Tyler Stokes: Rockin'
I got to the Brown Egg—Springfield’s best-kept secret when it comes to café-coffee shops—a little early, so I found a table and started going over my notes one last time. “Hey, how’s it going, man?” I peered up over the top edge of the papers in my hand to see Tyler Stokes hovering over the table.
He’s young—early 20s—and he looks it. He was dressed like all of the other college kids there: blue jeans and a faded sweater. But he didn’t blend in. He never does; nobody else there could wear a smile the way that he does. It’s warm and genuine, and it makes you feel like he knows something about life that you don’t, and he does.
He put his bag on the table, slid his coat around the chair next to me, and sat down. We chatted briefly about school, life, the weather—but I was eager to talk to him about his music, to find out why he smiles.
He’s not at all what you would expect. My first impressions of Tyler happened while he was on stage with his guitar in his hand. His presence was impeccable. As soon as his fingers slipped around the neck of that guitar, he changed. He aged five years and then commanded the audience like he does his instrument, playing us all note by note.
But at that moment, sitting across from me, he was just Tyler Stokes eating lunch and drinking a root beer out of a glass bottle.
He’s young—early 20s—and he looks it. He was dressed like all of the other college kids there: blue jeans and a faded sweater. But he didn’t blend in. He never does; nobody else there could wear a smile the way that he does. It’s warm and genuine, and it makes you feel like he knows something about life that you don’t, and he does.
He put his bag on the table, slid his coat around the chair next to me, and sat down. We chatted briefly about school, life, the weather—but I was eager to talk to him about his music, to find out why he smiles.
He’s not at all what you would expect. My first impressions of Tyler happened while he was on stage with his guitar in his hand. His presence was impeccable. As soon as his fingers slipped around the neck of that guitar, he changed. He aged five years and then commanded the audience like he does his instrument, playing us all note by note.
But at that moment, sitting across from me, he was just Tyler Stokes eating lunch and drinking a root beer out of a glass bottle.
| I’ve been fascinated with how musicians compose music, and Tyler writes all the music for Delta Sol Revival (DSR), a fresh band in the Springfield music scene. He’s been writing since he was 12. He wrote and recorded Drink to the Blues in his room when he was only 13. I know, I laughed when I heard the title, too. “My mom was like, ‘You can’t have it say drink,’ and I was like, it’s a blues album! It was the worst idea I ever had, but that’s the best part. You learn by failing—miserably.” The idea that a 13-year-old would write an album with drinking in the title is laughable, but it does make some sense. After all, that’s when he started playing in bars around St. Louis. A few days after his fourteenth birthday, he got his first paying gig for $50, but it didn’t go to his head. Somehow, he still didn’t feel like he was anything special, just a kid getting paid to do what he loved doing. | 
Tyler Stokes: Kid Rockin'
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It wasn’t until he brought a song he had just written over to his neighbor’s house, Devon Allman, son of Greg Allman of the Allman Brothers, that he realized that he had a knack for writing music, that he may just be something special. He put it in and played it for Devon:
[He] paused it after 30 seconds. “Here’s what you’re going to do: You’re going to start a band, and I’m going to produce your first record. You’re going to do this.” And I was like, heck yes, I’m going to do this!
And he did start writing music—all the time. In high school, he and his friends started a hobby band, Bucket of Truck. It was there that he first started developing his ability to write real songs for a real band.
Unlike some musicians, Tyler’s songs are based mostly on the music:
Unlike some musicians, Tyler’s songs are based mostly on the music:
It’s usually always music first, or I come up with one phrase. I’ll just say a line. Or it’s, like, “dew-dewt, dew-dewt, dew, dew,” and sometimes it’s just really random: “I just ate some duck soup.” Or, something more general like, “I just want to love you.” And then it’s like, well, that sounds really good, so let’s just write a song about that line. […] Sometimes it comes from just playin’; I find just one rift that sparks and goes into another thing. […] I start with grooves a lot—that’s essential.
He writes anywhere and everywhere: his basement back home, a practice room, in the hallway before class, in his dorm room, while driving, etc. He puts a lot of his initial ideas on loose-leaf paper, but when it becomes tangible enough, he puts it all into his computer on GarageBand. He translates everything he hears in his head into parts—4 pieces, 5 pieces, 6 pieces—for his band to play: percussion, bass, guitar, keyboard, vocals, background, and high vocals. It’s a lot of work, but when he has it all together, he can hear if it’s a good idea or not. And then he takes it to his band members where they decide if it’s the right feel for their instrument and offer their creativity and professionalism to the process.
If you haven’t ever written a song, you may be thinking that it’s a stagnant process where you sit down, drop a song, and flush, but, like most songwriters, it takes him weeks to fully write out a song and develop it, usually about 10 hours from start to finish. Only once has he pushed a song out in one sitting. He wrote it in the 30 minutes he had between classes, but, like all of his songs that I’ve heard, it turned out to be the type you don’t flush. It’s called “Shadows,” and it’s been played in St. Louis, Oklahoma City, and Nashville.
This sort of thing sounds like it takes a lot of talent, and Tyler agrees, to a certain extent. To him, talent can only take you so far, and the rest is hard work and what you learn along the way:
If you haven’t ever written a song, you may be thinking that it’s a stagnant process where you sit down, drop a song, and flush, but, like most songwriters, it takes him weeks to fully write out a song and develop it, usually about 10 hours from start to finish. Only once has he pushed a song out in one sitting. He wrote it in the 30 minutes he had between classes, but, like all of his songs that I’ve heard, it turned out to be the type you don’t flush. It’s called “Shadows,” and it’s been played in St. Louis, Oklahoma City, and Nashville.
This sort of thing sounds like it takes a lot of talent, and Tyler agrees, to a certain extent. To him, talent can only take you so far, and the rest is hard work and what you learn along the way:
You get better at it, and you learn tricks of the trade, you know, things to do when you’re in a jam. You get to that time in a song, and it’s like, what do we do next? We can do this, you can put this chord there, you can go to the five, and it will always go back to the one.
DSR: Practicin'
I’ve known a lot of talented musicians, and, although musically capable, most of them don’t write their own music. And most of the musicians I know that write music, don’t like to play covers. It’s a weird delineation that happens within the term musician. For his part, Tyler attributes this to his lacking the skill set that some musicians have to tediously perfect a song line by line on their instrument, and he speculates, from his experience, that the ability to write a song comes from just doing it:
That’s the hardest part is to start a song. Once the song’s started, I mean, you’re good. Throw in a chorus, some lyrics on top of it, some ketchup, some mustard. You’re good; you’re done. It’s just those first ideas, and, also the confidence. It takes great confidence to write a song and play it, and that’s something I struggle with. I get so nervous every time I show a new song to my band—every time.
This isn’t to degrade any musician that doesn’t write music. Some musicians, as Tyler puts it, just want to focus on the art of musicianship, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The art of songwriting is just a different step in a different direction, just like poetry is a little different from technical writing or writing a blog—all of which are forms of writing. Songwriting defines meaning for words, chords, notes, and rhythm. It is the hypertext markup language of music. It takes a musician and a writer, both.
This idea of assigning meaning to words for the audience to interpret can be a bit tricky for a songwriter. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia brings this up in the episode “The Nighman Cometh.” The gang writes a song with the line, “You gotta pay the troll toll if you want to get into that boy’s soul,” and the way that Frank sings it, it sounds like, “You gotta pay the troll toll if you wantto get into that boy's hole." This exact same thing happened to Tyler once:
This idea of assigning meaning to words for the audience to interpret can be a bit tricky for a songwriter. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia brings this up in the episode “The Nighman Cometh.” The gang writes a song with the line, “You gotta pay the troll toll if you want to get into that boy’s soul,” and the way that Frank sings it, it sounds like, “You gotta pay the troll toll if you wantto get into that boy's hole." This exact same thing happened to Tyler once:
I kind of have a low, blues-zee voice, and when I say, “that use to rest inside of me.” I mean, I say inside of me, but the way I sing it, it just sounds like sodomy [laughing], so when you talk about inflections, I always think of that.
What does Tyler fear besides being chased out of a bar and being tarred and feathered by an angry mob for singing about sodomy? Snakes, of course. It’s not a coincidence that Satan took the form of a snake in Genesis. Seriously, they are clearly evil. But the greatest fears, the fears that drive us, come from within:
My fear since I’ve entered [songwriting] is not being the fullest person that I can and not using the gifts I’ve been given and the opportunities I’ve been given to the best of my ability. And being lazy. I don’t care if I’m successful or not as long as I know that I tried and I gave it my best. I know it sounds cheesy, but it’s really true. That’s how my family is […] Working is the easiest part.
The more I talked with Tyler, the more I realized that he is so much more than his smile, his band, or Tyler Stokes on stage. Each layer reveals more talents, gifts—and humility. His self-proclaimed hidden love is writing music for film, and he’s written music for three award-winning movies, one of which, The Barberless Barber, was bought by a French TV station; he co-wrote “There’s No Time” with Devon Allman, which will be on Devon’s album, Turquoise, scheduled for release on February 12, 2013; and he’s a full-time college student at Drury University, studying to become a music therapist (If you don’t know anything about music therapy, you should. Learn about it. This is the type of musician that chooses it as a major, if that tells you anything).
But his band is his main focus right now. Delta Sol Revival is one of the top bands in town, Tag Magazine voted their song, “Play” the third best new song of 2012, and they are about to release their first professionally produced album this spring. Check out DSR on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, listen to some of their songs, find out where they’re playing next, and go watch them. You won’t be disappointed. Trust me: I’m not a doctor.
He’s grounded, passionate, dedicated—and in more than just music or his music—and that’s why you’ll be seeing Tyler Stokes living the dream, or at least his meager version it:
But his band is his main focus right now. Delta Sol Revival is one of the top bands in town, Tag Magazine voted their song, “Play” the third best new song of 2012, and they are about to release their first professionally produced album this spring. Check out DSR on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, listen to some of their songs, find out where they’re playing next, and go watch them. You won’t be disappointed. Trust me: I’m not a doctor.
He’s grounded, passionate, dedicated—and in more than just music or his music—and that’s why you’ll be seeing Tyler Stokes living the dream, or at least his meager version it:
Where do I see myself, or where do I want to be because [laughing] those are two completely different things? A hot tub? Jumping on a trampoline? In five years, I just hope to be touring, playing music, making a sufficient amount of money, hopefully I have my girlfriend still there—that would be nice—and being able to tour the world and play music, and, hopefully having a couple people there to see it.
Wherever Tyler ends up, you can bet your bottom dollar that he’ll be out there making good music or doing good with his music—with a smile on his face . . .
DSR: Workin' the Crowd
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