We the Ghost on Tulsa's Music Boom
Beau Tyler of We the Ghost is pretty effusive in his praise of his hometown of Tulsa, OK. Built on oil money and religious values, this mid-sized Midwestern city now boasts one of the best—and most eclectic—music communities in America. As the band gets ready to release their album The Kids Can't Dance, Beau explains why Tulsa has become more melting pot than dust bowl.
What have you been up to recently?
We’ve been in the studio for the last two or three months, but not just for this record. We recorded some songs for film and TV shows, plus some cool covers that we’re going to put out that are totally different from the original. Then we have the album that we just wrapped—it’s being mastered right now—called The Kids Can’t Dance. I think it’s our best album yet.
Tell us a little bit about The Kids Can’t Dance. First off, what does the title mean?
It came from the first music video off the record. We always have a really hard time naming our albums. We’re pretty foolish—we have six people in our band but are committed to having a unanimous decision, if we can.
I believe you need an odd number of people for voting to work.
We really do. But a unanimous decision for us is three people weigh in, and three people are like “Man, I don’t care.” It’s like half of our band is like the [Almost Famous] bass player who says, “I just want to get some barbecue.” The Kids Can’t Dance is a simple performance video with a lot of our favorite people around our hometown: Our favorite musicians and some of our biggest fans. A lot of them can’t dance at all. Some of them dance with glow-in-the-dark hula hoops, and they’re amazing. And we’ve got our friends, The Outsiders, who are an incredible local hip hop group. They can all breakdance like nobody’s business. When we came up with that idea, the album title came easy.
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