Lyon and the Notary not only deliver a fresh new sound, but they also have a gripping, heartwrenching backstory filled with hardships, tragedy, and perseverance.

“My parents weren’t around much,” frontman Gabriel Lyon reminisces. “I’d pretty much have to fend for myself. I guess you grow up pretty fast when your parents are only around on the weekends and after 5pm on weekdays.”

Struggling to cope with the absence of his parents in his life, Lyon turned to drugs to fill the void. By the age of 18, he was smoking marijuana cigarettes almost once a month, often times inhaling. “Everybody has a way of dealing with their problems,” Lyon explains. “Unfortunately, the way that I chose just brought me down deeper into the depths of hardship and tragedy.”

“He was in too deep,” drummer Andy Taylor recalls.

Drugs weren’t the only factor in Lyon’s wreckless, anything goes lifestyle. Drummer Andy Taylor recalls that while driving, Lyon would sometimes go almost 15 miles over the preferred speed limit. “We would all be like, ‘Gabe, slow down,’” Taylor recalls. “But that was just the way he rolled; living life in the fast lane. Nobody could slow him down. Not even authority.”