Dylan Doyle

A vocalist and songwriter as well as guitarist, Dylan Doyle is now 21 and he has extensive experience touring the U.S. and abroad.

He is gearing up to release a new record in the fall. And you can see him perform live Friday night when the Dylan Doyle Band performs at the Falcon on Route 9 in Marlboro. Doyle will be joined by Manuel Quintana on percussion, Scott Milici on keyboards and Kyle Esposito on bass.
A former factory that made buttons from seashells and utilized an adjacent waterfall for hydropower, the Falcon has hosted such distinguished musicians as John Scofield, who performed with Miles Davis; and Steely Dan co-founder, Bard College graduate and Woodstock resident Donald Fagen with his solo project, the Nightflyers.

Falcon owner Tony Falco said Doyle has been hanging out and playing shows at the Falcon since 2013, when he was 15.
“He’s part of the Falcon family here,” Falco said. “He’s always been a kid with big ears — listening intently to all kinds of musicians and able to appreciate all genres of music. He’s a real observant type. Musically speaking, he is a deep player. I’ve enjoyed watching him grow as a player and I’ve always admired his respectful interaction with other players — on and off the stage.”
And Doyle’s live shows?

“Dylan knows how to get an audience involved in his music,” Falco said.

Playing the guitar for Doyle is a physical exercise. Audience members don’t simply watch him perform. They can feel it. Like a gust of wind, sheets of rain or a break in the clouds, Doyle’s musicianship and rock and blues edge has plenty to offer the senses, far beyond the sound and the visuals.
Among the gigs Doyle has played is the King Biscuit Blues Festival in Arkanasas, which has welcomed such big acts as the late Gregg Allman of the Allman Brothers Band. And along with pounding the pavement to build a devoted following in the Hudson Valley, Doyle has focused on performing in the Midwest.

Touring, Doyle continued, is “almost like living life like an outlaw, without breaking any laws. It’s a very free life. It puts me in different places that I’m very interested in learning about and exploring. And the traveling, it’s the only way to really see things. It’s the journey, I love the journey.”

Doyle’s focus on touring seems to be paying off.

In May, he’ll be playing a venue in Baraboo, Wisconsin that can hold more than 800 people. And Doyle next year plans a return to performing in Ireland with festival appearances.
He has already toured the Emerald Isle thanks to a chance meeting in New Paltz some time ago with Liam O’Maonlai of the band Hothouse Flowers. O’Maonlai was strolling the sidewalk outside of Snug Harbor tavern and heard Doyle performing inside.

The two met and later played a split bill at Daryl’s House in Pawling.

“We hit it off,” Doyle said.

And all of this began with gigs at small clubs in small towns.

“In the beginning, the venues we played were really small tap houses and bars on the side of the road,” Doyle said.

Then he landed gigs in bigger places, Chicago, Madison, Wisconsin and Dubuque, Iowa among them.

“It’s kind of just connecting the dots and then getting more people to hear about it and hopefully bigger venues and bigger festivals,” said Doyle, a former resident of Madison. “Just touring out there, hitting it pretty hard.”

As for now, he said, “I’m just in the grind, clawing my way up.” - Poughkeepsie Journal

Two years feel like a lifetime to 21-year-old guitarist Dylan Doyle.

His trio performed in May 2017 at the Al. Ringling Theatre in Baraboo, an act dominated by the New Yorker’s impressive but lengthy guitar solos.

They covered the blues, Doyle said. They put on a good show.

“Baraboo should expect a far more mature sound,” he said of their return performance May 11.

Since the band’s last performance here, Doyle released a full-length album, toured Ireland and committed to writing original songs.

“I’ve grown,” he said. “I’m only 21 — I’m still young — but I started to feel like I could write about my own life experiences, my own feelings.

“I think people should expect to find a wider range of things to connect to, in the music.”
One example of his songwriting range is “Unify,” the track Doyle described as a “finger-pointing song” about the hate crimes still occurring in America.
Doyle — who describes his new sound as straight rock ‘n’ roll and sometimes folk rock — wants to live in a world that someday comes together as one.

On its surface, the song delves into “the political side of things,” the Shullsburg native said, but that’s not really how he views his approach to songwriting.


“It’s more of a feeling,” Doyle said of original songs like “Pleasures of the Damned,” which also is about the social state of the world. “It just seems like we’re all pretty far away from each other. We’re all caught up in something. I think we’re lost from each other, in a way.

Doyle started touring as a professional musician when he was 15, and so his perspective largely is a product of meeting people on the road, he said.

Al. Ringling Theatre Friends board member Bill Greenhalgh, who chairs the board’s programming committee, said anyone who enjoyed Doyle’s performance in 2017 and plans to see him again is in line for an even bigger treat.

Greenhalgh booked Doyle for the band’s performance back in 2017, and he today he takes guitar lessons from Doyle regularly via Skype.

“It’s like taking guitar lessons from Eric Clapton,” Greenhalgh said.

Greenhalgh’s impressed by how quickly Doyle flourished in the role of songwriter, encouraging residents to check out Doyle’s “Live at the Falcon” album on Spotify for the best examples of the musician’s maturity.

“He’s really got his head screwed on straight. He’s very focused,” Greenhalgh said of what the Baraboo audience should expect May 11. “He’s very melodic, very musical, and he can really bring the heat on a moment’s notice.

“He can go from the soft and lyrical to just all of a sudden bringing on a hail storm of intensity in his guitar playing — the stuff that just knocks people out. - Baraboo News

In this era of Covid-19, artists across the country have found it challenging to find ways to reach out and connect with their audiences. With so many performance venues closed, both small and large, Hudson Valley musician Dylan Doyle, 23, decided during this difficult time to invite friends and neighbors to see and hear him perform right on his front porch.

“It’s a tough time to be a musician, especially with the pandemic we don’t have gigs,” he said. “Last year it looked like I was going to be on the road two weeks out of every month, June through September.”

Doyle recently released a new original song, “Unify,” that he feels is perfect for the divided times we live in. “We’ve got to unify before we testify; We’ve got to unify, everybody you and I,” and questions how long will society let people be, “shot down for who they love or for the color of their skin,” as innocent lives continue to be lost in the streets, concluding that, “motherhood, fatherhood, sisterhood, brotherhood knows no color.”

The song is set to be part of a new 14 track album that will be coming out next spring after three long years of hard work. He said currently the song, “is out on all the streaming platforms like Spotify, Amazon Music and iTunes. They can download it and it’s also on YouTube. The album in the spring will be streamed as well; unfortunately CDs we don’t sell them anymore, but we probably will do vinyl.”

Doyle started his front porch concerts on July 5th of this year, scheduling them every other week. People hear about the concerts by email and through word of mouth.

“It’s kind of like a secret but not so secret anymore,” he said with a smile. “At first we only wanted 30 people and then we said we can safely fit 50 or 60 people. At one of them we had about 70.”

Doyle is thinking about having some performances totally online this winter.

At his recent concert Doyle let a bit of country music seep in.

“I’ve always loved country music [but] I just didn’t have the chops to play it but I’ve been practicing,” he said. “With the pandemic all I’ve really had time to do is practice, so I’ve been able to develop in different directions.”

Country music is a style that Doyle finds easy to write.

“Blues music used to be easy but country forms I can pick it up and write something that day,” he said.

Last December Doyle traveled to Columbia in South America to visit his half-sister.

“A couple of her uncles are professional Columbia guitar players who showed me their styles,” he said. “It reminds me of salsa and bolero dance music; that’s been kind of like my secret obsession,” he said, adding that he may soon take a stab at incorporating these distinctive idioms into his own musical performances.

Doyle has recently been performing on a new guitar; a gold top Les Paul with P90 pickups. He said he chose this model for its particular electronics.

“I didn’t have a guitar that could get the sounds that this guitar could get,” saying he is in the ‘honeymoon phase’ with it.

Bassist Ben Basile has been with Doyle for about two years. He primarily plays jazz, ska and reggae but playing with Dylan takes him into rock, blues and a touch of country music.

“I love it and I have such a great time. I perform with a lot of different projects but this is the only one where I get to play this style of music,” he said. “I just love working with Dylan. It’s so easy and it comes together so nicely. We are all just listening the whole time and we’re really playing together and that’s what it all comes down to for me.”

Mikiya Ito has been playing drums with Doyle for about 18 months. He said he usually plays jazz, rhythm & blues and hip hop, “but I had a lot of influences from my dad and listened to a lot of Blues Brothers, B.B. King and that kind of music growing up in Tokyo. Dylan plays a lot of that kind of music so for me it’s kind of like going back to my roots and reminds me of that music. So connecting with him with the music I grew up with is a lot of fun, I love it.”

Dylan Doyle knows that his pursuit of music is a life long journey, a path he will follow no matter where it takes him. But for now and in his immediate future he continues to work on his writing, his guitar playing and also his voice.

“I’m trying to live a fruitful life as safely as I can,” he said. - Hudson Valley Times

Guitar star Dylan Doyle delights audiences, but frustrates anyone trying to define his sound.

Doyle said his trio’s style of music lies somewhere between roots rock and jam funk. It evokes Woodstock but also dips into southern soul. It’s a uniquely American sound Doyle calls “a big melting pot.”

It isn’t the 19-year-old’s job to define it. It’s his job to play it. And that’s what the Dylan Doyle Band will do Saturday night at the Al. Ringling Theatre.

The band will come to Baraboo between tour stops in Dubuque, Iowa and Benton, in southwestern Wisconsin. Although Doyle is a New Yorker, he knows all about this area as the son of a Shullsburg native. “Everyone is so genuinely nice,” Doyle said.

It wasn’t far from this neck of the woods that Bill Greenhalgh, an Al. Ringling Theatre Friends board member, saw Doyle in concert. After seeing Doyle perform in Iowa in September, Greenhalgh – chair of the board’s programming committee – recommended booking him.

“I am always looking for up-and-coming acts that are of very high quality who will appeal to a wide range of our audience,” Greenhalgh said. “Dylan hits the mark perfectly. He is a superb talent who I think will be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame someday.”

Spectators hiring the trio after hearing it is becoming increasingly common, Doyle said. “It’s a good sign and a good feeling,” he said. “You never know who’s in the crowd.”

Doyle started playing professionally at age 13, and began touring two years later. His influences range from Bob Dylan to Bill Withers to Jimi Hendrix to The Band. He has played blues festivals and headlined the Midwest’s largest Grateful Dead festival.

“His music appeals to a huge age group, ranging from our local high school kids getting their first live taste of a rock guitar virtuoso to all us baby boomers who grew up loving classic rock,” Greenhalgh said.

Pursuing his passion for live performance forced Doyle to complete two years of high school via home school, but he knew from his first tour he wanted to do nothing else. “I would be happy playing six nights a week all year long,” he said. - Wiscnews.com