Quality Americana

South Texas songwriter Tyson Webb released a classic folk song “Candles” for his upcoming album Awoken by the Birds.

Webb’s been steadily growing his band Outlaw Boogie that performs around Houston and the Gulf Coast. 

“We have a drummer now, fiddle, trumpet, banjo…” Webb said. “That’s what I’ve been locking in on lately is the performance.” 

“Candles” is a more stripped down, classic Townes Van Zandt style single from Producer Robert Kuhn at La Izquierda Records.

“It’s my good homie,” Webb said about Kuhn, a community organizer and musician who founded the La Izquierda Surf & Music Festival. “I could spend a bunch of time adding all this stuff to the songs, but at the end of the day if it’s not a song worth hearing none of that stuff matters. Just lay it down solo and hopefully it’s good.”

Navy Days

Webb grew up in League City that sits just between Houston and Galveston. He spent time in the Navy after college where he picked up the guitar.

“My freshman year of college was the covid year,” Webb said. “It was like my second semester that college got shut down.”

Webb decided to enlist in the Navy and got started in basic training, and was soon asked to join Navy Seal training. 

“I started swimming a bunch and I was going through the training,” Webb said. “Then I was the guy that was like singing the marching songs, you know. I was the guy that was walking on the side of the group screaming and they would all repeat it back to me.” 

The group said he was the best that had tried leading the march, which gave Webb the idea of becoming a singer.

“I was writing down all these ideas,” Webb said. “I was like ‘I need to learn the guitar and start playing at bars, I think I could do a really good job at that.’” 

Covid was going through the Navy as well, and when they were potentially exposed or tested positive, they were quarantined for two weeks.

“I went through quarantine like six times in the Navy for a total of twelve weeks, which is pretty crazy,” Webb said. “Twelve weeks of pure isolation, but my homie gave me a guitar. So I was just playing the guitar. It all started right there.”

Webb spent time learning the chords and writing down lyrics, but he was confined to a room with little human interaction. 

“A lot of people haven’t really had to go through isolation in their life. I realize as the time goes on that that was pretty (expletive) bizarre stuff,” Webb said. “It was just nuts, but it really taught me guitar quickly. It put me in that emotional state where I wanted to give my all to something.”

Candles

After leaving the Navy, Webb started putting in work at songwriter nights and performing at clubs, and soon started hosting his own showcase at Dan Electros in Houston. Traveling across the state to Big Bend inspired “Candles.” 

“I remember exactly when I wrote that, and I don’t remember that for a lot of songs,” Webb said. “I had just came back from Terlingua, and I had stopped in San Marcos.”

Webb talked about making a brief stint in New York City along the way.

“I got my guitar back and wanted to go play somewhere peacefully, so I went to the San Marcos River right there in Sewell Park and I wrote it under the big tree. There’s not a place above that for me,” Webb said. “I noticed that leaving always turns into coming. There comes a point in every journey where the leaving turns into coming to the next place. You’re leaving Terlingua, but once you kind of shift gears in your mind, then your going to New York, or going to Austin.

It’s not really about the leaving part so much, it’s kind of just a choice of how you want to look at it. Do you want to look at it like you’re leaving and be all sad, of do you want to look at it like you’re going to the next thing and be happy and excited?”

Support the Artist

More information about Tyson Webb can be found here. 

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