For two longtime Reno musicians and brothers—guitarist/vocalist Cody and bassist/vocalist Greggy Rea—their newest band, Ranger, was more than just another music project to start up in the early 2020s. It has ended up being a complete 180-degree change that they both said helped them out as people as much as musicians.
“I was breaking up with a longtime friend and a longtime girlfriend, and coming from a lot of toxic masculine bullshit left over from my youth,” Cody said of that post-lockdown timeframe. “I was just done with that whole macho bullshit culture, frat culture. And it was bleeding into my music life, as it does with a lot of bands—just really toxic environments.
“And so, if I’m being honest about (the members of Ranger) coming together as friends, it felt really clean and really transparent and loving. And that was like, ‘Oh God, yeah, this has to be a band.’”…