“Everybody else at school was into Bon Jovi’s ‘Slippery When Wet,’ but for me it was Dwight Yoakam’s ‘Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc., Etc.’ which to me was a country band with a rock ‘n’ roll drummer.” – Gretsch Lyles
Gretsch Lyles has long had an affinity for classic Cadillacs, but his daily driver is something more practical. The biggest Chevy they make is certainly not as sleek and sexy as a ‘57 Coupe de Ville, but it’s tried and true for the life of a hard-working musician.
“I love Suburbans,” says Lyles. “I’ve had a bunch of them over the years.” And then he explains why: “They have everything I need — plenty of seating, there’s lots of room for cargo and they will pull a trailer when I need to.”
You’ve got to cover a lot of miles to lead a successful rockabilly band for 30-plus years. With a head-turning fashion sense that owes a lot to the late 1950s, he certainly looks the part, but calling the Modern Eldorados “rockabilly” is telling just part of the story. Their musical style leans as much toward Nashville and Bakersfield as it does Memphis. He traces his inspiration back to his father in Bay Minette, who also influenced his early love for automobiles, flashy and otherwise.
His dad, Danny Lyles, worked on cars and boats, and raced them, too. He also had a pile of 45 rpm records that Lyles rifled through early on, when he was still known as Tyron. Along with the likes of Elvis Presley and Ricky Nelson, the ear-opening stack of singles included the life-changing sounds of honky-tonkers like Webb Pierce and Hank Thompson and the California country combo Buck Owens and His Buckaroos. “I thought that all that stuff was the greatest, and pretty soon I was going to thrift stores looking for cowboy shirts,” says Lyles. “I realized later that Dad really had it dialed in.”
Born in 1972, Tyron Lamar Lyles came of age around the time that music videos hit television screens in the form of MTV and a weekly show called “Fridays.” That’s when some throwback music from his own generation packed a one-two punch and gave his life a clear direction. While his classmates were going ape over Bon Jovi, it was the rockabilly revivalists Stray Cats and the traditionalist twang of Dwight Yoakam that grabbed his attention.
Lyles was drawn not just to Stray Cats’ music but also their cool-cat persona — and particularly the frontman’s big orange hollowbody guitar. It was a Gretsch, he learned, and he became obsessed. While still a teen, he started rocking his version of their high-piled hairstyles. “I first got the pompadour when I was 14,” he says. “Mine was somewhere between Elvis Presley and James Dean because I’d just seen ‘Rebel Without a Cause.’” Some of the meaner kids around Bay Minette teased him, which he was used to by then. “They were picking on me and giving me a hard time, but that wasn’t anything new. They would make fun of my name, too, intentionally mispronouncing it as Tyrone.”
“I told everybody I was gonna go get a guitar player job and they just sat there laughing. I thought, ‘This is the last time I’m gonna talk about what I’m gonna do. I’m just gonna do it.” – Gretsch Lyles
He decided to have the last laugh. His fixation on that fabulous guitar from the ‘50s led to a nickname that before long was formalized. “Making fun of me, my buddy Robert started calling me Gretsch. I went down to the courthouse with $11 and went all the way with it. I legally changed my name to Gretsch Rockin Cat. Later on, as I matured a little, I had it changed again to Tyron Gretsch Lyles.”
He soon moved to Mobile (where he would keep the same apartment for 30 years) to be around more musicians, including several old-school guitarists he would learn from. He ended up owning numerous gorgeous Gretsch guitars over the years and even earned an artist endorsement deal with the company. He recalls finding a stunning White Falcon model in Pensacola and paying for it in installments. “It was the first thing I ever financed,” he says. “I stopped at Sam’s Club on the way home and bought a half a pallet of ramen noodles and buckled down.”
Knowing that you can’t be a star if you don’t dress like one, he focused on wardrobe, too. Shopping at second-hand stores did the trick in his early years, but eventually he visited the famous tailor Manuel Cuevas in Nashville. He’s one of the legendary designers of those custom rhinestone suits that have put the shine and sparkle on so many Grand Ole Opry stars. “He made me look like I was famous,” Lyles says.
The budding entertainer was just 19 when he scored his first Cadillac. It was a two-tone beauty, pink and white, that Lyles had spotted in an Auto Trader magazine and had delivered from Clearwater, Florida to the McDonald’s parking lot in Bay Minette. “Everything was different,” he says, once he took the wheel and cruised over to Mobile.
He’s been a popular performer for most of his adult life, having graced thousands of stages in this region and festivals around the country and touring overseas in Europe a dozen times. Some may be surprised that he is just now adding recording artist to his list of accomplishments. An album due out this month, called simply “Gretsch Lyles,” will be his first commercial release, and it showcases his strong songwriting skills in the realms of roots rock and classic country. People at his shows over the years may have been too busy on the dance floor to notice, but a careful listen of the new record reveals smart musical hooks and insightful observations no doubt gleaned from years of playing in bars.
For the project, he recorded in a Nashville studio that was built by Elvis’ original guitarist, Scotty Moore, and he enlisted experienced studio musicians who have played and recorded with the likes Marty Stuart, Webb Wilder, Clint Black, Hank Williams Jr. and Brooks & Dunn. He also credits Sugarcane Jane’s Anthony Crawford with additional recording and mixing at his studio near Loxley. The album’s 10 songs range from touching ballads to melodic rockers, all of which he co-wrote with longtime collaborator (and former drummer) Chris Reid. “I had made some recordings before but I never was completely satisfied with them,” he says. “I just decided to bite the bullet and go to Nashville and make a record that I knew I could stand behind.”
Besides being elegantly attired on stage, Lyles is an energetic performer who’s as quick with quips between songs as he is with his occasional karate kicks. He’s striking offstage, too, with a tall, lean posture and a demeanor that’s kind, mannerly and respectful. He carries himself confidently even when he’s dressed casually and running errands or in the school line as he waits patiently inside his Suburban for his young son, 7-year-old Jett.
Away from his music, Lyles is enjoying a relationship with his partner, Kimmy, as well as fatherhood for the first time. “He is a good boy and he’s tender-hearted,” says Lyles. “He makes it really easy to be a dad.” Though his father is protective, wanting to shield him from certain elements of the after-hours lifestyle, Jett is well aware of what his father does for a living, and how much fun it can be. Judging from his son’s occasional appearances at family-friendly events, Jett may even be following in his father’s bootsteps. “He’ll get up and sing ‘White Lightning’’ with a four-piece honky-tonk band in a heartbeat, and walk off like there’s nothing to it,” says the proud pop.
Sounds familiar. Lyles’ little boy is about the same age he was when his own father’s records started spinning in a way that helped to shape his life.
