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BACKSTORY: After moving to Los Angeles on a whim, the songwriter turned his experiences at open mic slots into a recording deal with Rough Trade
FROM: Portsmouth, Rhode Island
YOU MIGHT KNOW HIM FROM: His homecoming set at Newport Folk Festival 2025
NOW: Ballgame teamed up with Jonathan Rado and Ryan Pollie to record For the First Time, Again, his debut LP
When Tyler Ballgame starts singing, people listen. He’s got one of those voices—indescribable but unforgettable, it bounces from deep baritone to airy falsetto like the Viking ship ride at your local carnival. Whether in a crowded club or at the Rough Trade Records offices in New York City where we meet, Tyler Ballgame performances induce something close to awe. On his debut LP For the First Time, Again, Tyler and his team of collaborators aim to bring that intimate yet cosmic energy to the recorded format.
Ballgame’s career began as a dream. After growing up in the woods of Rhode Island, he attended Berklee School of Music until his scholarship money ran out. He then returned home and began gigging at dive bars and restaurants with a dream of doing this full-time always vaguely on the periphery. The early days of COVID lockdown led his mind to wander to far-off places: beaches in cities across the world, cheap apartments for rent in Lisbon. He shrunk the scope a bit and daydreamed of moving to Nashville or LA to pursue songwriting. In a slightly backward way, the pandemic felt like a second chance: “The world was asking nothing from me and it freed me up to do what I actually wanted.”
The question of what that was was easy to answer, but acting on it took a leap of faith. Tyler applied for a job as a recruiter in Los Angeles, and before he could even really register what was happening, he was heading practically as far away from his hometown as one can get in the Continental US. “After the interview they were like, ‘Can you be here in two weeks?’ I lived out of a suitcase for a year and a half in Venice Beach in a room in a woman’s house. No kitchen. Just a single bed.”
Ballgame had his new home, but he hadn’t found a community yet. He spent a year and a half performing at open mics multiple times a week, looking for collaborators, friends, and fans. It wasn’t until he ventured east, toward the city’s central indie music hub in the Eagle Rock neighborhood, that he formed a band and began playing shows in earnest. Before long, some of his music—plus an EP he recorded with local scene staple Ryan Pollie—made its way into the hands of Jonathan Rado, the Foxygen co-founder-turned-producer who’s worked with artists like The Killers and Miley Cyrus, in addition to Weyes Blood, Crumb, and Whitney. “He saw me on an Instagram story and was like, ‘Who the fuck are you? Your shit sounds crazy. Come over.’ We hit it off instantly and decided to make a record,” Ballgame explains.
“The world was asking nothing from me and it freed me up to do what I actually wanted.”
Just like that, Ballgame went from an aspiring songwriter grinding away in front of ambivalent open mic attendees to making an album with one of the most exciting musical voices in Los Angeles. While he had a collection of songs he could’ve recorded with Rado and Pollie, he approached his debut LP as a blank canvas, a fresh start to begin his new career in LA. “Rado began by giving me some prompts. He asked me to write the biggest song in the world, and my version of that is ‘Deepest Blue.’”
The album’s penultimate track, “Deepest Blue” finds Ballgame moving from that enchanting falsetto to something nearly operatic, made for stadiums and concert halls alike. It’s a throwback, but not enchanted by nostalgia; it buzzes with originality, with the sounds of the past repurposed for something brand new. “‘Deepest Blue’ is my version of an Adele song,” Ballgame explains. “I was writing for this new voice that I was occupying. Once we got in the studio and I heard it through Rado’s tape delay and legit Sony C-37A mic—what Roy Orbison sang into—I knew we were onto something.” This concoction ended up fueling the entire record, a willingness to experiment with effects both new and vintage to create something straddling both worlds, but existing in its own orbit. “The magic alchemy of the album is Rado’s style mixed with all of our shared vocabularies,” he says.
“[Jonathan Rado] saw me on an Instagram story and was like, ‘Who the fuck are you? Your shit sounds crazy. Come over.’ We hit it off instantly and decided to make a record.”
Before Ballgame made the trek from Rhode Island to California, he solicited advice from two of the most important people in his life. “I asked my brother if he would make the move, and he was quick to say ‘no,’” Ballgame recalls with a laugh. “But my mom pointed out that I wasn’t really risking too much, just a few thousand dollars. I’ve never had more than that in my whole life, but it’s just money. Having a full-time job, I proved to myself that I could be an adult and keep the lights on while trying to do this music thing.” The struggles were taxing. “It was fucking miserable, but at least I was playing my songs in LA. I knew I was in the right place.”
Ironically, it was only once Ballgame found himself jobless that his entire world changed for good. The singer’s boss was being mistreated by the recruiting company, working long hours with little reward. “She was really good to me and would let me take off to go do sessions and play shows. She was having a mental breakdown from all the stress and I convinced her that it wasn’t worth it. They were exploiting her and I told her to find something that aligned with her passions. She quit, and HR came to me and said that since I was assisting a VP, there was no longer a position for me, either.” Ballgame was more excited than scared. Earlier that week, Rough Trade had stopped by one of his gigs and the relationship seemed encouraging. “The day after I was fired, they made their first offer,” Ballgame recalls.
Now, armed with a record deal he’s always dreamed of having and a stunning debut album that encapsulates his life’s work to this point, Ballgame is once again trusting that everything will work out. “I believe that it’s good and that it will do good for the people who hear it,” Ballgame says. That’s all he’s ever wanted, really; for people to hear his music. “I have faith that it’ll work.” This belief hasn’t let him down yet. FL
