Close to Lincoln Park and the star shaped lights hiding beneath the freeway, in the remnants of an old brewery, within a brief walk of the Lucky Café on Alameda Street, resides Tyler Wright, vocalist and guitarist for what was at one point the hottest band out of El Paso, the D.A.
He graduated from El Paso High School in 2005 and since has lived in other cities like Seattle and Austin. “I always end up coming back because there’s really no place quite like it,” he said about El Paso.
The Sun City is Tyler’s home, it is where he learned to play music and where he became the person he is, and he missed the sun, the warmth.
There’s this phenomenon called the “Seattle Freeze,” he explained about how unlike El Pasoans, neighbors in Seattle don’t greet you so often. It’s cloudy and rainy, which was a huge change for him.
At the age of eight he received his first toy drum set, and a year later he picked up his first guitar. It was at a Blockbuster where he found himself and decided music would be his life.
“I got into music when I was six years old, in first grade; I had my mom take me to Blockbuster when that was still a thing and I picked out Green Day Dookie, and Pearl Jam Vitalogy, which you know for a six year old are rough, language wise.”
It was through these acts that Tyler found the foundational blocks of his identity, and through El Paso that he built that.
Tyler was the kid walking around the neighborhood with his “grandmother’s clip on earring and having green and purple hair with a shirt that read ‘stupid’ that pointed up at him.”
His first concert was at the El Paso County Coliseum, a concert that consisted of 90’s iconic bands Bush, No Doubt, and the Goo Goo Dolls. And more than a decade later, El Paso continues to foster musicians like Tyler.
Tyler and the D.A. were the first band to play at Lowbrow Palace on the stage before it was opened. To this day, Lowbrow which hosts so many nationally recognized bands and has been the most accessible venue of late for local bands, it remains Tyler’s favorite venue in the Sun City.
They are also an example of how bands can come together through friends of friends. A common notion that El Pasoans will always have ties to everybody through a friend or relative.
Tyler knew Cesar Muniz, the keyboardist, through another friend. Cesar knew a drummer, Evan Tremper. It was then proposed that they should try to make some music at which point Michael Frisbey was invited. There is also Stephen Ezcarzaga, the D.A.’s guitarist, who you may know as one of the founders of El Paso’s own Proper Printshop.
After the formation of the band, they focused on making music and being heard. It took family support and hard work to get the band running. Tyler recounted Evan’s family were the ones who lent them the money for the van they rode to tour, and having to do yard work at $10 an hour to pay them back.
– By Antonio Villaseñor-Baca