Exclusive Interview: RickyJab on Touring with Taylor Acorn, Forming Unsafe, Unsound, and Building a Music Career Across the Stage, Studio, and Social Media

For RickyJab, music has never been confined to a single job title. While many musicians spend years trying to define exactly what they do, Ricky seems perfectly comfortable living somewhere in between all of it. The guitarist, producer, content creator, musical director, playback technician, and entrepreneur has built a career that exists at the intersection of creativity and adaptability. Whether he's performing in front of packed rooms with Taylor Acorn, crafting heavy alternative music with Unsafe, Unsound, or helping artists through his production company, Ricky has become a prime example of what a modern musician can look like. And what ties his identity together? Not just talent, but his infectious enthusiasm that seems to follow him into every project and every stage he steps onto.

Between balancing touring with Taylor, content creation for his 200,000+ followers, music production for his growing base of clients, and running his business The Comma Between, Ricky joined us to talk about everything from starting a garage band in middle school, how TikTok covers unexpectedly changed the course of his life, finding community through music, and why he's never been interested in choosing just one version of himself.

Before he was touring nationally and juggling multiple creative careers, Ricky was simply a kid trying to start a band with his friends. Growing up on classic pop punk bands, he originally had his sights set on becoming a drummer. Ricky recalls the way it all started as a joke,  "We were in seventh grade and were exposed to a bunch of bands like Linkin Park, Good Charlotte, and we’re just hanging out outside,” he recalls. “And my buddy said, ‘Hey, we should start a band.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, that sounds cool.’ At thirteen, Ricky was living in a tiny apartment with his parents who were acutely aware of the acoustics of a drum kit in their limited square footage, so they instead offered him a guitar as an early birthday present. And what began as a compromise quickly became an obsession. Alongside his friends, Ricky spent countless hours making noise in garages, learning songs from websites like Ultimate Guitar, and teaching himself the instrument. 

Everything changed when he discovered his favorite band, Thrice. "Their guitarist, Teppeii Teranishi, he's the first guitarist that really got me paying attention. Part of it was his skills, but also the fact that he's an Asian guitarist." Ricky says. “I don’t really see Asians in the scene as much.” That inspiration led him deeper into songwriting, production, and eventually performance. But despite his growing passion for music, Ricky followed a more traditional path after high school, pursuing expectation and stability first. "I worked for a tech startup for seven years after college," he explains. Throughout those years, music remained a serious hobby. Ricky expanded his skills into production and engineering after he had sang in collegiate a cappella groups, gaining a stronger understanding of music theory and pop songwriting. Yet the idea of turning music into a career still felt distant.

Then March 2020 happened.

Like millions of others, Ricky found himself unexpectedly unemployed during the pandemic. While applying for new jobs, he started posting guitar covers online to stay busy. At first it was YouTube, then a friend encouraged him to try TikTok. "I originally rejected that idea. I was like, 'I don't think Gen Z would enjoy the music I play. I had no idea. I wasn't sure what people were listening to in those days,” he laughs. “But then I started scrolling around TikTok, and I realized there's a niche for elder emos.” Posting daily covers of songs by bands like The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus and Fall Out Boy, Ricky quickly found an audience. Views turned into followers. Followers turned into brand deals. Suddenly, what had started as an experiment began looking like a legitimate career. "I was like, ‘What is happening?’ It was like, ‘I guess I’m making a career out of TikTok.’”

That momentum led to another life-changing connection. Through TikTok, Ricky met vocalist Tyler, who would eventually become both his bandmate and business partner. Together, they launched Unsafe, Unsound, a project rooted in their shared love of post-hardcore, emo, and alternative music.

And a couple months later, another unexpected message arrived. "Next thing I know, I get a DM from Taylor Acorn," Ricky remembers. "She said, ‘I'm going on my first tour with Real Friends, With Confidence, and The Home Team, and I need a guitarist. Do you want to go on tour?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, dude, let's do the thing.’ That's where it all started.” That invitation launched Ricky's touring career and transformed music from a side passion into a full-time profession. "It was funny. I was close to getting an offer with Xfinity. And it was going to be like a pretty high-paying job. But I knew I was going to be slaving away more than 40 hours a week. And I was like, ‘Do I want to do this and give up my content creation stuff? Or give it my chances of being a full-time musician? And Tyler was like, ‘I don't think you actually want to do that. It seems like music is what's important to you. And now is the time seize that opportunity.’”

Today, Ricky's role in Taylor Acorn's camp extends far beyond simply playing guitar. Over multiple tours, his responsibilities have steadily expanded into playback operation, musical direction, and live show design. "That role had evolved over the years. I just started out as her guitarist. But as we got through more tours, I think part of the reason that I was able to take on these new roles is because I had been a veteran in the camp, so I know how things run. And because of that, Taylor had trusted me in taking on more of the behind the scenes tasks. And first, it just started with playback, so we would just have the MacBook on the side of the stage, and I'd just hit the spacebar. Then it evolved into, ‘Hey Ricky, are you able to reorder the set list? And maybe build some transitions and things between songs?’ So that's when I started getting into the musical director role." One of his favorite challenges came while helping create the live experience for Acorn's Poster Child era. Drawing from skills developed years earlier in collegiate a cappella, Ricky constructed a custom intro using vocal snippets from across the album. "I took her entire Poster Child album, grabbed all the vocals, and mashed them up together into a one-minute intro. And it's the coolest thing ever. I nerd out about it every time. I made them the same key and sprinkled parts of different songs together and built an intro out of that. That was the most fun I've had building a set.”

"I love Taylor's music, and I definitely resonate with a lot of her lyrical themes. It's always fun to play, but there's something magical about being able to perform the music that you've created. I'm appreciative of both sides of the spectrum.” - RickyJab

While his technical skills continue to evolve, Ricky says some of the biggest lessons touring has taught him have nothing to do with music. "I realized how much I enjoy me time and privacy," he admits. "When I started touring, especially as a content creator, I was obsessed with trying to get footage of every single moment on tour, soundcheck, setup, the show itself, in the green room, all of that." As someone whose career grew through social media, finding boundaries became essential. "As I continued touring over the years, I started to value the privacy of it. Sometimes I just enjoy being able to keep things private. I guess that’s what years of touring does to you.”

And yet, life on tour isn't always emotionally profound. Sometimes it's just chaos. Ricky laughs while recounting one of the most memorable moments from Taylor Acorn's recent tour. During the very first song of the final show, a guitar flip he'd successfully executed hundreds of times suddenly went horribly wrong. "I do guitar flips so many times. I've done hundreds of them. My one guitar strap that I'd use for maybe eight tours had never failed me. For whatever reason, six shows before The Big Incident, I said, 'I think I need to change the strap. I feel like at some point it's going to give out.' So I put on a new strap. Then on the last show of the tour, first song, we opened up with 'Poster Child' and I'm doing this one flip. Suddenly, I felt seven pounds lighter because the guitar just flew. Went right across the stage." While the audience continued watching the show and Taylor remained focused on performing, Ricky found himself scrambling for backup gear, coordinating with crew members, and trying to salvage the set. "My jaw instantly drops. I grabbed the guitar and I'm like, 'All right, I'm just going to pick it up and just finish out the song.'" He pauses, "The guitar is completely out of tune. It's gone. I run to the talkback mic and I'm talking to my front of house engineer, saying' Hey, guys, I lost my guitar,'" he laughs. Thanks to quick thinking from the crew, some emergency gaffer tape, and a lot of trust, the guitar survived. Then, despite everything, Ricky attempted the same guitar flip again later in the set. "It landed." If that isn’t a metaphor for life on tour, what is?

That perspective has also helped him balance the many different roles he occupies. Between touring, production clients, content creation, and Unsafe, Unsound, organization and communication have become critical. Unsafe, Unsound, in particular, provides an outlet that differs dramatically from his touring work. While Taylor Acorn's music leans toward pop-punk and alternative rock, Unsafe, Unsound explores heavier and more emotionally vulnerable territory. "I treat it as my personal sandbox," Ricky explains. "I would just be writing riffs that would be a minute long. I’d send a clip to Tyler, and then he comes back with an idea with vocals on top of it. We would just send files back and forth and spitball ideas, and after a couple back and forths, we formed a song.”

For Ricky, there's something uniquely rewarding about performing music you've built from the ground up. "I love Taylor's music, and I definitely resonate with a lot of her lyrical themes. It's always fun to play, but there's something magical about being able to perform the music that you've created. I'm appreciative of both sides of the spectrum.”

For now, Ricky remains focused on balancing the many hats he wears: touring musician, musical director, content creator, producer, entrepreneur, and artist. It would be easy for any one of those roles to define him, but perhaps the most impressive thing about RickyJab is how naturally he moves between all of them. After all, his entire career has been built on saying yes to possibilities he never expected, from a middle-school garage band to a TikTok account, from a layoff to a tour bus, from one DM to an entirely new life, proving that sometimes the biggest opportunities begin with simply picking up a guitar you never planned on playing.

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT RICKYJAB:

INSTAGRAM | TIKTOK