Lee Tyler Post is a big man who doesn’t do small talk.
Sit down with him to discuss music, and Post will soon sweep you off to a distant place, far from Port Angeles, far from his home town of San Diego.
Southern California never felt much like home, Post says. The son of a Castilian Spanish mother and a Cherokee father, he is a troubadour in the truest sense. He’s a traveler who finds refuge in rhythm and melody.
Growing up, though, Post played sports, not music. He was the youngest of four boys and wasn’t about to be compared to his older brother, who was a musician.
Then he heard Bob Dylan. Some said that young man from Hibbing, Minn., couldn’t sing at all. And Post didn’t see himself ever becoming a singer, especially not one who performed in public. He did want to write songs full of passion, though, like Dylan’s: songs as journals of the heart.
As a young man, Post was a construction laborer, working long days in the San Diego County heat. He figured this would be it for him. But then, he remembers, the muse came to visit. That’s all. No guitar lessons. No desire to sing cover songs in a fern bar. Just a thunderbolt, essentially, that struck one day.
Post has been on the road since, unleashing his own brand of lightning. He has fans who come to listen and weep, and who say, “You have got to hear this guy,” but who cannot quite describe what kind of music he’s making.
Some call it soul, or blues. Maybe some country. His heroes are the same men whose music awakened him decades ago: Van Morrison, David Ruffin of the Temptations, Otis Redding, Don Henley of the Eagles.
Post’s favorite song of all time: “Desperado,” with lyrics by Henley. “If there was a course in ‘Starting a Song 101,’ he would be the professor.”
Musicians such as Henley and Morrison are laying their souls out there, Post says. Which is what this singer does, whether in a honky-tonk joint in Georgia or Wine on the Waterfront in Port Angeles.
The latter is luscious, adds Post.
The delicious acoustics, the warm colors inside the wine bar: they create an ideal environment for the up-close-and-personal music Post pours out. There’s “Coffee and Wine,” “Hole in the Sky” and “Salvation Manor” from his “If Hope Had a Reason” CD. “Howlin’ Wind” from the “Life without Fences” album; “Comfort Street,” “And We Danced” and “Thunderclap” from the “Emancipate” record.
The darkness inside Wine on the Waterfront “makes me sound better than I actually am,” Post says with a smile.
Post has a fistful of albums available via his website www.LeeTylerPost.com. He’s not inclined to sign any record company contracts, since that could mean marketers telling him what and how to sing.
And though Post pulls some powerful inspiration from singer-songwriters like Morrison and Henley, he has never played a cover song.
“The only person I want to be like,” Post says, “is my dad: hardworking, kind.” LeRoy Post would go to work at 2:30 a.m. and get home at 5 p.m. — “and ask how your day was.”
These days, Post lives the life of an American Gypsy storyteller; unencumbered by a record company or the need to stay put, he and his wife of 15 years, Jackie, crisscross the country in their van. Post, naturally, never lacks inspiration. He sings songs that come from the life stories he hears from people he’s met all over the country, from Port Angeles to Santa Fe, N.M., to Austin, Texas, and Atlanta.
Before moving to Port Angeles last year, he toured Georgia, the Carolinas, the Virginias, Tennessee, New Jersey and California.
The Posts also lived in Sequim from late 2008 to summer 2010. Jackie’s line of work, medical transcription, allows her to be as mobile as her man. He and Jackie love going on the road together.
“I have the right person to make the journey with me,” Post says.
But then they decided to return to the North Olympic Peninsula, to get away from the distractions of a big city. The songwriter wanted to work on the music for “Wreckage of Love,” his next CD, which he hopes to release this fall.
The title isn’t autobiographical. But “everybody seems to agree: ‘Wreckage of Love’ is ‘story of my life,’” Post says.
“I’m a good listener. My friends tell me their stories.”
Not that he goes home and immediately writes a song from what someone just recounted. It could be a couple of years later that he composes the musical tale.
“It’s like there are a bunch of files down in the basement,” he says. “I have no idea when something is going to come up. I just hope it comes out honest.”
For this singer, the song is a way to connect spiritually — with listener and muse. Though Post doesn’t call himself a religious man, he says he feels closest to God when he is making music.
“Something comes through me. I’m the middle man,” he says. To write and perform a song, for this composer, is like dancing with God.
Jackie goes to every gig, and though she is shy by nature, she’s grown used to talking with her husband’s fans. She takes care of CD sales at his performances, though sometimes she can’t fulfill requests for particular songs.
“He performs the new songs to break them in,” Jackie explains. “But when people come up and say, ‘I’ve got to have that,’ I have to tell them it’s not on a CD yet.”
For his part, Post says he’d rather have five attentive listeners in an audience instead of 500 distracted ones.
“I want their energy, their silent energy. It’s something they don’t even know they have,” he says.
“We’re all on a train together.”
