Tyrone Wells talks coming back to Spokane and his new album
Tyrone Wells, a Spokane native and folk-pop musician, is returning once again to share his music with a Whitworth-exclusive audience. He recently started a two-month tour for his newest album release, “This Love,” and is traveling all over the country to perform. Wells has released several albums in his career, and is well-known for his song “Time of Our Lives,” which has been used in television shows, one being “The Vampire Diaries.” Wells said he enjoys performing at Whitworth because he feels a warm welcome whenever he visits.
Wells talked to us about “This Love” and playing in his hometown:
Q: How long have you been doing music?
A: “I’ve been doing music seriously for over 10 years. I started doing music in high school and got more serious about it in college. But I was originally thinking that I was going to be a youth pastor, and then when I was in college, I realized that I really wanted to get into the music side of it.”
Q: What’s it like coming back to Spokane?
A: “I love it, because a lot has changed since I’ve been there. But I always love coming back home and I always feel a lot of love from the people back home.”
Q: How is “This Love” different from other albums you’ve released?
A: “Well I tried to be more intentional about forming the record, and then with the acoustic guitar and the voice…I tried to simplify it a bit… There’s definitely more instrumentation going on, and I think I approached this differently, like the core of the songs were different.”
Q: What’s your favorite song on the album?
A: “A song called ‘Aria,’ which is the name of our daughter. She just turned one, a year old. She’s just really, really old, and my first child. I wrote the song for her, and during the recording you hear a recording of her, a recording of her talking. Not words, it’s just babbling, and it’s really sweet.”
Q: If you hadn’t been doing music, what do you think you would be doing? Do you think you would be a youth pastor instead?
A: “You know, I don’t know. I come from [a family] who have worked in the church, like my grandpa is a preacher [and] my dad is a preacher. So obviously I love that work, but also it’s not for the faint of heart. It really demands a lot of you, all of you really, all that you have to give. And so I don’t know, I might have. I do love what the church is about, and I love God. But if I didn’t do music, I don’t know if I would have.”
Q: What inspires your music the most?
A: “I think… [it] would be beauty. Whether it be in a person, or in nature, or in God, or in a relationship. That’s something that inspires a lot of what I do.”
Contact Meghan Dellinger at [email protected]