The album cover to Grayson Ty’s new project “Bloodline,” which will be out through digital streaming platforms on June 21.
Reminder Publishing submitted photo
NORTHAMPTON — There is a moment on Grayson Ty’s new five-song EP Bloodline where the Western Massachusetts singer-songwriter resembles a phoenix rising from the ashes.
“I’m better off than I was before,” Ty assertively sings on the chorus of “What the Fire’s For,” the handclapping, finger snapping, toe tapping, yet ruminative country western track that reflects the grander ethos of the project.
“It’s really about realizing your self-worth and enduring your darkness to find a way out and becoming a better person because of it,” Ty told Reminder Publishing in a recent interview, when talking about “What the Fire’s For.”
The power of perseverance, personal growth and finding a warm embrace, whether it be with someone you love in the present or with someone your connected too from the past, runs through the veins of an EP that bathes in the twilight of folk, country, soul and western tropes.
There is a clear lionhearted aura around the Ty’s heart-on-the-sleeve, storytelling-style songwriting, which drives the majority of the project, and specifically materializes on the propulsive power country tracks “Rock Bottom” and “What Happened to Me,” two songs that are grounded in real life experiences while simultaneously sounding like distant country folk tales.
Being vulnerable for vulnerability’s sake is not necessarily on the mind of Ty, however. The tracks here function as liberating and cathartic moments in his journey, as well as the journey of others. He deals with heavy topics on the EP, but he never looks down on himself and others. The temptations, tribulations and battle scars are all part of life’s roller coaster, and it can be a proud moment when you are able to steady the ship.
Even the process of creating the project was liberating for Ty. He told Reminder Publishing that in the past, he would define his success by streams or what other people thought of his album, but this time around, he took super producer Rick Rubin’s mantra of “all that matters is you are making something that you love” and ran with it.
“I found that really the more personal and specific you get to your own story somehow, the more relatable it becomes to the listener,” Ty said. “Rather than trying to make it this kind of broad idea that you hope people can listen to, just hone in on what you feel and what you’ve experienced.”
The entire project took several months to complete, according to Ty, but the project’s lineage can be traced as far back as generations.
Never is that more present than the uber-danceable rockabilly finale track “Distant Star,” which quite literally parses through Ty’s Jewish heritage, as well as his maternal and paternal bloodlines.
The song, which is rich and vivid in detail, finds Ty breathlessly capturing his family tithes at a dizzying pace that almost feels like he must put it all on wax before the history is forgotten — “And Mama came/On a Veterans Day/In a back seat down in Queens/One of two/With a grandma who/Got hitched at 23/And her daddy crossed the great Atlantic/Changed his name the day he landed/a lightweight wrestling champion of the world.”
The song is a timestamp for the important events, places and people that define Ty’s lineage, but the story is also timeless in the sense that Ty can be his own type of oral historian for the coming generations.
He told Reminder Publishing that he spent a lot of time talking to relatives and researching different sites to find more about the history. Through that research, he found interesting tidbits, including how his great-great grandfather was a world-famous wrestler or how his great-grand aunt was a famous jazz singer.
“Learning about my family made me have a deeper understanding of why I make music,” Ty said. “There were elements that I learned along the way that I knew I wanted to incorporate somehow into this song.”
While a lot of these songs took a few different sessions to make, the track that feels like the warmest embrace on the entire EP is “At the End of the Day,” the humid ballad that Ty said only took a few hours to make.
The song is a sundown slow-burner, an idyllic exhale and the brief eye in the storm of life. “And nothing compares/To having you there/When I’m worn down and weak,” Ty wearily sings, as he melts into the “fire of his heart” that keeps him going.
Ty said that the track is mainly about his wife Laura Buchanan, a performer in the valley trio Eavesdrop who also made a collaborative album with Ty last year called “Long Way Round” under the moniker SONAURA.
The track, while personal in that regard, is also universal in the way it talks about leaning on the people you love when the going gets tough.
“It’s okay to ask for help,” Ty said, when talking about the song. “It’s a much healthier outlet than some other alternatives.”
The EP is also a change-of-pace for Ty in the sense that he is embracing those old school country and blues tropes moreso now than he was before, when a lot of his music was more pop-centric.
Ty said that switch in style is a reflection of what he is listening too now but also an extension of the sounds he was embracing with Buchanan on their collaborative project last year.
“I’ve just fully embedded myself in that world,” Ty said. “I feel like in a lot of ways, the artists that I’ve been listening to and surrounding myself with have honed in on that idea of writing lyrics that are true to themselves.”
With the EP set to hit all digital streaming platforms on June 21, Ty is set to perform a show at the iconic, and newly-refurbished, Iron Horse Music Hall on June 28, where he and his bandmates-which include lead guitarist and harmonizer Jeff Lynch, pianist/organist Darby Wolf, bassist Paul Kochanski, drummer and harmonizer Andrew Ricketts and Peter Adams on pedal steel-will perform tracks on the EP.
Additionally, Ty said he will be joining Eavesdrop and Buchanan for some SONAURA songs.
“We played there a few years ago, so it’s so exciting to be back,” Ty said of the performance. “It’s such a magical listening room.”
Readers can immerse themselves in Ty’s new EP as well as other tracks from Eavesdrop by buying tickets to the show on The Parlor Room Collective’s website, theparlorroom.my.salesforce-sites.com/ticket.
