Like his bandmates, Ryan Shupe began playing music at a very early age. A second generation fiddle player, he started playing at age five and was soon performing professionally and touring nationally with a group called the PeeWee Pickers. He still plays a fiddle he found in his great aunt’s closet.

After years of playing in other bands, Ryan Shupe found that getting gigs in and around Salt Lake City wasn't as a difficult as keeping a group together. After years of fronting bands which inevitably split, Shupe decided to form the RubberBand so he could enlist a rotating group of musicians on a gig-by-gig basis and never have a group “break up.” His plan didn’t exactly work, however. One by one, the temporary sidemen began to stick, fusing into the close-knit final incarnation that exists today.