Folk artist Tyrone Wells is now within the final week of his Lift Me Up Tour, which is stopping for its third to last show in Santa Barbara at one of the singer-songwriter’s favorite venues in town, SOhO Restaurant & Music Club. Promoting the 2019 album his tour is named for, “Lift Me Up,” on November 20 Mr. Wells will present three to four songs from the new record along with his back catalogue that began more than a decade ago. Minus a couple of “snafus” he and his band experienced while in Texas, Mr. Wells expressed pleasure with how his current tour has gone and how the new album’s songs have performed in a live setting.
“The new songs have been going over very well,” he said.
A singer-songwriter uninterested in chasing trends, Mr. Wells told the News-Press that he didn’t set out to make “Lift Me Up” all that different from his previous records. Rather than focusing on what production techniques to use on his new songs, he is more concerned with the songs themselves, particularly their melodies and lyrics. This approach hasn’t really changed throughout his years of making albums.
“When I think we’ve arrived at the best songs, I try to go about not messing up the song with doing too much production. In that way I think I’ve been a pretty consistent artist,” he said.
Of all the songs featured on “Lift Me Up,” Mr. Wells is particularly fond of the melody and lyrics of the fifth track “Something About Her,” which he named as his favorite. When it comes to performing live, Mr. Wells’ favorite song to play is “Carolina Blue” from his 2003 sophomore album “Snapshot.” When performing the song, Mr. Wells sings about his family from his paternal grandparents, to his mother and father, to his three daughters aged 7, 4, and 1. The “blue” in the song’s title is a reference to “the kindness and the blue that has been passed down in our family’s blue eyes.” The songwriter added that performing the song throughout the tour reconnects him with his family in a meaningful way.
“Singing that song every night in a new city, helps tie me back to my family, and I feel it,” he said.
Before he was married, Mr. Wells frequently wrote love songs, either about romantic young love or yearning for love. Now past the stage of life where he feels such things, the singer-songwriter told the News-Press that his writing has grown to be more focused on familial lyrical themes. This he said is most likely due to his wife and kids.
“They really are my world,” he said of them.Tickets for Tyrone Wells’ November 20 concert cost between $20 and $52 and can be purchased online at www.sohosb.com. The show will begin at 7:30 p.m. at SOhO Restaurant & Music Club, with doors to the venue opening at 6:00 p.m. SOhO Restaurant & Music Club is located at 1221 State St. Ste. 205.
