Philadelphia is blessed with a diverse and talented wealth of musical talent. Among the many bands actively contributing to the local music scene, Athensville also aims to use their platform to raise visibility about important issues, including social justice issues.
Ahead of their Nov. 23 performance at 118 North in Wayne, Pennsylvania, Athensville singer Matt Taglang and guitarist Dave Perry sat down with Metro to discuss their recently released EP, ‘Crossed with Lightening,’ their upcoming show, and the unjust incarceration of Tyree Wallace, a Philadelphia man who served 26 years of a life sentence without parole for a murder he did not commit. Perry is also a lawyer who represented the wrongly convicted Wallace, who was released on Nov. 4, 2024.
What was the inspiration behind the EP itself?
Taglang: All six of these songs were coalesced in one weekend of writing. Dave and I had fragments of songs, guitar riffs and lyrical ideas, and then the two of us just decided, because we both have busy family lives in professional lives, and we decided that we needed time to just do nothing but these songs and hammer them out.
My brother in law has a place in the Poconos, and we just blocked it out on our schedules and said, you know, this weekend in February, I think it was actually in 2022 when we put all those songs together, and then, we did a lot of writing that one weekend, and a lot of the lyrics come from the same kind of source of isolation, but with a bent toward connection.
We were kind of isolated, but, in a very great place with our families and our professional lives and our connections, and we were just trying to put it all together in one album. Like our producer says, they call it an album because they’re taking a snapshot and putting all those pictures together in one album. One of the songs in particular speaks to that — ‘Changeable’ is really about breaking through the ice, the isolation and making true connections.
Another one of the songs, the first single, was ‘Desiderata‘… I watched a video that Dave had me watch about a client that he’s working with, Tyree Wallace, and I watched, literally, that weekend in the cabin, I watched that video, and that was the inspiration for the lyrics to ‘Desiderata’.
So really, it all kind of came together, and it is a true album in the fact that it’s like a snapshot of what we did that one time, and then producing it and making it all come to fruition is a long process because of our schedules and because our producer schedule. It’s a long process, but it really is a snapshot of that that time.
Can you explain the background around what went into writing ‘Desiderata’?
Perry: Matt and I, and I think the whole band, really, at some level, currently and in our earlier years come from an affinity for music that is social justice-minded, social justice-informed, politically informed, informed in all kinds of of ways. All the bands that really influenced us the most, if you look at them, all took a stand and used their platform to raise visibility about all kinds of issues, whether it was the environment, whether it was political prisoners, voting rights, gun control, many different issues.
Whatever platform we have, and certainly at the time that we wrote the song, and my involvement in a case of a wrongful conviction and somebody who’d been serving, at that point, two and a half decades in prison, it was natural for us to want to sort of follow in that pattern and sort of do what the bands that influenced us always tried to do throughout their careers. So that was what we were trying to accomplish. It’s no accident that we put Tyree Wallace’s name in the name of the song.
What’s really remarkable about it, and I think we knew this, is that someday we felt, you know, desiderata free, Tyree Wallace, where the word free is a sort of and a call to action could actually be turned into, ideally an adjective, where he would be a free Tyree Wallace, and as we sit here today, as of Nov. 4, he is. So the meaning of the song has evolved in the most perfect way that we could ever have anticipated.
Have you told Tyree about the song?
Perry: On Nov. 6, he joined me and my family for dinner, and as we were finishing dinner, I played him the video, and he watched it intently, and as soon as it ended, he started singing the chorus, which tells me that it’s a good hook. And I don’t expect Tyree to remember all the visuals of it, and it hasn’t been officially released, but it’s going to have, I think, a little bit of a life of its own as a video.
It’s almost like a PSA. And if we can help more people and draw attention to his type of situation, to his nonprofit SRC (Systemic Reformative Change), which is mentioned at the end of the video, and freetyreewallace.com, which is mentioned in the video, if it can live on and sort of really serve that purpose, it will be great. And I think he’ll have many more chances to watch it.
What’s the general excitement level like for Saturday’s show?
Taglang: 118 North is a special place for us, because our bass player used to be the sound man there. We get to use that space as practice when they’re not open on Monday. So we’ve played on that stage many, many times, but only to an empty room on a Monday night. So this Saturday will be the first time we see it full, and hopefully it is truly full. Hopefully it’s going to be a packed house.
Athensville will play at 118 North in Wayne, on Saturday, Nov. 23. Doors open at 7 p.m. For more information and tickets, visit tixr.com,
