Today we’d like to introduce you to Devyn Byrd.
Hi Devyn, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I always wanted to be a performer. I remember being a young kid and riding in the back seat during family road trips, hip hop and metal playing in my earbuds at max volume. I would belt the words at the top of my lungs, completely unaware that everyone else in the car could hear me. I wasn’t listening to the music just for enjoyment though. I was imagining myself performing the songs in front of people, whether I was singing the vocals or playing the guitar solos. When I was 12, I started trying to write my own songs on the guitar. In hindsight, I think my dream of being a performer was more specifically a dream to have other people know the lyrics and riffs to my songs. I wanted to make music that connected to people, so that they would want to belt my songs in the car too.
Several years later, I (guitar) formed my first band with my friends Nick Saj (guitar) and Eric Barrera (drums). We had trouble finding a vocalist who wanted to sing heavier music, so I became the lead vocalist by default. I was pretty bad at the time, but the rest of the band was patient with me. Towards the end of our senior year, we recruited Mike Luce (bass) from Eric’s other band, and we entered into the studio with Drew Cyphers to record an album. I suppose a lot of bands like to start with recording a single or an EP as their first project, but we had 10 songs we liked and we couldn’t agree on which songs to include or cut, so we just recorded all of them. We set up a GoFundMe to help us afford the record, and it was really special to see our friends and family donate so much money despite never having heard us actually perform together. That album was a collection of songs inspired by the post-hardcore bands we had all grown up listening to, such as Sent By Ravens, Emery, Underoath, Thrice, and At The Drive-In. We called the album Your Local Politics, since many of those songs were lyrically influenced by Donald Trump’s disastrous first presidency.
The week after we all graduated high school, we played our first “real” gig in an actual music venue. We continued playing shows together, but we struggled when the COVID pandemic shut the entertainment world down for a while. After a stretch of inconsistent shows and no new music, we started taking things seriously again in 2023. We brought on Jon Gutierrez as our new bassist, Mike switched to guitar, and I stepped back from guitar to focus purely on vocals. We eventually put out a song called Devil, which featured Eric’s scream vocals and allowed us to push ourselves towards a heavier direction. From then on, we made a better effort to support other bands in our scene, play more shows, tour outside of the state, and market ourselves more online. It has been humbling to play alongside so many incredibly talented bands and watch our audiences grow.
Recently, in a callback to my roots, I started writing poppy, hip-hoppy, electronica-inspired metal music, and we eventually recruited our long-time collaborator Abe Cuenca to be our keyboardist/synthesist/DJ/sampler/electronics guy. I’m still trying to figure out a concise title for him, cause he really does it all. He even plays bass on a song too. In February 2026, we finally released our second album (8 years after our first album) called Where Did All The Flowers Go. This record is about grief. I lost my grandfather very suddenly in 2022, and I had a difficult time coping with it. I tried my best to pour that pain and reflection into the writing and production of this record.
The reception to the record has been incredible and fulfilling, both live and online. For a while, I had accepted that my dream of connecting to others through music would never become a reality. But here I am in 2026, listening to concertgoers at our shows singing the lyrics I wrote, and watching guitarists on Instagram posting their covers of the riffs I wrote. We aren’t a big band by any means, but it means the world to see any number of people caring about us like that.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
There have certainly been a few bumps along the way.
When we were starting out, we were irresponsible with our money. We went through three different versions of our follow-up album to Your Local Politics, because we kept wanting to change the songs that would be included on it. We recorded drums 3 times with the same producer and didn’t use any of the recordings because of our own indecisiveness. I’d give anything to have that kind of money lying around now!
We’ve also had lineup changes. We’ve had some seriously talented members who could outplay (or out-sing) basically every other member in our band. Ultimately, it didn’t work out with those members for a variety of different reasons. That said, we’ve been fortunate that there’s never really been drama around or within our band, even when we had to have tough talks with those talented members about our diverging values and directions.
We also sought out producers and mixing engineers with impressive credentials in hopes that, frankly, they would make us sound better and we would blow up. Ultimately, after getting burned several times by recognizable names and even getting a lawyer involved to bail us out of a bad contract, we realized that nobody was ever going to care about our music as much as we did, so we took production and mixing into our own hands to ensure that our music sounded exactly how we wanted it to. It’s worked out for the better, as we really enjoy the sound and detail of our own productions. AND we get to work on our own timeline which is very convenient.
Personally, I’ve also struggled with a bit of an identity crisis. I lost my love of singing when my voice changed in middle school because I couldn’t sing my favorite songs anymore, and although I rediscovered it later, I struggled to perform well live. It felt embarrassing and exhausting to play shows and not live up to the standard that people expected from us. It sucked to know that I was letting the rest of the band down, and that I was the only one in the band who didn’t enjoy playing shows. I just didn’t have the range to match the vocals I imagined for the songs I wrote, so I felt like I wasn’t deserving of the vocalist role in our band. Over the years, I have had to learn what I am actually capable of, what my limitations are, and what my role is in the band so that I can help us sound as good as possible. It’s a lot less stressful to play shows now.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Aside from American Theory, I also play bass and produce in my other band called Offspec. When I’m not doing that, I’m teaching one-on-one music lessons at Lake Norman Music School and Lincolnton Music School, and when I’m not doing that, I’m teaching one-on-one lessons to my own clients, and when I’m not doing that, I’m teaching music class at West Lake Preparatory Academy in Denver, NC, and when I’m not doing that, I’m co-writing/producing for other artists. Nobody wants to hire me full-time, so I gotta work like five different jobs. I’m proud that I was able to turn music into a career. In fact, it’s cool to say that all of my income comes from music. I thought I was going to be a data scientist after I got my master’s degree in it, but after applying for close to 300 jobs without an interview, I figured it just wasn’t meant to be. I think it’s for the best.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
American Theory’s song The Lion and The Liar was featured in the video game NASCAR Heat 4 in 2019, which is still one of the coolest things that has ever happened to me.
That moment came down to luck. Our producer Drew was friends with someone who was friends with ANOTHER someone who was looking for artists to be on the soundtrack. They only had one slot left and they were out of time, so they were desperately trying to scoop up whoever they could. We were fortunately pitched by Drew to be on the soundtrack and they accepted.
That song is still one of our most successful songs right now. It’s not even our best song, in my opinion, and it’s probably not even top 10 for me (and we only have 23 songs out right now), so it’s really just luck that allowed us to grow and connect with people as a result of that song. Seven years later, we still meet new people at our shows who discovered us from that game!
I actually recently took a look at some critical reviews for the game, and a lot of people said the soundtrack sucked. Can’t win ‘em all, I suppose.
We had another song called Love You To Life get a lot of attention on Spotify. I woke up one morning a few days after it came out and saw that we had received a buttload of streams on it overnight. We didn’t have a huge release campaign or viral post or marketing or anything like that. The algorithm gods just blessed us for no reason whatsoever. After our numbers went up because of that song, we noticed we started receiving a lot more opportunities from other bands, promoters, venues, media outlets, etc. It just felt like I was given something I didn’t really earn, so I felt inspired to work hard and sort of “earn it” retroactively through hustle. It also gave me hope that there is a future out there where American Theory is touring the country and writing songs for a million people to hear, as long as we pursue it with every ounce of our being.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://americantheory.net/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/americantheory/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/@americantheory/?hr=1&wtsid=rdr_076MOVpJ8Nmpxu0fO
- Youtube: https://m.youtube.com/@AmericanTheoryBand
