Ronan Carroll

At 14, he decided to spend the summer teaching himself guitar, and picked up an old nylon stringed instrument that was hanging around the house. A couple of years later, he co-formed his first band, The Unknown Citizens, playing rhythm guitar and singing lead. Ronan’s song writing at the time was influenced by Irish bands Thin Lizzy and Horslips, with their fusion of rock and traditional Irish melody and rhythm.

Those days, it seemed that playing in a band was a condition of Irish citizenship and Ronan misspent his teenage years in dive bars attending rock shows.

Other musical projects, during the Citizens era, included playing bass with The Rhythm Men -- a wedding/party band specializing in rock, pop and traditional Irish songs.

In October 1994 Ronan left Ireland for the dryer climes of San Francisco, intending to explore musical
opportunities in the Bay Area. He spent the next few years attending yet another collection of dive bars and playing in various San Francisco rock bands.

In 1996, it was time to get serious and 10 years after he started playing guitar, Ronan took his first guitar lesson. His teacher was Alex Skolnick (formerly of heavy metal band Testament). Realizing the value of this education malarky, he went on to attend City College of San Francisco, studying classical guitar and jazz. In Spring 2001 Ronan got down to business, joining Route 66 -- a hard working rock n' roll cover band. He performed all over the Bay Area and beyond with them, sharing lead vocal duties and playing lead guitar.

When the chance came to join Tempest near the end of 2002, Ronan felt it was a great opportunity to return to his traditional roots and play with a rockin’ band. He was thrown in at the deep end, playing his first gig with the band on the Friday -- the following Monday morning found him in the studio laying down guitar tracks for Tempest’s 5th Magna Carta release “Shapeshifter”. He lives in the Hayes Valley area of San Francisco, with his sparkly wife Vivienne, daughter Mia and son Page. Also a huge soccer fan, he traveled to Japan in 2002 for the World Cup to support the Irish national team. He's been known to play a bit, too.

Ronan’s electronic music project, gROUSe, can be explored at www.grousemusic.com.
gROUSe’s debut album “We Want To Be Loved” was released in April 2005.