Tyler Neal has established himself as one of the rising new voices in Atlanta’s blues/rock, jam band scene.
A native of Carrollton, he was lead guitarist for Col. Bruce Hampton and The Madrid Express while still in his early 20s and currently holds two residencies — one with The Tyler Neal Band at the Northside Tavern every Wednesday and another at the legendary Bitter End in New York City’s Greenwich Village. He released his debut album, Nothing To Lose, in 2019.
Neal plays the guitar, drums, flute, bass guitar and keyboards in a variety of genres that include blues, roots, gospel, soul, funk and pop. “It’s not really one of them,” he says of his stylistic influences, “but not not any of them.”
He was mentored early in his career by two giants of Atlanta music. Hampton, who passed away in 2017, helped Neal find his musical voice. Yonrico Scott, who was known for his long tenure with The Derek Trucks Band and passed away in 2019, also took Neal under his wing.
Neal recently sat down with ArtsATL to discuss his approach to musicianship, his new single and the lessons he learned from Hampton and Scott.
ArtsATL: Let’s start by talking about your newest single, “Let the Spirit Take Over.” About three-quarters of the way through the song, something happens where it just seems to take on a life of its own.
Tyler Neal: I think, in general, art has to take on a life of its own and the best songs — it’s kind of like they write themselves. They really have to take on a life of their own in order for them to fully grow into who they are. I’ve heard someone say that they’re like your children, and you have to nourish them. But you also have to let them be themselves. It’s a fine line and a delicate balance on every single one. Sometimes that takes a lot of time. I recorded five different demos of that song. It took me a few years to get it from the conception of the idea until it was birthed and released into the music world. So many things helped that song grow into what it is.
ArtsATL: I can definitely hear Yonrico Scott’s influence throughout.
Neal: It all started with Yonrico and the album that he and I were writing. It never ended up happening because he passed away. I took home one of the drumbeats that he was working on, and I put it on a computer and looped it. As I was jamming along to it, that’s when I came up with the chords and the idea of the chorus. That’s the spirit: Let the spirit take over you. And I wrote the verse immediately, too. I put myself in his perspective and where he was and his life at the time, and I wrote it from his point of view as best I could.
ArtsATL: Yonrico Scott had a huge influence on your work. How did he impact your approach to music?
Neal: That whole album, Be In My World, it was so influential to me and it still is — every song on it. Rico was such a mentor and a role model to me. He filled this void in my life as a mentor and someone to look up to.
ArtsATL: What do you mean by a “void”?
Neal: I’ve always been an artist and a musician, but I didn’t have anyone to really look up to for that. Being an artist, it’s not something you choose — it’s something that chooses you. But there’s a fear that the world has for artists. There’s a fear that I think a lot of parents have for their children to become artists, especially in the society we live in — how is he going to make a career for himself? There was a lot of negative energy. I don’t blame anyone in my life for that because I don’t think they understood what they were doing. But by putting that on me, it definitely left a void in me as a person. It was like a part of me that I wasn’t allowed to be, or have, and that was really hard.
Yonrico was my spiritual teacher but deeper than a teacher. He was my role model in a lot of ways. He was the first person to tell me that I could be a musician. In that moment, it changed my life.
ArtsATL: Tell me more about what you learned from him.
Neal: Yonrico basically provided me a diet of music: Miles Davis and John Coltrane, Ali Akbar Khan, James Brown, Stevie Wonder and Duke Ellington. You know how they say you are what you eat? You are what you listen to. Music is a diet, too, and it makes you who you are. I think that as artists and musicians, particularly, we should learn as much as we can about these different music worlds and let those little worlds work on us. By learning about them, by gaining access to them, they gain access to us, and it makes us a better person and a better artist.
ArtsATL: Is that what separates the musician who’s just playing notes versus the one who’s an artist?
Neal: I think that it’s the ability to translate authenticity from a deep place of who you are. You have to mimic before you can do anything. There’s a progression. I think the more mature you become as an artist, the more power you have to be yourself through whatever medium. It’s the ability to be oneself and to be aware of what’s going on with the ingredients. Musically, the ingredients are the notes, but also it’s what’s happening in the room at the time.
You take someone like Johnny Cash. He took that song “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails. Most people think that’s a Johnny Cash song. Because Johnny was such an artist, he took that song and made it what it is, because he’s so himself. He was telling you about his life. Even though he didn’t write those words or those chords, he was telling you his story through that song. He was authentic. He was telling you a story that was true about himself.
ArtsATL: There’s so much pain in his version of that song.
Neal: Once you’re in this life, you’re going to experience pain. It’s a sad, terrible thing that we all have to endure. So it’s almost like you’re showing the audience something different from their reality. Maybe they’re not consciously feeling it, but, somewhere in there, they’re feeling this change in their reality or in how they see things. Like as much truth as you can handle is as powerful as your art can be. It’s like the amount of pain you’re able to take is also contingent to the amount of truth you can take. It’s how honest you can be, how much yourself you can be and how powerful your words are.
I sort of see my mission is to take those terrible things and try to turn them into something good. And I can’t do that on my own. I need help from the beyond. That’s one of the many things I mean in the song “Let the Spirit Take Over.” You’ve gotta let go. It’s got to be something bigger than just you.
ArtsATL: It sounds like what you are saying is that, as an artist, you are a cosmic healer of sorts and, to be that, you have to embrace the pain honestly and then let it come through your music.
Neal: Yes. You left me speechless. That was such a beautiful way to put it — the cosmic healing part. That really is what music is. Music is so deep. I don’t think that it gets the credit it deserves. Sometimes music is 100% taken for granted, but that’s OK because music is also love, and it doesn’t mind if you take it for granted — it’s still powerful. The purest love is something that you can take completely for granted, but it still acts on you.
If you’re an artist and you’re embracing the truth of all of these things, you’re healing, right? It’s your healing through love. By channeling love and channeling truth and letting your audience see and feel what it’s like, you’re serving God versus serving yourself, if that makes any sense. I think if all musicians were doing that, we would live in a different world.
ArtsATL: Why don’t all musicians do that?
Neal: Music is supposed to be healing, but what it ends up being is competitive. It ends up being a platform for self-aggrandizing — to make oneself great and to exalt oneself. It’s like, oh, this is my time to take my solo and show off my skills.
ArtsATL: But true musicianship, it sounds like, is something more spiritual.
Neal: I’m not preaching to anyone here. Maybe I am, but what I’m saying is that I think music is one of God’s gifts from the beyond, from the universe — whatever you want to call it. Music is love because you can benefit from it. Even when you take it for granted, in the most pure and perfect way, music can heal you. It’s like if you think about it outside of the dogma and the religion and you think about it as just this way, we’re supposed to love and manifest love. That’s what creation is, right? That’s love.
ArtsATL: It’s more than just playing in a band for you. Your music is your calling.
Neal: I have peace about what I do with my life, which is to create music because I know why I’m doing it. But it’s a burden, and it’s not always fun. It’s not always fun to get up there in front of all these people that don’t appreciate it and pour my heart out. Sometimes it really sucks, and I hate it. But then there are moments when someone comes up to me, and they say ‘Man, I don’t know what it was that happened tonight, but it really hit me on this level that made me feel, like, healed.’ Because when you’re putting out your music, you’re putting your life out there. That’s one thing Rico told me. He said, ‘Man, you just open up.’ If you’re an open book you just put it all out there, it’s not fun because it makes you vulnerable. But you have to do it.
ArtsATL: Tell me more about Col. Bruce Hampton’s influence on your work.
Neal: Bruce would say, ‘Be no one going nowhere, doing nothing,’ and things like, ‘It’s not about what you play — it’s what you don’t play.” And that it’s the space between the notes. If you can just stop and have a spiritual, musical communion with the people on stage and see each other and be where you are in that moment. It’s like, how in the moment can you be?
ArtsATL: Why do you think he chose you to mentor?
Neal: You know, he gave me a chance, and I’m forever grateful for that because it has changed my life. One of his most popular sayings was, ‘Showing up is 80%,’ and I just started showing up. I’m grateful that he gave me a chance. I had a feeling that I was going to be his last guitar player. You know, his health wasn’t great. You know, that came with some pain, but there was the joy of getting to play with Col. Bruce and all the things that could happen when you get to play with him.
ArtsATL: What did you learn from him?
Neal: I learned so much from that from that man — to play quieter, to turn it down, to be patient, to just hold on, to hold your horses. I think I learned a lot about femininity from Bruce, the idea that music is allowing everyone a place to shine — allowing there to be space. There’s usually all this pent-up masculinity trying to express itself on stage, but the energy on the stage should be balanced. I learned from Bruce to hold, to let it be what it is right now.
Bruce was the least skilled, most gifted musician I have ever been onstage with. He didn’t know how to play guitar. He didn’t know how to sing. But what he was a master of was timing and presence and energy and waiting and being quiet. He was really good with the feminine aspect of music, about being open and allowing for things to happen the way they should. And, you know, thank you for asking me that because I’ve never said it that way. I think I just learned more from him right now, which is what happens with Bruce. I’m still learning from Bruce — I probably have more ahead of me to learn from Bruce.
ArtsATL: So where do things go from here?
Neal: Even if I never get to reach a lot of people; even if I never get to have that big-stage, sold-out auditorium moment; even if that never happens; I don’t care. That’s not really why I’m doing it. That would be a great experience, and I intend for those things to happen. But I sort of see myself as already having succeeded so far because I get to do what I do. Music is just a vehicle to have this conversation with you right now about these things. I feel like this is part of what my purpose is — to get to talk about truth and to try to elevate our world through these ideas.
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Shannon Marie is a freelance music journalist and educator.
