Photo credit: Erin Wiley

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW W/ Jon Tyler Wiley of Jon Tyler Wiley & His Virginia Choir

rj frometa Wednesday, April 14, 2021 Content Leave a comment

Take a little trip with me, if you will, to Fredericksburg, Virginia. There’s a new band from that neck of the woods called Jon Tyler Wiley & His Virginia Choir, and their brand new song, called “Strong,” is the perfect introduction to a group that you most definitely need to know. It starts out quietly, gently, compellingly, until bursting into arena-filling, vibrant, soaring Americana goodness on the chorus that will give you the best kind of chills. It just feels good to listen to this song. The lyrics detail Wiley’s story of meeting and marrying his wife, and the music echoes that overwhelming love throughout the song, bursting forth ebulliently. Fiddle (Eddie Dickerson), upright bass (Joanna Smith), electric keys (Thomas Johnson), and electric and acoustic guitar (Wiley) dance with Brian “Piper” Barbre’s fresh drums and percussion. This is alt-Americana at its finest.

The Virginia Choir began as a solo project in the fall of 2018 when Wiley stumbled across a collection of crude demos and sketches of incomplete songs from earlier in his career. The accomplished sideman spent much of the last decade as a member of Americana act Melodime and as a multi-instrumentalist for country singer Kevin Mac, singer-songwriter Stephen Kellogg, and occasionally with country rock and roll band Sister Hazel. A handful of demos slowly turned into a full-length record in 2019, with Wiley recording all of the instruments himself. When Wiley was overcome with the urge to perform this new music live and needed a band to do it, he started to assemble the Virginia Choir. What began as a planned touring band shifted to become a full-on collaborative collective, writing and recording as a quintet. “Strong” is the first song they were all involved in fully creating together, with the track coming to life during the pandemic in 2020.

Vents Magazine sat down with Wiley to talk about “Strong,” the way that creating remotely led to a magical song, the melting pot that is Virginia music, and what’s in store in 2021 for this exciting new outfit.

Vents: Hi Jon, welcome to VENTS! How have you been?

Jon: Busy! We have spent the last year recording new material as a band, and before that I made a record by myself, so it’s great to finally be releasing music out into the world. It’s been a long time coming.

Vents: Can you talk to us more about your brand new song, “Strong”?

Jon: This song was one of the first songs we wrote as a band, and it was our first time recording ourselves in our own homes. I had previously made a record myself in my apartment, but I went to a local studio to record drums and some of the guitars. We bought or borrowed some mics and did this entirely on our own. It was scary, but super rewarding. Having the ability to try things and learn what works or what doesn’t work is really important.

Vents: The track is amazing and caught my attention immediately. Did any event, person, or place in particular inspire you to write this song?

Jon: Thank you! This song was inspired by my wife. Most of my writing is fictional, I’ve always loved being a storyteller. However, all of this song is based on things that actually happened. It makes it a lot of fun to sing.

Vents: I’d love to hear a bit more about how it was writing and recording the song remotely.

Jon: We have tried to limit the time the five of us are together due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so a lot of writing has taken place by emailing demos back and fourth to one another. This song came from an instrumental guitar part I had been fooling around with for quite awhile. Last spring, I sent Piper (Brian “Piper” Barbre, our drummer) and Joanna (Smith, our bassist) a 30-second demo of the main hook of the song. They sent me back ideas for their parts, and, as soon as I heard everything together, I immediately started writing lyrics. It came very quickly. We ended up using a lot of the demo in the final recording, just because it felt so good. It seemed to have that special something.

Vents: Drop a few of your favorite lyric lines from this song on us and tell us what inspired them or what you remember about writing them.

Jon: “Went outside to sneak a kiss, to show her stars that don’t exist.” One of the first nights my now-wife and I ever hung out, we were with a group of friends. Someone told us that there was supposed to be a meteor shower, so I asked her to stay up with me and watch for shooting stars. I never bothered to fact check my source on that meteor shower; I just wanted to hang out with her. We didn’t see a single meteor, but it didn’t matter.

Vents: You are from Virginia. What role has this state played in your music?

Jon: Living in Virginia has been CRITICAL to my musical development. There’s just so much here: the jazz and R&B scene in Washington DC, bluegrass in Charlottesville and out in the more rural parts of the state, country music everywhere, rock bands everywhere. It’s a wonderful melting pot. I was late to the game appreciating bluegrass and found that world after a love affair with jazz, so I love being able to be close to both.

Vents: How would you describe or explain your sound to our readers?

Jon: I’ve always described us as a country band that doesn’t play country music. At first glance, we have a fiddle, piano, slide guitar, occasionally an upright bass or a mandolin — it’s all the usual suspects for a country band. However, as much as some of us like country music, our musical tastes as a band are all over the map, and it shows. I’d say The Police and Bruce Springsteen and Thelonious Monk and ABBA are just as present in our music as, say, Merle Haggard. We are a melting pot of our collective record collections.

Vents: When you are able to head back out on the road, what song are you most looking forward to playing live and why?

Jon: We have a song on our EP called “I Won’t Miss You,” that I’d describe as The Turtles’ “Happy Together” having a baby with “Friends in Low Places” by Garth Brooks. It’s a lovably quirky song, and the recording of the vocal was the most fun I’d ever had in a vocal booth. I’m really excited about getting that one in front of a crowd.

Vents: Who are your biggest musical influences? Favorite album of all time?

Jon: I love storytellers: Petty, Springsteen, Haggard, Stevie Wonder, Ben Folds. I love songs that could just as easily be short stories if you took the music out of them. I will say, however, that some of my first musical memories are listening to “Live at Fillmore East” by The Allman Brothers Band with my dad. So if there’s great musicianship and a crushing band, that seals the deal. My favorite album has GOT to be “Born to Run,” though. There’s just everything you could ask for in those eight songs.

Vents: What else is happening next in Jon Tyler Wiley & His Virginia Choir’s world?

Jon: We are releasing an EP and an LP this year. LP #2 is already halfway written and recorded. We like to stay busy! Besides that, we’re trying to figure out how to perform in the world of COVID. We’ve been releasing videos on our YouTube channel and doing occasional livestreams from our Facebook page. I’m just anxious to get this music in front of people in a live situation. We’ve all been in bands before, but we all see something special in this unit. We know what we are collectively capable of.