The Shop: Roland Sands Design
RSD headquarters is impressive as hell, a rabbit warren of a facility that starts with a showroom, opens out into what's damn near a museum of Roland Sands creations, then morphs into a workshop and warehouse, before terminating in something akin to a barn, compete with a stage where the former pro motorcycle racer and AMA 250 GP champion puts on live music performances for friends and regulars.
"I've definitely lived a couple of different lives," Sands tells me as we sit among dozens of custom bikes. "That's something not a lot of people get to do. I've gotten to do it at a few different levels with event production – running the Super Hooligans racing championship, which is seven years old now. Then there's the business, which is parts and apparel, with the custom bikes as the calling card. And yeah, being a pro racer. I've had a wild life. Two wheels has absolutely been a blessing for me."
The world of American custom motorcycles can feel like it's totally dominated by garish, raked-out choppers, but as an elite-level rider, Sands is keen to build machines that go, stop and handle, as much as they look badass. I've always appreciated the fact that the guy with his initials on the tank hops on these gorgeous customs, wheelies the bejesus out of them and throws them out sideways in the videos.
"When I get on a bike," says Sands, "I 100% still have the ability to shut my brain off and go ride fast... But it got to a point where, when I wasn't racing, art became more important to me. Being creative, being respected for creativity, it just has way more of a lifespan than being a motorcycle racer, unless you're Rossi or Marquez, which I'm not."
The rider: Josh Dun of Twenty One Pilots
The recipient of today's RSD custom motorcycle knows more than a little about the creative process himself. 35-year-old Ohio native Josh Dun has spent the last 13 years as one half of massively successful alternative musical duo Twenty One Pilots. Indeed, "alternative" might be a stretch here, given that the duo remains the only group in history to have not one, but two albums on which every single song went either gold or platinum. Here, refresh your memory:
Dun is reasonably new to the motorcycling life; by the time he was old enough to ride one, he was playing drums, and stuck with four-wheeled vehicles that he could schlep his kit around in. Then, once Twenty One Pilots blew up, there just wasn't time.
"There was a period in our lives," he tells me, "where the entire year was just touring and playing shows – which was awesome. I think the reason I've only recently got a motorcycle is that it's only recently started to slow down a bit, to where we have time to build a home back in Ohio, and build a life at home. When the band started touring, I was always really excited to go, because we'd stay in hotels that were nicer than my apartment. But now I'm married, we have a dog and a cat, and you know, it's exciting to get back home!"
Indeed, it was Dun's wife, actress Debby Ryan, that suggested he should consider getting a motorcycle sometime in 2021. A little taken aback, Dun needed no further encouragement, and after taking a close look at Indian's FTR1200 flat-tracker and some other machines, rode out of a motorcycle store on his first bike, a first-gen Scout Bobber. "It just felt right," says Dun. "It felt cooler to me. The FTR, as a first bike, felt too fast, too powerful for me to learn on."
He's put some miles on that Scout, even though the Ohio riding conditions are highly seasonal. "We've got to get the mileage out of 'em in those summer, spring and fall months," says Dun. "My brother lives with me, we've got two bikes in the garage, and within 15 minutes of riding we're out in the country, on open roads where you don't have to worry about other vehicles at all. It's a relaxing, almost therapeutic type of ride."
Perhaps there's a link between the whole-body co-ordination you need to play drums at a high level, and the whole-body involvement you need on two wheels. "Maybe it's something in the brain," he muses, "I like to utilize all four limbs. There's something satisfying about motorcycles, when you're fully in control."
The Project
When Indian Motorcycle contacted RSD about the idea of creating a Forged Series custom bike for Josh Dun, well, the team had already more or less built it. And the fact that it fit its new rider so perfectly was more or less a series of happy coincidences.
"Ed Kretz was a legendary motorcycle racer back in the day," says Sands, "he was part of Indian's Wrecking Crew. He was our inspiration. We weren't gonna build a race bike, but Kretz just rode the shit out of everything, he wanted to build cool looking stuff and ride it hard. So we thought, well, let's just take the stock Scout and make it more fun to ride. A bit more competitive."
"The new Scout is cool, man," says RSD Workshop Manager Aaron Boss, who did most of the work on this bike. "I'm glad that they switched up the frame design. It's less Euro, I guess. It's more like an American cruiser with that tube frame that goes underneath the motor. Yeah, it's got a radiator, but people want power, so they're cool with a radiator. The old Scout frame... It was too much, in my personal opinion. You don't need to make everything tie together so the motor looks like part of the tail section. So the frame looks way better, and the gas tank style on the new bike's better, too."
Before knowing about Dun's fondness for both the Scout and the FTR, Boss began using FTR parts to sharpen up the handling of the cruisy Scout chassis. "We mixed it up a bit," he tells me, "we put on the FTR front fork and triple clamp, and used some Sector risers to give it a more upright cruiser bar. It has that club style look already with the front fairing, but we put an aggressive streetfighter kind of tail on it. And performance is everything, dude, so number one first thing you're always doing is upgrading the brakes."
"We put an FTR swingarm on it," he continues, "so it's a bit taller, and I made new shock mounts to reposition them. We used the stock rear shocks from the next package level up, the Scout 101, with the piggyback reservoirs. At the front of the frame, with the exposed radiator it actually looks skinnier and smaller than the old Scout. So I added a lower frame section. It doesn't need it structurally, the motor's a stressed member, but I added it to do the mid controls, just bringing those foot controls a little further back – and it shows off the frame a little more, makes it look a little more traditional style."
"We actually had the idea," says Boss, "that we wanted to build it so it could look like an OEM stock bike, not so extreme or so customized – you could look at this and think it was a limited run from the factory. This is a very relatable build. It's all been kind of rendering in Roland's brain, I guess he knew what to build it into. He drew up a render and showed it to me, and said 'let's build this thing.' I immediately liked it. We're used to each other's styles, if I had to guess what direction he'd take it, yeah, more performance, tail section, mid controls, more aggressive stance, skid outs, burnouts.... Yeah!"
"The old Scout," says Sands, "was a bit overdesigned, with the aluminum chassis and everything. I think the old Scout was kind of a Victory still. The new Scout, designed by my good friend Ola Stenegärd, you can see they wanna build a classic style bike that you can chop up and turn it into a chopper, turn it into a road racer, or a flat tracker, you can go anywhere you want with it. And when I saw it, I was like 'we are raising this bitch up and putting road racing parts on it for sure!"
The Handover
The three men, each outstanding in his own field, quickly find common ground when they meet; they're all makers, each knows the intoxicating feeling of dreaming up an idea, and the blood, sweat and tears between that moment of inspiration and the point where the thing they've created does enough justice to that first perfect idea that they can let go of it and show the world.
So how did Dun like his new ride? See for yourself.
As just one more happy accident, the color scheme Sands decided on, before having known the bike was going to Dun, perfectly matches the album art on 2017's Trench. "There's a story that's been going on since the beginning of our band," says Dun. "A kind of lore. We never wanted to make it a prerequisite for people to listen to the music, but it boils down to the mind and the brain, and how much they control us. Specifically, insecurity is a huge thing, and there's a group that personifies this insecurity, they're kind of the antagonists in this long-running story."
"And the protagonist's group is there to lead the hero to understand his potential powers," he continues, "they're called the Bandidos. They live on a world called Trench. And they're identified by wearing yellow tape, on the shoulders, the chest, wherever. So for the whole cycle of our Trench album, we had yellow tape all over everything. When I first saw the bike, with those strips of yellow on it, I thought it was intentional. It's just perfect for that story. But it was completely by accident. It just worked out that way."
"Watching Josh go down the road on that bike, that just made me so happy," says Sands. "He looks comfortable, and it just looks badass. It's all the things you want out of a motorcycle. And he's awesome. Super talented, and the band, Twenty One Pilots, I mean, those guys have really helped a lot of people through their music. They're kind of a band for the odd man out, and most of us feel that way at times. They speak to people who are trying to get their shit figured out. You almost need a superhero mentality to help you do that, and they provide that."
So where's Josh Dun gonna take this thing when it arrives in Ohio? "There's a road in Columbus, route 315," he tells me. "It's a long road, it's curvy and windy, there's a river on one side and a bunch of trees... It's my favorite road in Columbus. That'll be the first road I take it on, that'll be the perfect inaugural ride."
"It's fascinating," says Dun, "that something's been around for so long, and people have continued to hone it and make it better, while at the same time holding onto the classic part, the things about a motorcycle that should never change. Optimizing, that's a word that I like. Even within music, it's writing songs, making recordings, putting together a tracklist for a CD, putting together a set list for a show. There are songs that people will always want to hear, the classics; they'll always be on the set list. But what can be added, or changed? Is there a song we need to write, that this show is missing? I can see how these guys are doing a similar thing as they optimize these bikes."
We'll catch up with Aaron Boss again soon, to highlight another truly out-there project he's been working on after hours – a Harley-engined 'belly tanker' car with some of the wildest chassis and suspension work we've seen on it. "It's the funniest thing," says Boss. "The whole car. I built it a few times in my head, I render, I close my eyes and I see things three-dimensionally, like full color renders. I've built the whole car a few times in my head, every single night before I go and work on it. And the next night, after work when I get started, I already know what I'm doing. I've already shaved the tab or the piece of metal a few times in my head."
What's next for Roland Sands? Well, it seems he might have at least one more surprise pivot in store for us. "I've got this, like, plant company I want to make," he grins. "Essentially high end, custom plants, with vessels to hold them. I was in my back yard yesterday, and I just started going off, thinking about this. When you're in a really good space creatively, you close your eyes and start seeing what it is you want to accomplish. That's the way you start setting the wheels in motion. I have these pictures in my head and they won't go away. I've thought about them enough that they're almost real to me, now I just have to accomplish it."
Ten points if you manage to wheelie a nice succulent for the promo shots, Mr. Sands!
Source: Indian Motorcycle