Chattanooga Times Free Press - ChattanoogaNow
Music coming up at Camp House
Jenny & Tyler bring soul-grass indie pop sound to stage tonight
When Jenny and Tyler Somers first started playing music, they would travel “to any city where we had a couple of fans. We even drove out to do a show for one person in their living room,” says Tyler.
“That ’s how we learned to perform and to connect with people. When you’re regularly playing for three or four people, you can’t hide. You’re exposed. You have to learn to engage.”
By the time indie pop duo Jenny & Tyler made the move from Delaware to Nashville, they had built a dedicated following of fans by crisscrossing the country. Their move to Nashville in 2008 wasn’t as much about a change of scenery as it was committing everything to music-making as a vocation and pursuing a career as artists.
Tonight, they’ll bring their soul-grass music — a fusion of indie folk, soul, contemporary Christian and bluegrass — to The Camp House. Anna Lawrence will open.
The two met while students at the University of Delaware, and almost immediately began writing songs together and backing each other at shows. They began dating in 2006 and married a year l ater, between production and release of their first record, “A Prelude.” They spent the next year touring before settling in Nashville. They are parents of two daughters.
On their 2010 release, “Faint Now,” the couple collaborated with Third Day frontman Mac Powell, who provided backing vocals on their song “Carry Me.”
They are supporters of International Justice Mission’s fight against human t raff i cking and t heir album, “For Freedom,” supported that effort.
Tyler says the key to their writing is being deliberate about telling the story of the lyrics through the music.
“If the line is a question, we make the melody uncertain. If the mood is happy, we paint it in a major scale. If it’s dark or yearning, we want the track to communi- cate that same emotion. A song doesn’t feel complete to us if it doesn’t do that.”