By Kieran Webber
Based out of Southern-California Tyson Motsenbocker creates emotively driven folk that has the ability to create beautiful yet haunting imagery due to its prickly and truthful song writing. He comes from a similar elk to the likes of James Bay, Ben Howard and Ray LaMontagne.
His latest single ‘In Your Name’ continues Motsenbocker’s ability to create heart warming but nail bitingly emotive music, a testament to his songwriting ability. The songs story is one that many if not everyone can relate to, a story of human questioning the reality of a higher being, questioning your faith whilst you go through the turmoil of a family illness/death.
Tyson explains, “I never meant to play or record “In Your Name” – I never meant to write it either. I was sitting on the porch at my parent’s house when her doctor called to tell us that her sickness had gathered enough momentum and velocity that it was now an unstoppable force, and ultimately that she was going to die soon. All of the years of my family praying that she would get better shot through my mind, and then alternatively, all of the things people had claimed God had answered their prayers about – weather, sports, traveling mercies or whatever. It seemed so trivial and impossible. Like the big power was only toying with us.”
Talking on the video of the song Tyson tells us, “When we were talking about making a video for this song, I wasn’t sure how we could do it without it feeling too self-serious or on the nose. The filmmaker for this video, Dustin Miller had a friend in Florida who traveled around taking pictures of people living in these run down motels on the main drags of the coastal towns. I imagined all of those people, living out hard times under the evangelical fear of the American South. Something about this guy seeing the trouble that the cultural church didn’t, it felt like a parallel image of the song.”
Watch here:
‘In Your Name’ is taken from his ‘Letter To Lost Loves’ album that was released via Tooth and Nail records.