William Tyler

Tennessee-raised guitarist, songwriter, and producer William Tyler launched his professional path in the early 2000s by touring and recording alongside a wide-ranging assortment of artists that encompassed Lambchop, Wooden Wand, the Silver Jews, Bonnie Prince Billy, Candi Staton, Charlie Louvin, and Rhys Chatham. Once he had built a standing as a flexible and strikingly original guitar specialist, Tyler embarked on a solo path centered on instrumental pieces that often ventured into experimental territory and drew from multiple traditions, ranging from spare American Primitive stylings to pastoral country-inflected rock and folk. Releases such as the acoustic Behold the Spirit from 2010 and the broader full-band statement Modern Country in 2016 earned extensive critical praise. Following a move to California, Tyler reemerged in 2019 with the pastoral Goes West and the soundtrack for the indie feature First Cow. He further joined forces with guitarist Marisa Anderson for the 2021 set Lost Futures, and in 2023 he reworked selections from his earlier catalog into live band versions for the Merge-issued double-album Secret Stratosphere.

Raised in Nashville, Tyler is the offspring of Dan Tyler, a former attorney who became a Music Row songwriter and whose chart successes include songs recorded by Eddie Rabbit, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, the Oak Ridge Boys, Kenny Rogers, and LeAnn Rimes. The younger Tyler’s initial recording group was the Paper Hats, which issued two albums: Come and See in 2004 and Desert Canyon in 2008. His debut solo track, “Between Radnor and Sunrise,” surfaced in 2010 on Tompkins Square’s Imaginational Anthems, Vol. 4 compilation, appearing shortly before the widely lauded Behold the Spirit.

Tyler kept performing as a solo act while continuing session work. His second album, Impossible Truth, arrived via Merge in early 2013; over the ensuing years he maintained a schedule of headlining dates and support slots, among them shows with Hiss Golden Messenger. He also contributed to that band’s Haw (2013) and The Lateness of Dancers (2015) and, in 2015, produced Jake Xerxes Fussell’s first album. While spending time away in Oxford, Mississippi, Tyler started composing fresh material inspired by elements he sensed were disappearing from American music. He moved to April Base Studios in Eau Claire, Wisconsin to lay down initial tracks with musicians that included Phil Cook, bassist Darin Gray, and percussionist Glenn Kotche. The project was finished in Nashville. Recorded and mixed by Jon Ashley and co-produced by Tyler and Brad Cook, the expansive all-instrumental Modern Country emerged in mid-2016 to broad acclaim. Now based in Los Angeles, he issued Goes West in early 2019, another reflective full-band recording on which he restricted himself to acoustic guitar and was supported by guitarists Meg Duffy and Bill Frisell, bassist Brad Cook (also serving as producer), keyboardist James Wallace, and drummer Griffin Goldsmith. After those two ensemble-focused albums, Tyler’s next undertaking proved markedly leaner. Commissioned to score director Kelly Reichardt’s understated frontier film First Cow, the guitarist pared his resources to fundamentals, fashioning a spare yet engaging soundtrack that featured only himself on guitar, banjo, dulcimer, and additional instruments. Issued by Merge in March 2020, Music from First Cow combined the score with excerpts of dialogue from the picture. Later that year Tyler released New Vanitas, a seven-song collection of tranquil solo electric guitar pieces that first appeared in limited digital form before receiving wider distribution the following summer. In 2021 he also partnered with like-minded guitarist Marisa Anderson on the guitar-duet album Lost Futures. For his subsequent solo project Tyler assembled a band drawn from musicians who had worked with Silver Jeans, Margo Price, and Dead Weather, among others, and revisited earlier compositions from his catalog. The concert took place in Huntsville, Alabama in May 2021, though Merge did not issue the recording, titled Secret Stratosphere, until March 2023. The seven tracks, largely extended pieces that sometimes stretched beyond ten minutes, appeared as a double-album on vinyl.