Colin Tyler
Colin Tyler is a Chicago-based singer-songwriter but is a student of the
world. His style varies, but always showcase his amazing vocal talents.
Moving effortlessly through genres- jazz to blues, rock to romantic- his
storytelling and compelling arrangements thread it all together to provide
audiences with more than a song, but a whole experience. Colin does not
track his music, he only performs it live, full band, single take to be as
honest as possible and capture that moment in time.
His voice and music have been compared to Jeff Buckley, Jimmy Gnecco,
Ours, Nick Drake, James Reyne and recalls a time when music peered deep
into our shared human experience. In Colin's own words from a recent
interview, "It is my firm belief that here and now our culture is standing
at the threshold of a revival; and not just musical, but of all things
synthetic. We are begging for something honest and pure in all aspects of
our existence; from the foods we eat, to politics and the information we
receive, right down to music and art. I am reminded of the excess, glam
and utter insincerity of the 80s just before Kurt Cobain took the helm of
the grunge revolution. We are beginning to see that, although our
technologies increase efficiency and productivity, we are sacrificing
something more inconspicuous...
Upon listening back to all my studio-perfected music, I sensed something
was missing; something was incomplete. It was sonically pleasing, but it
simply had no soul. I realized I had been trying to imitate something that
was once raw and emotional. Now, all honesty and emotion had been
suffocated and only a shadow of a ghost remained. I then decided to never
make a studio recording again. Live recordings are my future.
Recording is a fairly new technology and concept, given the scope of music
history. How did people listen to music before the phonograph? Imagine it,
for a moment. They had to physically be in the presence of the artist to
hear the music. Great music wasnt readily available to them. They could
not access it with a stroke of the index finger. It was something special;
something sacred and they knew it. Can you imagine if you were one of the
lucky few able to see Beethoven himself perform Fr Elise? What an
experience it must have been!
In some cultures, separate words for music and dance do not exist. They
are one and the same. The movement of a person is as important as the
sound. So where did we go wrong? When did compact disks and MP3s become
all that is music? When did the performance become secondary? It seems
like we are taking photographs of mountains and pawning them off as
mountains. Yes, you can look at a picture and gain a pretty accurate idea
of what a mountain is with a little imagination, but to actually stand at
the base of Mount Everest and look up is quite another impression far
beyond the dimensions of a photograph. No wonder everyone is stealing
music. Theyre starting to smell the bullshit."