Formed in New York in the late 1980s, Tyketto emerged as one of the most respected acts of the melodic rock era with their acclaimed 1991 debut album ‘Don't Come Easy.' Fronted by the powerful and soulful voice of Danny Vaughn, the band built a loyal following through a blend of soaring melodies, emotional songwriting and hard rock muscle, producing enduring fan favourites such as ‘Forever Young' and ‘Standing Alone.' Subsequent releases including ‘Strength in Numbers' and later reunion-era records like ‘Reach' continued to showcase the band’s knack for heartfelt lyrics, towering choruses and Vaughn’s distinctive vocal presence.
Over the decades, Tyketto have remained a beloved name within melodic rock, admired for their optimism, musicianship and refusal to fade quietly into nostalgia. Upcoming March 20th release, ‘Closer to the Sun,' released more than thirty years after their breakthrough, has captured much of that same spirit that made ‘Don’t Come Easy' such a defining record. Packed with huge melodies, emotional ballads and uplifting anthems, the album demonstrates that Vaughn’s songwriting and voice remain as powerful as ever, reaffirming the band’s place among the most enduring and respected acts in classic melodic hard rock. We caught up with Danny recently to talk all about it.
Thanks for your time today, Danny, it's lovely to touch base with you again.
My pleasure, it's been a while I believe.
Yep – it was last in 2022 around your Vaughn's Day tour. It's great to talk to you about a new Tyketto project. It's been 10 years since the last Tyketto album, ‘Reach,' which I know was an album you were really proud of. Why has it taken so long to get the next one written and recorded?
Not intentionally! (laughing) We got sidelined by COVID a little because it was during that period that we were supposed to make the next album. When we came out of COVID two band members, unexpectedly, said they didn't want to continue on. There was no drama or anything like that, it was just, ‘I spent the the last two years at home with my family and I really like it here,' you know?
So, I had to immediately shelve any idea of a new Tyketto album. I mean, you can get a bunch of players and knock something out, but I've always been a little on the old school side and enjoyed making records with a band. We needed time to build a new Tyketto, we needed to see if the audience would accept a new Tyketto and we had to take time to see if we liked what we were doing too. The only way to do that would be to get some touring underneath our belts so we did that for about two years and then we knew we were ready to make an album together.
When you write for Tyketto do you have to be in a different mindset compared to when you are writing Danny Vaughn solo material?
Yeah, without a doubt. A lot of times I will just start a song and see where it goes and then decide which road it is going to take as it emerges. It's strange because the first two songs I wrote, one of which is on the new Tyketto album I sent to Michael (Clayton-Arbeeny, longtime Tyketto drummer up to 2023) because he's still my best friend and sounding board. There was a song called ‘Scars' and a song called ‘The Brave.' He heard them both and said that he thought ‘Scars' was a Tyketto song but that ‘The Brave' was more of a solo song and I totally disagreed with him!! (laughing)
So, ‘The Brave' was the first song I wrote for the album but it kinda sat there gathering dust. Bassist Chris Childs came to me after a while and said, ‘You know this is a great song, right?' and I was, like ‘I know!' (laughing) And so it became the final song on the new album after being the first one that I wrote!
If ‘The Brave' was the final song included on the album which one was the last, that just kinda snuck in at the last minute?
I don't think anything snuck in but the last one I wrote was ‘Far and Away.' That was born out of a vacation in Marrakech that my wife and I went on. It kinda opened my eyes to a lot of things and became one of those Danny Vaughn acoustic moments that I've had throughout my career! (laughing)
There's a song on there called ‘Harleys and Indians' which isn't on the vinyl version of the album – what's the thinking behind that decision Danny?
It's purely a timing thing. We couldn't separate the songs in any way where one side didn't get too squeezed for what the capacity of a vinyl can hold. That song is a cover of a song that Roxette did originally. I'm proud of the fact that nobody has known that as yet! (laughing) It's a song I've always loved and it's got an infectious beat. We were going to make it an extra track for Japan only but when we finished the record we felt it sat in really well amongst the other songs and so we decided to make an 11 song album!
In an alternate universe I could see ‘The Brave' being the title track and theme around which youi build the album. You've gone with ‘Closer to the Sun.' What was the thinking behind that choice?
You're not far wrong, we considered ‘The Brave,' for sure. I'd love to give you a great philosophical answer about why we chose ‘Closer to the Sun.' When we lined up all the song titles it felt like there was something about the imagery of ‘Closer to the Sun' – we initially were leaning towards an Icarus-style imagery but that's been done to death. I thought it was nice to channel the idea of moving closer to warmth and positivity, it's a very positive record, there's no politics on it, the closest we come to that might be on ‘The Brave,' but we wanted to create an uplifting album that you put on when you're driving and stay with until the very end.
There's a good bunch of wisdom, strength and positivity all over the album. ‘We Rise, ‘Bad For Good,' ‘Higher Than High.' Is that where your writing naturally leans towards? There's a legacy with those songs that runs all the way back to something like ‘Strength in Numbers.'
When we all got together the discussion was intentionally, what kind of album do we want to make? We did it before with ‘Reach' and so what we created with that album was intentional. With this one, the main direction was definitely, ‘why don't we give the fans what they've been wanting for years?' I get it all the time. ‘Why don't you just write another ‘Don't Come Easy?' (laughing) That album was created at a particular moment in time under specific circumstances with specific people, right? You can't just replicate it.
We didn't set out to create ‘Don't Come Easy 2,' but we pulled it apart and asked ourselves what it was that made that album survive for 34 years and even be seen by some people as a classic album. Even a song like ‘Standing Alone,' which expresses a very deep inner darkness, ends on a positive, resilient note. So we didn't copy ‘Don't Come Easy' but we brought the feeling of that album into the writing and recording of ‘Closer to the Sun.'
I would honestly say Danny, without blowing smoke or being hyperbolic, that this album stands toe-to-toe with anything else that you have done in your career.
That's great to hear. Honestly, everyone I've talked to so far has talked about how there is a lot of ‘Don't Come Easy' in this album. Hopefully the fans will feel that way and we will enjoy this next phase of the band's career together!
I've always liked you at your most melodic – I loved the ‘From the Inside' album – so you won't be surprised to know that the song that stood out for me, initially on ‘Closer to the Sun' was ‘Starts With a Feeling.'
Ok, well, now that song has a special reason for it's sheer melodic-ness – it was co-written with Jim Peterik of Survivor! I reached out to Jim when we first knew we were doing a new Tyketto album – I mean, he knows how to write a song, right? (laughing) I told him about this idea of looking back at ‘Don't Come Easy' and he asked me to send him 2-3 songs that I thought best represented that album for him to listen to. Within a day I had the beginning of ‘Starts With a Feeling.'
Of all the tracks, it runs the risk of maybe being, shall we say, the most 80s sounding and I loved it but wasn't sure it was going to fit on the album at first. However, day after day, I went to sleep humming the chorus and so was, like, ‘OK, song, you win!' (laughing)
‘We Rise' has all the hallmarks of a Tyketto classic as well.
Yeah. We felt very much that we were really reaching back into our beginnings with that song. Harry came to me with the riff and the chorus of that one and I filled out the rest. Harry (Scott Elliot, Tyketto's new guitarist) was in the band for six months before he very quietly admitted to me that his parents had given him a copy of ‘Don't Come Easy' when he was six years old! (laughing)
Has he brought a youthful energy to the group of older men! (laughing)
Yeah – I'm not sure how the other guys are going to feel about that though! (laughing) We try to give him wisdom! The thing is we are a fairly energetic group of old men at the moment.
Obviously, ‘Standing Alone' has always been Tyketto's signature ballad, you could probably never play a Tyketto gig without playing that song, but, my god, ‘The Picture' runs it close for power and emotion. I hope you find a way to squeeze that one into the live set as well.
We'll see. It's going to be a tough choice thinking about how many new songs from the album we do and which ones they are. With a song like ‘The Picture' I've kinda made a rod for my own back because I always promise myself when I go into the studio to never think of singing it live, if you do, you'll hold back, but to sing that song every night would be difficult! It's one of the first songs that everybody heard and went, ‘Oh, ok then!'
The song itself comes from a very old demo. Maybe fifteen or more years ago I got an email from these two guys from Boston who were part of a band called Mars Hill. They had written wrote some music, no lyrics, no melodies but they said that they could hear Danny Vaughn singing on them and asked me if I would be interested. I heard the demo and immediately understood what they meant. There were four tracks on the demo and the first one went on the ‘Dig in Deep' album, a song called ‘Monday.' The second track ended up on my ‘Myths, Legends and Lies' album, that's ‘Time out of Mind.' And so there were two more songs I had just floating around. ‘The Picture' I had written but the other one was ‘Closer to the Sun'.
I was going through my files and looking for old ideas and put ‘The Picture' on and sent it to the guys and they were like, ‘Holy shit!' (laughing) So, that and ‘Closer to the Sun' both came from this one demo I had been sent 15 years ago! It proves that great songs are just great songs, no matter when they hatch.
I don't hear a great deal of degradation in your vocals in terms of tone or power since 1991. Famously, singers like Jon Bon Jovi and Vince Neil are struggling with their vocals as they age. What do you do to keep your voice in shape?
I think it's more about what I don't do! (laughing) Particularly in the case of someone like Vince Neil, bless him. I think he did a lot of things over the years that he probably shouldn't have done that has harmed his voice. I'm a bit of a fanatic about keeping it together. The thing to think about with Jon Bon Jovi – don't forget that this is a guy who toured his ass off for 25 years and more. Playing 200-300 gigs a year some years, the human voice isn't equipped to cope with that so there is going to be damage. It's hard to say no to a manager saying to you that if you toured for 18 straight months you'd become the biggest band on planet Earth, right? If I had been given that opportunity I might not have a voice right now, either.
Hard rock, melodic rock, classic rock – call it what you will – has migrated from it's North American homeland over the past 20 to 30 years and is now a largely European-based genre in the hands of Italians, Germans and Scandinavians. Your life did the same – you came to Ireland and now live in Spain. You've sort of mirrored the migration of the genre – was that deliberate?
I suppose it was deliberate. When I moved I'd started up my solo career again and I had no expectations but in order for me to tour, because there was no interest in me from the States, I knew I would have to come over to Europe. That meant paying thousands of pounds or euros just to get started. So, I thought it would ease things a little bit to go live where my career seemed to be taking off again. It was an easy move.
What you see going on in America right now – I started smelling that over 20 years ago. Things started to get nasty and ugly within that second Bush administration and so it wasn't hard to leave back then and I can tell you that I have no interest in going back there right now, either.
I think there's still a desire to make new music over here in Europe whereas the American hard rock or melodic rock scene seems to be just nostalgia based. Is that a fair observation?
Yeah, you're probably right. Certainly over here people seem to be more ready and accepting of new music from classic bands or even emerging bands. I'm not ruling out ever playing in America ever again and we have a great time doing the cruises and things like that but a lot of bands or players at my level or friends of mine like Jeff Scott Soto and Kip Winger – we've had these conversations where we've started to see younger people at our audiences again. A lot of our original fans from the 80s and 90s now have kids that are old enough to come to our shows and so there seems to be an injection of that going on right now too.
Its the 40th anniversary of the Waysted album, ‘Save Your Prayers,' this year. I wondered if you ever would do a small tribute or nod back to that album as Tyketto? I don't know where the rights to the songs sit but I'd love to hear Tyketto knock out ‘How the West Was Won' or ‘Heroes Die Young.'
I don't see any need for that, really. ‘Save Your Prayers' has been re-released to death so many times over the years. I think it kinds of stands where it is for now. Once in a while Tyketto will do a Waysted song live but I don't know if we have room for that on this upcoming tour with a new album to promote and the back catalogue to cover as well.
I think there will be a big demand from fans to hear as much of ‘Closer to the Sun' live as they can.
Yeah, I hope so. We'll certainly know by the time the tour starts. On the upcoming UK tour we're kind of co-headlining with Warrior Soul so everybody has to get their time in which means I don't think we'll be doing a full 90 minutes this time around. It'll be tight, for sure.
You've lived through the most turbulent time in music history in terms of how the industry has changed. A lot of people focus on the negative changes that have happened in that time but in the spirit of Tyketto positivity, I wanted to ask you, how has the industry changed for good since ‘Save Your Prayers' came out forty years ago?
One of the things that streaming has done is that you don't need the big record labels anymore, which is nice, because they were all thieves and vagabonds in their own different ways! (laughing) Bless 'em. Especially the big ones. If you are savvy enough you have a chance to be heard and to reach people from your own home nowadays.
Additionally, the fact that everybody is now able to create a form of a home studio enables remote writing to be able to happen too, which cuts down the cost and expense of travel to do that. I don't like to do that all the time because I prefer to be in a room with someone if I can, but it does open up writing possibilities that weren't there 40 years ago.
When we got together to record ‘Closer to the Sun' we got into a rehearsal studio for five straight days to be able to bang out the songs to get them to where we wanted to get them to but the prep for that was all done remotely and that was great from a cost and time point of view.
Tyketto's new album ‘Closer to the Sun' is out March 20th and you are going to want to buy it, trust us. You can purchase and pre-order the album at this link right here. Their UK tour starts on 13th April in Cambridge – tickets for the tour can be found right here.
