A special performance for our 2021 online festival! Watch the performance anytime on festival day by following this link: https://youtu.be/bKetQnmAgpo .
Alec Lytle reminds us of our humanity.
“A singer/songwriter worth watching…”
– Hal Horowitz, American Songwriter Magazine
“Lytle’s music is a breath of fresh air that transports you to that peaceful and serene place… ”
– Raul Campos, KCRW 89.9FM Los Angeles
Great songwriters are often gifted with the ability to spin tales, to imagine characters, and to fabricate fantastic details of their lives. Alec Lytle is no such songwriter. Woven of his own loves, losses, triumphs and missteps, his songs ring honest and carry the character and mood of the redwood forest where he lives and writes. The husband and father of two lives with his family in a house he designed and built on a plot of land in the rural Northern California coastal mountains — an area with a rich history, including Ken Kesey’s acid tests and the more than 20 albums recorded by Neil Young at his iconic ranch. Here, Alec wrote his debut album, The End of Ours (2015) and his latest, The Remains of Sunday (2020).
Alec, previously an upright bassist, sideman, and harmony singer, is un-beholden to the formulas that typify singer-songwriters in folk and Americana music. His lyrics tell compelling, clear, relatable stories, always true and angularly referenced, inviting listeners to relate and apply their own meaning; his sound propels them into swirls of sensation, allowing them to tap into a vibrant, immersive experience with his music.
Along with a ragtag, evolving group of unique musicians, he records and performs as ‘Alec Lytle & Them Rounders.’ The ensemble includes mandolin, upright bass, drums, slide guitar, pedal steel, fiddle, banjo, and three-part harmony singing in a variety of combinations, lending to a vast spectrum of sounds. From gritty southern a cappella and rowdy, boot-stomping choruses, to the Laurel Canyon troubadours of yesterday —but never wandering quite so far towards the sentimental — they stretch past the limits of modern folk music. The band performs on stages at music festivals, cafes, clubs, and bars across the US.
Lytle wrote his 2020 release, The Remains of Sunday, during major personal upheaval, with the births of his children and passing of his mother and older sister. It would be easy for such a work to be too inwardly oriented for listeners to connect with, but his collaboration with the band yields a remarkably accessible exploration of deeply human themes — grief, intimacy, and nostalgia among them.