Guitarist for Rye Coalition and The Black Hollies, Herb Wiley, has been diagnosed with ALS, a progressive neurodegenerative disease. My father had it and it is beyond devastating. His attitude is positive, and if you know Herb you know he’s always got a huge smile on his face, yet he’s facing unimaginable hardships right now as his body is failing him.
What he is most upset about is losing his ability to play music — music IS life for Herb. Right before Herb lost much of the function in his hands and arms, he recorded an album called WYLIE where he played every instrument, recorded it, etc.
“The story behind it, says Herb, is that I wrote all these songs back in the day around ’98, ’99 and played them out a couple times using my friend Scott (Black Hollies) on drums and Justin (Rye Coalition) on bass. Then I stopped writing the album, joining Rye Coalition to record the ‘On Top’ LP sessions. During Covid, when everybody was holed up and and nobody wanted to do shit with the sky falling, I recorded this slowly in my friend’s basement to tape. I basically waited 25 years to record them properly with hopes to put together a band and play them out. As soon as I was done recording and mixing, all of this started happening to me. It was almost as if, subconsciously, I needed to record them now or I might not be able to. And here we are. Very strange synchronicity. Life is definitely stranger than fiction.”
Herb is a musician and we all understand what that entails. You can go to his GoFundMe to help anyway you can.
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