BY MATT KITE for WEEKLY VOLCANO 8/1/25 |
Crossover country music artist Antwane Tyler knows what it means to be homesick and to come home. He’s written songs about both. And he’ll be returning to his birthplace of Tacoma on Sunday, August 3, when he performs downtown at the Tacoma Block Party.
“I’ve been marinating in that a bit,” he says of his upcoming concert, which is scheduled for 6:00 p.m., “and I’m really excited about it.”
Antwane’s unusual blend of country music, hip-hop, and pop reveals his complicated backstory and his unique journey, which began in Tacoma and has since taken him to Snohomish County and Nashville, among other destinations. After entering foster care at the age of five, he was later adopted and moved north to Monroe to live with his adoptive family. There he put down roots, not only geographically but musically.
“We’ve always been a get-out-there-and-have-fun kind of musical family,” he says. “But I was obsessed with music. It was a different level of obsession. I would spend hours in our garage in Monroe learning classic rock. I listened to a lot of country, classic rock. I would just learn how to play it if I liked the song. I’d just learn by ear.”
Self-taught on guitar (his main instrument), drums, and keyboards, Antwane eventually started writing and singing his own songs. During the initial period of his music career, he considered himself a hip-hop artist, but eventually he started infusing his music with more traditional sounds. His breakthrough hit, “Homesick,” is a folk-flavored anthem with more than 700,000 streams on Spotify. Other recent singles, including “Down Home Girl” and “No Son of the South,” deftly mix old-school tones from banjos, mandolins, and pedal steel guitar with modern sounds from loops, MIDI instruments, and Auto-Tune. Modern pop production ties it all together.
These days, Antwane finds himself being compared a lot to Shaboozey, a well-known Black country artist from Virginia who blends hip-hop with country and Americana. But the comparison says more about how new the crossover genre is than it does about how closely the two men’s styles resemble one another.
“I’m okay with that,” Antwane says. “We might look or sound similar in certain aspects, but we have completely different stories.”
Antwane’s tastes and influences range widely, and he’s fine with that too. He’s not trying to sound like anyone but himself.
“I’ve been blasting the Tame Impala album that just dropped,” he explains. “For a while, I was into Wolfmother and the Black Keys. And there was a time when I was only listening to Drake and J. Cole. I also love folk.”
For Sunday’s performance, Antwane will be bringing a six-piece band. He’s planning on debuting one or two unreleased songs and also promises to play a couple of well-known country covers—one modern, the other traditional. He’ll be giving both his personal stamp.
So far, Antwane has released only singles and says a new one is slated to debut in August. But an EP is also in the works, and recent writing sessions in Nashville, Tennessee, produced more material for another big project.
At age thirty, Antwane has surrounded himself with a core team that helps him do everything a major record label would do—while still maintaining complete creative control. With the help of his two business partners, he also owns and runs a ten-year-old video-making business, which, combined with his music career, keeps him on the move.
“I still make sure to find time for myself,” he says. “There are certain times of the year when it’s difficult to do that, but I still enjoy going out and throwing a line in the water. I love being able to get out on the river and do a little fishing . . . and I also love solitude, where I get to just be with my music.”
That music, both innovative and timeless, has brought Antwane full circle to Tacoma, where he began life on tenuous footing. He can remember attending daycare at Munchkinland, and he’s still in touch with his foster care family.
“It’s a part of my life that will never be forgotten,” he says. “As I got older, a lot of the core growing-up memories occurred after I was adopted. But I still remember the good, bad, and ugly tied to Tacoma.”
If home is a prominent theme in Antwane’s work, the music itself has kept him connected to something that transcends time and place.
Downtown Tacoma’s third annual Block Party is happening on Sunday, August 3, from 1 to 7 p.m. at 9th & Broadway—and it’s free, family-friendly, and packed with local talent.
This year’s lineup includes live performances by Antwane Tyler, Laza, Avery Cochrane, Race to the Light, and DJ Phaedra, with community favorite Kwabi Amoah-Forson emceeing the event. Expect everything from soulful vocals to electronic beats and this crowd-pleasing country/hip-hop crossover.
Other festivities include line dancing with Steel Creek Country, mural painting with Spaceworks Tacoma, a beer garden by 7 Seas Brewing, vendors from Tacoma Sunday Market, Greentrike’s Kids Zone, and skateboarding with Grit City Grindhouse.
