INTERVIEW // The Moss: Yoga and Yerba Mate Touted as Tour Cures for Insomnia

Photo: Shervin Lainez 

Using storytelling lyrics in their genre-bending songs that mix textures and dynamics of all generations, The Moss, an alt-rock band currently residing in Salt Lake City, doesn’t let anything hold back their creativity. The guitarist and singer Tyke James met his bandmate Addison Sharp when they were just 12-year-old wannabe musicians living on the shores of O’ahu. They learned how to perform the crazy magical shows they put on now by performing in front of a local taco truck. After trying to pursue music on his own, James realized the shows he did with Sharp in Utah were so much more fun and playing with a band was what he wanted to do. Eventually, they met up with their other bandmates, Addison’s brother Brierton, and Willie Fowler to form the first lineup of The Moss. 

They finally released their first album Kentucky Derby in 2021 after financial turmoil and learning how to record their own music. They have since recorded an Audiotree session and an EP called Insomnia just this year. Insomnia was written starting in 2021 when the band was all living in a small apartment together and was finally released to the public this past January. WNSM caught up with Tyke James as he was walking through a farm in Salt Lake City before The Moss left for tour.

Ida Ward York: Are you getting pumped for tour to start soon?

Tyke James: Oh I’m so excited, yeah, I’m so pumped.

IWY: Are there any venues you’re playing that you’re excited to check off your list?

TJ: I’m stoked to just play New York in general, it’s going to be our first time and it’s exciting. I’ve been to New York a couple times and there’s a lot going on there, so it’s pretty exciting that our show there sold out. It’s such a busy place but people are making time for us. 

IWY: Do you have any pre-show rituals you guys are getting back into as tour starts?

TJ: Yeah we have a few. Our main one is we’ll hang out and drink Yerba Mate in the green room, maybe do some yoga and stretch. We like to find a place to swim before hand if possible, it’s going to be hard in New York unless there’s some kind of pool nearby. We kinda just like to get outside, get grounded, see the city. We used to have a lot more but touring and playing a show every day it gets a lot harder to do all of them every time, so we’ve kinda just whittled it down to drinking caffeine and chilling out.

IWY: How do you think this tour is going to be different after the release of Insomnia?

TJ: It’s our first time in all of these places coming up, and so I think having that song released is whats given us attention out in those areas. I think just having it out itself is whats bringing the crowd in those areas, or most of them at least. Definitely a blessing in that way.

IWY: How does it feel to have Insomia’s title track on spotify’s viral 50 playlist? Did you expect it coming from this EP after working on it for so long?

TJ: Honestly no, you always hope for the best with releases, and you always want them to do as good as they can, but you never really know which ones will. It didn’t feel like any old release because we started working with a lot of new people. We recently signed with managers and with a label, so that was our first release with a whole team. I guess when we first put out Insomnia it was just our manager, just kinda with people who knew how to do it right I guess. Then from there, that’s how our label found us as well and a lot of stuff has snowballed since that release. It definitely was surprising it did as well as it did and is doing as well as its doing.

IWY: With Insomnia having so many themes of literal insomnia, did you plan to write it as a concept album? How did that come to be?

TJ: I like to build a world and so it’s not necessarily a concept that’s bound to that EP, but more its more just concepts that are bound to my mind that come out when i’m writing songs. I go to a place where these themes are things I think about a lot, then they just come out in my creative voice. 

IWY: Your influences from nature are obvious, but is there any specific place you’re thinking of when writing those lyrics?

TJ: I think theres a lot of places, me and Addison, the guitarist, grew up on O’ahu in Hawaii just surfing and there’s a spot near my house thats still my favorite place in the world. It’s a half mile or so out from shore and when you face one way you see the endless Pacific Ocean and you face the other way and its the island’s super green mountains. Every time I see that when I visit home and go out there it blows my mind just how serene and beautiful it is just to be there. With these songs, I wrote them living here in Salt Lake City, so I think where I’ve been living here has really had an effect on the lyrics and the emotions I feel that come out in my songs. I think a little bit of the angst comes from being around a lot more people all the time. I talk about that in “Carousel”, there’s a lot of new emotions that I’ve felt and have been deciphering in the last couple years living in such a different place. 

IWY: How has it been changing together as a band, since you’ve known Addison since your teenage years? As well as such a change in location from Hawaii to now Salt Lake City?

TJ: We actually moved separately, I was pursing music by myself for about a year or so, and then Addison had moved from O’ahu to Utah. At the end of that year, I had visited him here and we had done a couple of shows together that were just so much fun. I was like, ok playing with a band is what I want to do, I don’t want to play by myself all the time. In just sort of playing together we found our first lineup, Willie had never played drums for us and it was the first time he played for us, and Addison’s brother had moved to Utah and was playing bass with us. It just felt right, my personality is very nomadic and I just adapt, if a place or thing feels right I’ll just latch onto it and see what happens; I try to stay open to whatever possibilites. I was living in my van and ended up in Utah with them playing shows and from there it just felt right, sort of growing, and that was about four years ago when we officially started playing together. 

IWY: What music have you been loving lately?

TJ: My two favorite albums right now are probably Indigo De Souza’s new album All Of This Will End – I love indigo De Souza, and Hijos Del Sol by Hermanos Gutierrez.

IWY: You’re playing your dream show. Where is it and who’s on the billing with you?

TJ: Either of those artists I just said, Indigo De Souza or Hermanos Gutierrez, and where? Honestly, back home on O’ahu, I think that would be really cool. We’ve never played a legitimate show out there before. We played at this taco truck a lot and a couple house shows, but we never actually had a fully formed band enough to play a real show — or any kinda fan base really. It would be cool to go back to Honolulu on the south side and play a show.

Words: Ida Ward York

Catch The Moss at Baby’s All Right on 5/24, follow them on IG, and stream on Spotify or Apple Music.