Tyrone Wells hits the Bartlett with new album in tow

Coming home is always an exciting time for Tyrone Wells.

Spokane must feel the same way.

The Spokane-raised singer-songwriter, who found major label success and indie stardom with songs such as “More,” “Running Around in My Dreams,” and “Freedom,” is coming home for two shows Sunday and Monday at the Bartlett. The first show, booked for Sunday, sold out in short order. A second one, for Monday, has been added.

He expects to see a lot of familiar faces, family and friends in the crowd.

“Usually when I’m in Spokane it does tend to be a little bit like that (a reunion),” he said, “with friends from high school I’ll be seeing. This time my folks will be down in Spokane, even though they now live in Southern California. But they’re going to be up there, so I’ll get to see them.”

The reason he’s home? He’s celebrating his latest album, “Roll With It,” released Tuesday on his own label, Position Music.

Some of the songs on “Roll With It” have been with him awhile.

“I’ve been playing one of them (“Always Love You”) for quite awhile, probably about a year,” Wells said in a recent phone interview. Three or four of the other songs developed as he participated in a residency at the singer-songwriter club Hotel Cafe in Hollywood.

“It’s a great place to hop up and try new material,” he said. “I did a residency for four different weeks where I was trying out new songs. It was fun. I could walk in there thinking, ‘I’ve done it now. I’ve written a great song,’ and then the crowd gives me blank stares after the song. It was a good little litmus test for me to figure out what people are reacting to and feeling.”

“Always Love You” was written as a lullaby to his daughter, Aria, who just turned 3, as part of their bedtime routine. “It means a lot to me because it’s really personal” said Wells, who also has a newborn daughter, Ireland, with his wife, Elina. “There’s something about that time with my daughter that I love.”

It’s a song he often plays in the middle of the set.

“If you’re a parent, or if you’re a daughter, it means a lot,” he said.

He had written about 60 songs for the “Roll With It” sessions. Writing, he said, is his favorite part of his job.

“I just dig in and unearth something that matters, and that’s not always easy to do,” he said. “I’m not a lightning-strikes kind of guy, where it just downloads from the heavens. I’m more like a guy that sits down and works at it. But I really love that work. And I love to collaborate as well, so I do quite a bit of co-writing, where I’ll have another songwriter in the room and we bounce ideas off each other until a song is born.”

He worked with producer Dustin Barnett, both in Nashville and Los Angeles, on “Roll With It.” It might sound different from previous Tyrone Wells records, less centered on the acoustic guitar. That was intentional. “Like most recording artists, I wanted to try something different,” he said. The result is a sound that is more pop and less folk, and highly polished.

“It was a great process, and I’m really proud and excited about this record,” he said.

Wells has not been to the Bartlett – his last local gig was last year at Chateau Rive at the Flour Mill – but he’s looking forward to playing his tunes in the new space.

“As a singer-songwriter, I sometimes would prefer an intimate room that feels great with a couple hundred people rather than a room of 1,500,” he said. “To me, as someone who does what I do, it’s a great setting.”