The Wes Tirey Interview
Born and raised in Farmersville, OH, Tirey grew up in the country where there were no street lights, typical commitments to get anywhere and hardly anyone around. But this special backdrop that intimidates a lot would eventually lead to Tirey’s love for music, more specifically, songwriting. Influenced by the likes of Conway Twitty and Dwight Yoakam in his early years, Tirey eventually started his very own band after high-school, Wes Tirey and The Easy Hearts and soon after relocated to Dayton for more action. With a few releases already under his belt at the time, Tirey released “I Stood Among Trees” with Dying For Bad Music and soon after his highly antiquated follow up “O, Annihilator” on Full Spectrum Records. Tirey now currently resides in Asheville, NC where he continues to work on music with his most recent music project, “Michael Ondaatje's “collected works of Billy the Kid” that will be released by the fine folks over at Sun Cru. In this interview we explore Tirey’s youth growing up in Ohio, his early influences, seeing Brooks and Dunn back in the day, living in Asheville, elements of songwriting, records he’s released over the years and his most recent project he’s absolutely stoked to share with the world!
Tell me about growing up in Farmersville, Ohio before relocating to Asheville, NC. When did you first begin to fall in love with music, more so songwriting? Was this something that was relevant around your households growing up? Do you have any siblings?
Farmersville is just about how you imagine it in your head – middle of nowhere rural Ohio. The population is around 1,000 people. No streetlights. A half hour drive from anything remotely interesting. I stayed there until I was nineteen and then moved into my own apartment near Dayton. That’s when I was really deep into songwriting. I was about three years in at that point and knew it was what I wanted to do. My older sister and both my older brothers are music lovers, but I wouldn’t say music – especially songwriting – was very important growing up. I just kind of came around to it, however it happened.
Who were some of your earliest influences? When and where did you see your first concert and when did it dawn on you that you wanted to be a musician? An artist. When and where did you play your first gig and what was that experience like for you?
Man, earliest influences? Gotta be Conway Twitty and Dwight Yoakam. First concert was Brooks & Dunn with my crazy aunt. I was way too damn young to be there. I later got to see Dwight Yoakam in concert with my mom when I was nineteen – that was a really sweet moment. I saw him again in 2019 – dude’s voice hasn’t aged a bit. I got my first guitar at fourteen and after that there was no stopping me. I can’t remember where I played my first gig. That was a long time ago.
Did you participate in any groups, or projects prior to becoming a solo musician? Tell me about writing and recording your 2013 debut “I Stood Among Trees”. What was the process of creating that album? What was the overall approach? How did the deal with Dying For Bad Music come about? That same year you released a cassette, “Home Recordings” with Orange Milk Records. Can you tell me about that release?
Oh, sure – I first started out as a solo artist and then went on to play with a band. I “released” my first EP in 2005. It was called Cheap Work of Art. It’s pretty bad, but it’s got some charm to it. After graduating high school, I started a band called Wes Tirey and The Easy Hearts. We played the Dayton scene and released a couple EPs. I had a solo album, or two in between and after. I Stood Among Trees was kind of my way of getting back into things after a bit of a hiatus. I released that on my own – Marcus offered to re-release it as an expanded edition with a few extra tracks. I’ve known Seth and Keith who own and operate Orange Milk since my Dayton days. I was doing a lot more instrumental work around the time they asked me to release something. More lo-fi home stuff. Some of those tracks go back to 2010, 2011.
That following year you did another double release with Full Spectrum Records and Scissor Tail. When you're writing and constructing music for an album, do you usually have an overflow of material when you tap into that special place?
It depends. When you write with a full album in mind, it becomes more of a construct and you can kind of see a beginning, middle and end, more or less. When you’re just writing, the space is more open and you’re not thinking about anything other than one song at a time. With O, Annihilator, I had just gotten out of a long-term relationship and was living alone again, so those songs just poured out nearly all at once and then were gone just as quickly as I’d started. It was exciting, really – I hadn’t written with that kind of urgency in a while. The Scissor Tail release was a split with my buddy Andrew Weathers, who you probably know. I worked on those two pieces over the course of a month, or two – can’t remember, really. I was living in Black Mountain, NC at the time – when I wasn’t working all I did was stay home and play guitar.
I want to jump ahead a bit with your most recent project you're working on with the fine folks over at Sun Cru. Tell me about Michael Ondaatje's “collected works of Billy the Kid” and what this project has been like for you to work on.
I first came across the book back in 2015. I picked it up at a great bookstore here in Asheville and just tore through it over a day, or two. It’s this perfect hybrid of experimental poetry and prose vignettes. I don’t want to give too much away – it’s too good of a reading experience to pass up. I’d been in a bit of a writing slump around the end of last year and had been listening to Richard Buckner’s The Hill, which is made up of a selection of poems from Edgar Lee Master’s Spoon River Anthology. It seemed like an interesting challenge to take free verse poetry and impose some kind of melodic structure, so I took a handful of poems from Collected Works of Billy the Kid and worked them out. It was a fairly quick process, really – the most work was rearranging the lines so they fit into a clean break for a verse, chorus, or hook.
What does your Spring and Summer look like this year and what are you most excited for? Is there anything else you would like to further share with readers?
I travel a lot for my job, so I’m going to be on the road a bunch. My birthday is next month, so I got a night out with friends and a baseball game to look forward to. I think I’m going to Brazil in July. It’s gonna be a whirlwind. I’ll hit the studio soon to really get the release for Sun Cru cookin’. Thanks for the invite, Dakota – really appreciate it, bud.
