Le Select, Montparnasse 99

"The Select still stands in its original spot on Boulevard du Montparnasse, and over the years its management has worked hard to retain the original décor and atmosphere of the place. Go for wine in the early evenings or early morning cafes creme when the place first opens up."
(Lesley Blume / bustle.com, June 17, 2016)

Freshly married, Ernest Hemingway moved to Paris in 1921 as a European correspondent for the Toronto Star. For around six years, the young Hemingway mingled with the artists, writers and intellectuals who met in the countless cafés of the city on the Seine. When he returned to the USA in 1928, he had made his breakthrough as a writer with his first novel "The Sun Also Rises" (1927).

Almost 100 years later, on January 24, 2025, Ty Myers released his first album entitled "The Select". A project that has already attracted a lot of attention before its release. Which gets proven by the fact that the 8 songs from it, which had already been pre-released, were streamed almost 100 million times on Spotify. With 8 new songs, the full album thus includes 16 songs, of which the 17-year-old(!) Ty Myers wrote twelve himself and was involved as a songwriter on 2 others.

The region around Austin in the state of Texas has been one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in the US over the last 12 years and has now around 2 million inhabitants. About half as many people live in the city itself, which is nicknamed Live Music Capital of the World. For there are over 250 venues in Austin where you can experience live music. So it's no wonder, that Ty Myers, born and raised in Austin, made his first musical appearances there at the age of 11 or 12 with the support of his songwriting father.

"My first love was old country when I was little bitty, because that's just what we listened to," the young artist tells  holler.com in an interview. "Then my mom introduced me to more soul and blues stuff, which was a huge influence on this album."

And at billboard.com he adds: "I feel like this album is a real culmination of all of my influences. I blended everything that I love into one, hopefully unique, sound."

When Ty Myers describes his musical style on his homepage as old school country storytelling, bluesy riffing, and stunning soul vocals, then that can indeed be applied to his first project. 16 songs that deal with almost every relationship situation imaginable in a very thoughtful way. You know them all, but somehow you've never heard them like that before.

'Ends of the Earth' describes unconditional love (until the end of the world), while 'Real World Now' finds that life is unpredictable and challenging, especially when you're a musician trying to make a living while working on a relationship.

The blunt title 'Worry is a Sickness' deals with jealousy and a lack of trust, while 'Let 'Em Talk' stands up for a relationship that others do not agree with:

Oh baby I wouldn't take it back,

we both broke hearts to get what we have.
Let 'em say what they'll say
and put it in the past,
we’re the best mistake we ever had.

(Let 'Em Talk / Trent Dabbs, Anderson East, Ty Myers)

'Love Is Two Faced' deals with the happy and the disappointed side of love. Thoughtful and stylistically somewhere between jazz and soulful blues:

She shows her true colors now and then.
When it's all going wrong, you turn to a song

'cause a melody is your best friend.
When it don't do you wrong, it don't make you hold on
to somеthing that's long, long, long gone.

(Love Is Two Faced / Ty Myers)

Ty Myers tells  musicrow.com about the recording process of the lonesome 'Somewhere Over You', written by Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin: "When I told my dad I want to cut 'Somewhere Over You', he didn’t think it was right [for the album]. His version was gospel-sounding, but I was hearing horns and soul things. I said, 'Well, I'm doing it, so you can tell me how you feel about it after.' I recorded it, and now it's one of his favorite songs on there."

The quiet 'Firefly' shines with sparkles of a night together, while 'Man On The Side' is about feelings that are hoping for so much more. The latter is a song that Clay Cook co- wrote with John Mayer and about which Ty Myers says: "I'm a huge John Mayer fan—probably his biggest fan. I wanted to nod to the people who influenced me, and Mayer was my number one influence for this album."

"When I started getting into him, I listened to his live album 'Any Given Thursday'. The first song that stood out was 'Man on the Side'. He played Stevie Ray Vaughan's 'Lenny' before transitioning into it, and it blew me away. It's so well-written and the only time he's recorded it, so many people don't even know it exists."

Written by Ty Myers and produced by Brandon Hood, 'Thought It Was Love' sounds as if it was a song specifically written by Jimmy Webb for Glen Campbell.

While the album is consistently calm and mid-tempo, the light funky 'Can't Hold Me Down' with its horn section and the stomping 'Too Far Gone' add some spice to it.

The song that not only helped Ty Myers break through via TikTok in 2023 but also landed him a recording contract with RECORDS Nashville/Columbia sits at the end of the album. 'Tie That Binds' is in search of something lasting, telling the story of a relationship from first glances in a bar to the marriage proposal.

With "The Select", Ty Myers presents an impressive debut album that actually doesn't sound particularly country in terms of sound, while at the same time being just that. And it seems that his authentic-sounding approach as a singer and songwriter is able to appeal to quite a wide audience. One that also respects him as a live artist, as his current concerts - even if they are in small venues - play to packed houses.

And last but not least, the young artist surprises once again when he says: "Hemingway has been a big influence since I was little. My uncle, who's passed now, loved Hemingway and introduced me to his work. My mom also loved him, so his books were always around. The more I learned about him, the more I felt a connection."

So eventually we can leave leave it up to Ty Myers to also tell us how the title of his project came about: "The album title, 'The Select', comes from Hemingway's first novel, 'The Sun Also Rises'. In it, the characters hang out at a bar called Le Select to escape their worries. That's what I want people to do when they listen to my album."