Quality Americana

There’s a magical place in south Texas where the people gather to eat and sing along the Paseo del Rio, where the accordions and fiddles sing into the night and you can experience one of the unique cultural melting pots our Lone Star State is known for. Just past the Alamo you’ll find Jacob Kyle entertaining from the stage.

Blue Skies & Sunshine

“Blue Skies & Sunshine” kicks off like some of your favorite summer country songs on the local radio station. The chorus hits like the Fourth of July, and the groove keeps you dancing into the night.

“I was really trying to get away from the minor feel,” Kyle said about the single. “Most of the songs that I had released up to that point had been sad or dark, and I wanted to do a more major feel like the Allman Brothers.”

The structure and feel of the single allowed Kyle to explore his love of southern rock and have an extended guitar solo. 

“I’ve sort of thought of myself as a guitarist before a songwriter for most of my life and I’ve slowly started to expand the songwriting chops, but I tried to leave myself moments in this album where I could stretch out some guitar playing,” Kyle said. “It’s also one of those songs where you could have these really fun choruses with harmonies.” 

The song is a “reflection on people that you had in your life at some point in time that are no longer in your life now, either if they’ve passed on to the next life, or if they’re just people you drifted apart from and you look back on the happy moments that you had together sort of like rose colored glasses,” Kyle said. “It was a hard one to write. It was kind of like trying to be somewhere in between a happy and a sad song.”

Gulf Coast

Kyle grew up around nature by the Gulf Coast in Victoria, Texas.

“I kind of grew up on the outskirts of even the small town,” Kyle said, “so I was on the country side of town.”

Now based in San Antonio, Kyle said that the experience of growing up in small-town America was invaluable to his upbringing, but that the opportunities for a working musician were scarce.

“You can only, unfortunately, play the same three or four bars so many times in a month before they’re kind of sick of you,” Kyle said.

Heavy Metal

Kyle was obsessed with music from a young age. 

“I was actually kind of into hard rock and metal stuff originally,” Kyle said. “I was definitely a Warped Tour generation kid.” 

He started out as the vocalist in a metal band in his teenage years, and after graduation Kyle started learning the guitar and began a career in finance. 

“I was doing music on the side for quite a while,” Kyle said. “It was just kind of a soul sucking type of corporate job I was eager to get out of at the earliest possible opportunity.” 

Kyle set some earnings aside and dove straight into the world of live performing, and he’s built a reputation as a singer-songwriter in the Texas Hill Country.

Lonesome Valley

Kyle self recorded and produced Lonesome Valley, his first full-length album, at home in San Antonio with feedback from other friends in the music world. He said that he is excited to produce an album rather than the new standard of endless singles to trick the algorithm. 

“It feels good to know that you’ve completed a collection of songs rather than just these singles that seem like they don’t have the same level of depth,” Kyle said. “You listen to Dark Side of the Moon and you’re like ‘wow there’s an extra level of beauty in this album because of the cohesion between the songs.’ Not only is each song great, but they’re all great as a collection, which has always been something that’s important to me.”

He set up a makeshift studio in his spare bedroom and “pretty much did everything on two channels for this whole album. It’s really like survivalist production at the moment, working with the minimal amount of tools, but there’s a nice sort of simplicity to the workflow when you’re doing something that simple.”

Kyle played most of the instruments for Lonesome Valley too, along with some friends on drums and pedal steel guitar. The full album will be released April 25th.

Kyle is already collecting songs for his second album, and said that self-producing is very rewarding but that the process takes much longer than hiring fellow artists and engineers. 

“If I don’t get a start on it now, it’ll be two or three years before I finish something else,” Kyle said with a laugh. “I’m trying to make sure that I’m forcing myself to be in a good position to keep moving.”

Support the Artist

Kyle can be found playing with his one man band set up, and also plays with his backing band the Blues Bonnets. They recently played one of Texas’ most historic dance halls in Gruene. He also fills in lead guitar for his friend Jed Craddok from time to time, who also played drums on the record.

“It’s so fun to just be a guitarist sometimes too and not have to worry about being a band leader,” Kyle said. “It’s something I try to take every opportunity to do when I get a chance.”

More information about Jacob Kyle can be found here.

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