubbed several instruments on “Lucy,” among them a fiddle, a viola, and a violin and a viola restrung with bass strings to reach down to the cello range. He sings harmony with the band, which as of 2026 was still a six-piece with him on fiddle.
