AVERLY Debut: The Sound You’ve Been Patiently Waiting For
For Jonny Carroll and Jon Class, the journey to this moment was not a quick one. Respectively possessing their own stories in the Indiana music scene, both have come from different walks of life with a unique set of skills and experiences. For singer/songwriter Jonny Carroll (The Willow EP, Leaving On The Light) he was looking for a change in the trajectory of his own music.
Not only was his approach to his music shifting, but so too was his perspective. “Over the course of the past two years or so I’ve been on a break from touring and performing to focus on my health,” says Carroll. Jonny further recounts how issues with his health, both emotionally and physically, were keeping him from moving forward.
As for producer/multi-instrumentalist Jon Class (Josh Garrels, THE WLDLFE), his journey to AVERLY started with a conversation with Jonny around the genre of pop. “I really haven’t had much of an interest. . . until recent years,” Class explains, “When I started working with Jonny. . . I loved the fact that I could get into the vibe and feel of the writing without sacrificing interesting, thoughtful lyricism.”
For the pair, both came to the table with openness and a willingness to find a sound that worked for them. As they realized what was taking shape the duo decided to create their band aptly named AVERLY. While drawing from the sound palettes of the likes of artists such as LAUV or LANY, a differentiating factor of AVERLY is the point of collision between clean pop idealism and a brand of rugged artistic maturity that can only be acquired through the toiling process of trial and error.
After taking a trip to Scotland in the fall of 2013, Carroll found inspiration to begin his career as an artist. Carroll recounts staying in Edinburgh near Waverley Station. “Recollecting that powerful moment led to Jon and I deriving the name AVERLY since Waverley made us think of wizards and DisneyChannel sitcoms.” Taking a cue from Ben Gibbard’s passion project, the Postal Service, AVERLY’s sound is the correspondence between vintage synthetic sound design and story-based lyricism, fronted by Carroll’s soaring sense of top line melody and emotive vocal delivery aptly displayed in their debut single, “Patient”
“I wrote this song based off of an experience I had living out of my Honda in Brooklyn last fall,” Carroll shares about the single, “It was sort of the beginning of a different writing style for me, and I was really enamored with the idea of incorporating these reversed, harmonic acoustic guitar loops I had demoed.” Carroll’s delicate, quiet voice describes the desire to experience all that life has to offer, but at the same time trying to slow down and remember what it means to truly be patient.
“Take me back I want to tell her I’ll lose track of all the memories that we’ll never have if I don’t learn to be patient.”
With this unlikely duo joining forces to produce this new indie pop track the anticipated question is: what is next? “We’ve got a lot of plans and ideas that we are bent on realizing over the course of the next year or so,” Carroll explains, “However the journey unfurls, Jon and I are all in.”
With Carroll onboard and looking forward to the potential for some summer tour dates in the Midwest, Jon shares the same sentiments. “The older I become the more I realize a need people have to connect with something or some art that can say what they’ve been feeling,” Class becomes poignant as he continues, “Aloneness is crippling and numbing, and I think we can wield the music we make to let people know that they are allowed to feel, and not be isolated in those feelings either.”
“However the journey unfurls, Jon and I are all in.”
Whatever may come in the future one thing is for certain, the partnership between these two has truly created a fresh sound that is much needed in this world today. Many of us find our solace and comfort in the music that transports us to a different world. For AVERLY’s debut single “Patient” it may just take you to a subway train in New York City headed for a life of possibilities.
AVERLY’s debut single “Patient” is available everywhere December 7th, but you can listen to it below in this exclusive Medium debut.
