Rye Coalition’s Herb Wiley Diagnosed With ALS, Crowdfunding Treatment

Herb Wiley, a guitarist in Rye Coalition and the Black Hollies, revealed last week that he has been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the rare neurodegenerative disorder that’s also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. There is now a GoFundMe page to crowdfund his treatment. Wiley has also released a solo album of long-gestating songs that he recorded, coincidentally, immediately before the onset of his ALS. Wiley played every instrument on the album, recording and producing in a friend’s basement, in the hopes of retooling songs he originally wrote in the 1990s to perform with a new band. Listen to the record, Wylie, below.

Wiley said in a statement:

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 need that 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.

Post-hardcore luminaries Rye Coalition formed in New Jersey in the late 1990s, bringing in Wiley for the aforementioned 2002 album, On Top. After signing to the ill-fated major label Dreamworks shortly before its sale, the New Jersey band returned to indie label Gern Blandstein to release a final album, the Dave Grohl–produced Curses, in 2006. A subsequent documentary, The Story of the Hard Luck 5, documented the band’s rise, label woes, and eventual split, with input from Grohl, Steve Albini, Jack Black, and others. Wiley is one of three Rye Coalition members who went on to form the Black Hollies.