Ahead of his performance supporting Striking Matches at The Garage as part of Country Music Week, we interviewed Tyler Rich about his new single ‘Rather Be Us,’ the success of ‘The Difference’ and his first experiences in the UK.
How’s your trip been so far? I’ve seen you exploring all across London with the Churchill War Rooms.
Yeah, I’ve been doing it all, yesterday I walked around for about eight hours around the city. Everywhere I wanted to go, when I looked on the map there were a bunch of parks in between, so I thought why wouldn’t I just walk there. I made it to Buckingham Palace.
Hopefully this will be the first of many UK trips, so you’ll have lots more time to explore…
I certainly hope so, I’m already having a blast.
The current single is ‘Leave Her Wild,’ inspired by the Atticus quote?
Yeah so my wife, it’s always been her favourite quote. One of the writers I wrote it with, John, came into the studio and said ‘hey man, have you ever seen this thing, I see these girls posting it all the time,’ and I said, ‘oh yeah it’s Sabina’s favourite.’ He started talking, asking why it was her favourite. We started talking, she was in a relationship in the past that was super controlling and I had been in a relationship in the past that was also very controlling, and you get sucked into this thing where you love the person, but you aren’t yourself anymore. So we started talking about this idea of ‘If you’re going to love her, leave her wild. If you’re going to make her, make her smile.’ All these different things just started to fall out and it became this story live. Now it’s amazing when we play it live and telling the story of how it came to life, it’s not even relationship-wise – we’ll see little girls hop onto dads’ shoulders and sing along.
Well it’s one of those songs I think a lot of girls can relate to and read themselves into.
100%. It’s funny though because there’s also the other side to it. There’ll be guys that as soon as we start playing that, guys will hold the girl and they’ll go crazy because it’s their song and then there’s the girls that are really wild and guys are like ‘why are you inspiring this Tyler? Somebody needs to calm her down. Stop dancing.’ Those guys hate me.
Did you fathom the response that song would get? Did you have that gut feeling when you were in the room?
Yeah absolutely, we were all super excited. I’ve found I always leave thinking ‘oh damn that was really cool,’ but I’ll know within a day if it works. As you’re doing it you’re excited about it.
You grew up in California. Can you describe what it was like there? I know everyone knows about Hollywood and Disneyland, but it’s much more diverse than that?
I tell that story all the time on stage, people say ‘if you’re from California, then why do you like country music?’ I’m like ‘have you ever been there?’ and they say they’ve been to Disneyland, LA where the traffic sucked. California, in general, though it’s a whole coast of a country, almost of a continent – it’s massive. Everything north of the Hollywood sign, even beach towns and even some of those are so agriculture-driven. They have wide open beautiful spaces. Where I grew up is just a hub of farming, surrounded by some big cities, but it’s just this tiny town. Even if I didn’t grow up there, my mom listened to country growing up my whole life. Somebody could be born and raised in New York City but if their parents listened to it growing up and they love country music and they want to play it then that’s all that matters.
You didn’t go straight to country music though, so how did you get back to knowing that that was where you wanted to be?
I was in and out of different indie rock bands, just any type of music I could play with my friends really. We toured around a lot, and when the last one of those bands broke up I decided to go back to school and got my degree. I told myself as soon as I graduate that I would move to LA and become a solo artist. So I graduated and as soon as I got down there, I was writing all these songs and I met up with these producers and said this is kind of the direction I’m going. I didn’t even call it country, I just said this is the direction I’m going and these are the songs, it was just singer-songwriter stuff, a bunch of songs about where I grew up and the girl who broke my heart which sucked. They were like ‘you wanna do country?’ I thought I’ve always loved country and I’ve grown up listening to it, but it just wasn’t very clear. I’m not from Tennessee or Georgia, I don’t have an accent, I’m just singing songs about shit that happened to me. I’d always loved country music and wanted to do it, so I was like ‘shit well if I’m going to be a solo artist, I’m going to do country.’ In LA, especially, unless you have thousands and thousands of dollars, if you find a producer who believes in what you’re doing, you create a deal and you just work together. They just loved it and they had a passion for it and we just went. I opened up this book and I had all these songs, what I thought were country songs that I was writing from back in the day and throwing out ideas. We created all these songs, and we put out this single called ‘Radio’ forever ago and it did really well independently.
How far along did you decide to make the move to Nashville?
I’d say 2 years after that first single came out, everything started happening so fast once that single came out. I started playing shows… I released the ‘Valerie’ EP just after I moved to Nashville.
It must feel so different doing that EP independently and then this one with Big Machine. Can you describe the difference in how it’s felt?
Well doing the ‘Valerie’ EP, there wasn’t really any thought to it. It was ‘hey, I released a single’ and now I’m going to release more and more singles and songs that I wrote and love, and I’m just going to put them out into the world. This one was way more orchestrated, but for all the right reasons of course. We’re dropping a surprise new single tomorrow night.
‘The Difference’ felt like the tipping point for your career. How did that song come to you?
We had all these songs, ones that we loved and wanted to put out but we just weren’t sure we had the first single. The first single is so important, you only get one first single right. We went through all these pitching meetings and people were sending us songs, we had so many songs in the pile and I was writing more songs in the pile, but we just weren’t sure we had the one. We sat down for a five hour pitch meeting. Every thirty minutes a publisher comes in and they come in with a list of songs for us, and usually by the minute you pass or write it down to listen to later. Four hours in, my ears were numb. The song starts playing and I hear this cool, kind of swagger in it, super stripped down. The demo compared to what we did with it in the studio was very skeletal, very stripped. This voice of Devin singing it… He’s one of my favourite voices, and writers, he’s just incredible. I heard his voice on that demo and thought ‘this is dope,’ maybe a puppy head twerk because it’s from California – he grew up like twenty minutes from me. The chorus hit and the lyric hit and I thought ‘this is it, this is amazing.’
What’s up next for the rest of the year?
Germany next week and then the Brantley Gilbert cruise, then three radio shows up to Christmas and then I’m done for the year. I mean stuff might pop up, but this summer was nuts. First Stagecoach, Faster Horses, Boots and Hearts in Canada, every county fair you can imagine… Those tiny random little county fairs are awesome.
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Final Few
Beer or whiskey? Beer.
Give up songwriting or performing? Songwriting.
Record you couldn’t live without if you were stuck on a desert island? Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
Complete the sentence…
Music is… therapy.
Country music is… real.
Tyler Rich is… fun as hell (laughs).
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