Ty Tabor, the guitarist, songwriter and co-vocalist best known for his work with King's X, has opened up about a traumatic brain injury that left him unable to write music for years, saying it has taken him until now to feel like himself again creatively. The injury traces back to a serious car accident in 2022, which happened as he was driving home after going to the studio to work on a new solo record.
According to a report from Blabbermouth.net, Tabor was driving home from the studio when a speeding vehicle struck his car at a red light. He had been stopped in the far-right lane of a three-lane parkway, and the other driver hit his car despite two open lanes being available to the left, per that outlet's account. The collision threw Tabor's car into the intersection, and he suffered a traumatic brain injury when his head struck the steering wheel and split open, the report states. He also experienced a concussion and severe head pain in the aftermath, and noticed difficulty speaking correctly afterward, including saying words that rhymed with what he meant but were not the right ones, according to the same report.
In an interview with Ed Hackimer of This Day In Metal, Tabor said that simply answering a question about whether he had recently worked on solo music required him to explain the brain injury, the car accident, and the traumatic events that followed. Blabbermouth reports that in 2022 he was driving home after going to the studio to complete work on a new solo record when a serious car accident left him with a traumatic brain injury. The outlet describes what it calls perhaps the most devastating and long-term issue he faced afterward: an inability to create new music.
A Long Road Back To The Studio
Per the Blabbermouth report, once Tabor recovered physically, he tried to return to the studio to finish the solo album he had been working on before the crash, only to find he could not generate new ideas to complete it. The brain injury had affected his musical creativity and his ability to write new material, the outlet reports. Tabor said doctors told him his recovery would require regrowing neural connections, and that they could not say how long that process would take.
To exercise creative pathways in his brain, Tabor was encouraged to pursue other creative activities, and he became heavily involved in photography during his recovery, according to Blabbermouth's reporting. This Day In Metal notes that only recently has he come to a place where he is finding himself able to create once again, nearly four years removed from the accident. In the months before the interview, Tabor reported that his creativity had started returning and that he felt much closer to normal, per Blabbermouth. “It has taken years to get back” to being creative, he said, according to that outlet.
Unfinished Solo Work And A Busy Band Schedule
Tabor had released his solo album Shades in 2022, which he said received good chart positions and good press, Blabbermouth reports. He went on to record a follow-up solo album after Shades, assembling eight or nine songs and getting the project to about 80 percent finished, with plans to release it quickly — before the accident derailed that timeline, according to the outlet's account. This Day In Metal reports that fans can still look forward to him putting the finishing touches on the solo album he had been working on when things went awry, though the outlet does not specify whether or when that project might be completed.
Despite the disruption, Tabor was still able to tour with King's X behind the band's 2022 record Three Sides of One, according to the same This Day In Metal interview. That album, the band's 13th studio release, came out in September 2022 but was recorded back in 2019 at Black Sound Studio in Pasadena, California, and was produced by Michael Parnin, an Emmy Award winner, per Blabbermouth's reporting. The band's lineup has weathered its own share of health scares in recent years: bassist Doug Pinnick underwent two hernia operations, and drummer Jerry Gaskill suffered two near-fatal heart attacks, which led King's X to cancel all of its previously announced tour dates in October 2019 so Gaskill could undergo heart procedures, Blabbermouth reports.
A Legacy Stretching Back Decades
King's X released Ear Candy in 1996, and the band's 2008 album XV later became its highest-charting record since that release, according to Blabbermouth's account. VH1 included King's X in its list of the 100 Greatest Artists in Hard Rock in 2005, the outlet notes. Separately, an interview published by All Music Magazine notes that Tabor also appears on a cover of the Howlin' Wolf blues track “300 Pounds Of Joy” on Cactus's album Temple Of Blues II.
Research into traumatic brain injury recovery more broadly suggests the path back can stretch on for years. A cohort study examining outcomes among more than a thousand trauma center patients looked at functional, symptom and quality-of-life changes across the one-to-five-year window following both mild and moderate-to-severe brain injuries, according to a summary published by the National Institutes of Health. For Tabor, that long arc appears to be matching his own experience, as he only recently found his way back to writing music after nearly four years.
