Jul. 04, 2012 - Issue #872: The Beer Issue
Brock Tyler
A prairie boy forever / Aaron Parker
The culmination of late nights and multi-instrumental work came together for local singer-songwriter Brock Tyler, who's celebrating the release of his latest EP, You Can't Keep the Sun Down.
Tyler did a soft release for the EP last summer, but now that he has physical copies in his hands, he wants to get them out to the masses. The six tracks, which just scrape the 15-minute mark, get right to the point through concise, simplistic songwriting that offers a glimpse into what Tyler's musical world is like.
"It's pretty varied. I find myself working on lots of different kinds of music," he notes of this landscape. "The stuff on the EP, those are songs that I think are a really good sample of songs I like to write."
Each song tells its own story, from sleeping under the stars on "June" to regaining perspective on "Saturday, Maybe." Aside from nature and daily life, Tyler also finds inspiration within history, which can be heard on "Just Like Chester Munday," which tells the story of a distant relative whom he'd never met, but received a copy of his obituary in his email.
"One of the lines that stuck out to me was that he was a military man until the end and a prairie boy forever," Tyler recalls. "I realized I related to one of those things. History and nature are big things for me."
The songs were recorded independently by Tyler over the course of about 24 hours in the dead of night at Central Baptist Church, where he's also a congregation member. The night-time recording sessions, which involved Tyler manning numerous different instruments, were done mostly because of logistics, but the time also helped the atmosphere of the record.
"There's something about it, too. Everything's quiet, and I work best at night," Tyler adds. "I stay up way too late working on music all the time, so it's my time to really get to work."
The church became a part of the recording through its natural reverb, creating a large, open sound for the EP. Tyler says he's always been a fan of Stax records from the '60s, where a large part of the sound was due to being recorded in large, echoey spaces.
"You can hear it all over the recordings of Otis Redding, Booker T & the MGs," he says. "That was part of what inspired me to record in a church, to introduce a sense of space and place to the songs. I wanted the listener to feel they were in the corner of the room listening in."
Fri, Jul 6 (8 pm)
With Alex Vissia, the Young Albertans
Elevation Room, $10
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