Singer-songwriter Tyler Halverson’s rural roots run deep. He got his start playing local FFA and 4-H Festivals and still recharges on his family farm in South Dakota.
The cowboy themes that influence his music have lead to more than 500,000 monthly listeners on Spotify as well as recent opportunities to play his first arena show and headline at Billy Bob’s, which he was gracious enough to speak with The Cowboy Channel the day of in Fort Worth.
TCC: How excited are you to perform your first show at Billy Bobs?
TH: Super excited, been looking forward to this for a while now.
TCC: Tell me about life before music, where you’re from and why you’re here?
TH: I’m from South Dakota originally, when I was 20 years old I moved to Nashville and I’ve been writing songs out there for about 7 or 8 years now. And then 2-3 years ago, we kinda came down here (to Texas) and just started playing around Fort Worth like Magnolia’s (Motor Lounge) and a couple different places out in Granbury, just kinda around DFW and then couple in Lubbock and Amarillo and been just growing since then and gonna see what happens.
TCC: And you told me your band is in Fort Worth, how did you get connected with them and meet them?
TH: A friend of a friend called up my buddy Ryan Tharp and he plays guitar for our friend Red Shahan and he was kinda putting together a band for me and we were playing with Michael Ryan up at Canes in Tulsa and that was probably about two years ago now. Just been running with the same guys since and yeah, I’ve been pretty blessed to find those people.
TCC: Whats one of your favorite memories with them?
TH: We like the Blue Light a lot, we like Lubbock a lot. Also about a month ago, we played with Parker McCollum, that was the first arena show that we’ve done with him in Wichita. So, that was kinda fun to take the band that you go play in dive bars and little hole in the walls and whatnot with to out in front of thousands of people in an arena.
TCC: What does life behind the scenes look like?
TH: I wish I could tell you I had hobbies but I don’t, I don’t do anything with my life other than play guitar and take walks, truthfully.
TCC: What inspires your music?
TH: I think big part of the inspiration behind what I’m doing, I have a very, very good community of songwriters that I live with and that I’m around all the time in Nashville and they’re some of my closest friends. I wouldn’t even say it’s a competition, it’s just like you hear what somebody’s writing that day and you wanna go in your bedroom and you want to write something just as cool. It’s just healthy and this really cool place to grow music and to grow some art and stuff like that. I think that’s probably the biggest inspiration, just the people I have in my corner and who I’m around.
TCC: Do you take a lot from back home in South Dakota?
TH: Absolutely, I think so, I think so a lot, I mean you’re only gonna write about what you know and what you live and that’s you’re upbringing, you can’t really escape that or run from it no matter how far away from you go. And then also, too, my favorite thing is going home to South Dakota and just like totally checking out and I’ll come back from South Dakota with a dozen songs and it’s just kinda nice to go there and recharge.
TCC: What do you do when you’re back home recharging?
TH: So, I’m the oldest of 8 kids, so I stay out of my sisters’ way and try and make my mom happy, and we just kinda hang out at the farm and play more guitar.
TCC: What is your favorite of your own songs and why?
TH: We have one called “As They Did” and I wrote that about kinda like a coming across the plains song, like before you see the fencelines and the highways and everything like that. Just wondering what it would be like taking that trip from like where we live south of Sioux Falls, South Dakota and then out toward Rapid City, where the Black Hills are, and just kinda what that would look like before all that,
TCC: Well tell me about your new album that you just released...
TH: So we got two more songs coming out by September and then that should be the first ten songs, the first batch. Super excited to get those out and its fun now, watching the live set, every song that’s out, and I’m super thankful for this, every song that’s out, people are showing up and singing along to that. But then there’s little dips in the set sometimes when there’s new stuff that we’re putting out or a new song we’re singing, and it’s just interesting to see that from people and how they react to certain songs. But these songs we did with my buddy Ryan Youmans and Gary Stanton. We all kinda co-produce this stuff together and made it in a studio out in Hermitage, Tennessee, and these songs were a couple 2 or 3 years old and just kinda took some time to have them finalized and we’re finally doing it so just super excited to get em out and share something else new.
Some answers have been condensed for clarity. You can listen to Tyler’s music here, follow him on social media here, and get updates on his tour and more here. Special thank you to Joey Hollis.