TylerGrant & ArtistWorks
Photo by Jessie Bell Photography/Adrift Dinosaur
Background
Tyler Grant has been a name familiar to flatpicking guitar players since he emerged onto the acoustic music scene in the early 2000s performing with bands like Adrienne Young, the Two-Stringers (with Christopher and Casey Henry), Canadian fiddler April Verch, old-time banjo player Abigail Washburn, and the Drew Emmitt Band. In addition to his contributions to these recording and touring bands, Tyler turned heads in the contest world by winning the flatpicking guitar contests at Rockygrass in 2003, the Wayne Henderson festival in 2005, the prestigious National Flatpicking Championship at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas in 2008, and the Doc Watson Guitar Contest at Merlefest in 2009.
Tyler’s life in music was first influenced by his father, Michael, who played the guitar and sang songs from Sun Records recording artists such as Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Roy Orbison. A native of the San Diego area of California, Tyler started playing the guitar when he was fourteen. His first guitar heroes were rock players like Chuck Berry, John Fogerty, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. By the time he was sixteen, Tyler was playing the stratocaster in a classic rock band.
Tyler entered college in 1994. Although not originally intending to study music, he did take some music electives studying piano, voice and classical guitar during his first year. At the end of that year, he decided to “take the leap” and seriously pursue the study of classical guitar under the tutelage of San Diego legend Fred Benedetti. He said, “I fell into the routine of predetermined steps that classical players use to get from one place to the next. We started with scales, then moved on to etudes, then learned simple pieces, then harder pieces. I spent a lot of hours practicing.” Outside of his school studies, Tyler continued to play in rock, reggae and funk bands while in college, and began teaching lessons at a local music store.
After finishing the program at Grossmont College in El Cajon, California, Tyler continued his studies at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California. The experience at Cal Arts was inspiring. Tyler said, “I learned an amazing wealth of knowledge about guitar technique and musicality. I learned to see a piece of music for what it is on the whole and how to bring out elements of its interpretation. I was still working on the classical repertoire, but I was applying what I learned to all styles of music.”
While studying at Cal Arts Tyler found a connection with bluegrass music. He said, “It was always in the back of my mind after listening to the local country station (KSON) with my dad and hearing Wayne Riceʼs bluegrass show on Sunday nights. I had that sound in my head when I was growing up, but I just didnʼt know what to do with it.” During his explorations of rock and roll Tyler had become a Grateful Dead fan, which led him to an Old and in the Way recording. He said, “I heard ‘Uncle Penʼ on a live bootleg tape and immediately reconnected with that Bill Monroe bluegrass sound Iʼd heard growing up. At that moment I understood what bluegrass music was and fell in love with it.”
Some friends at Cal Arts turned Tyler on to Tony Riceʼs Manzanita CD and some Bill Monroe CDs. Tyler said, “I was instantly hooked! In 1999 I learned how to play my first fiddle tune, ‘Leather Britchesʼ, on the guitar and it was all over. After that I started a bluegrass band at the school. To the rest of the music department we were like some obscure world music that they had never heard.”
In addition to starting a bluegrass band at Cal Arts, Tyler joined a Hindustani (North Indian Classical Music) fusion group called Hindugrass and an Eastern European folk group called The Toids. He graduated from Cal Arts in 2000 with a Bachelor’s Degree in music, specializing in Guitar Performance. He moved back to San Diego and continued to perform in local bands, teach private lessons, and perform classical guitar at weddings and in restaurants. While playing electric guitar in a rock band, a reggae band, and a funk & soul band was paying the bills, he said, “All of my study at home was on bluegrass flatpicking, and I attended bluegrass jam sessions three Tuesdays out of every month, hosted by the San Diego Bluegrass Society.”
In 2002 Tyler attended the Rockygrass festival and said, “I really got hooked! It was more fun to me than any other style of music. The people were great, the music was top-notch, and the community spirit was inspiring.”
Present Day
After playing for a number of years in bands led by others, Tyler formed his own successful band Grant Farm in 2010 and, additionally, has released six solo recordings. During the COVID shutdown, Tyler placed Grant Farm on hiatus and has since been performing as a solo act and also has been playing some “Picking on the Dead” shows with a core band and various artists that he picks up at any given festival where he is performing.
In the Spring of 2020, Tyler began working as a river raft guide in Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado and Utah. He said, “I get to entertain people as part of a WinterWonderGrass-related series called RiverWonderGrass. It is basically a small acoustic festival on the river where we have a band or trio perform during a multi-day expedition that lasts four or five days (depending on the time of year).” The group rafts during the day and camps at night. Tyler, and guest musicians or groups that have been hired to come along on the trip, perform at the evening camp sites.
Tyler explained that one of the owners of Adrift Dinosaur is the founder and promoter of the WinterWonderGrass festival. During the pandemic he enlisted musicians for a float trip. For that initial expedition in June, 2020 Tyler was invited to participate along with fellow musicians Dan Rodriguez, Andy Thorn and Andy Hall. Tyler enjoyed the trip so much that he decided to go through training to become a river rafting guide. He said, “The original group that did the first floating trip was just guides, WinterWonderGrass festival staff and the four musicians. We were just setting the thing up to see how it would go. I loved the experience so much that I stayed and started learning the guiding and the boating.”
Tyler has performed on the river with Lindsey Lou and Kyle Tuttle, members of The Little Smokies, his Picking on the Dead trio, the Kitchen Dwellers, and the three singers in Fruition. He said, “Often times it is a whole group, sometimes it is a trio from the group and often it is me stepping in and coordinating a fun acoustic trio with musicians that I know. Since we have the connection with WinterWonderGrass, it became known as RiverWonderGrass.”
Teaching at ArtistWorks
Regarding his new association with ArtistWorks, Tyler said, “Its called ArtistWorks Flatpicking Academy and it is my best opportunity as an instructor to really get my method out there. It came about through the work I’ve done with JamPlay and TrueFire. I’ve been doing online lesson for JamPlay for ten years. [Editor’s Note: see Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine, April 2021 for a review of Tyler’s JamPlay course]. Eventually JamPlay, True Fire, and ArtistWorks all merged under a company named TrueFire Studios. They are all still very unique platforms, each with its own style and approach and they are separate subscriptions.
“That is how I got connected with ArtistWorks. Once this merger happened, everything that I did for JamPlay also went up on the TrueFire site. We ended up doing a lot of those lessons for both sites from the JamPlay studio in Fort Collins, Colorado. One of the coolest things that we got to do was real song lessons where I learn the exact guitar parts and we built a period correct jam track with drum sounds, bass, keyboards and vocals. Then I go in and perform the guitar parts on camera and break them down and teach them. We did this for ‘Blue Sky’ and ‘Ramblin’ Man’ by the Allman Brothers, ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling,’ by the Eagles, ‘Blackwater’ by the Doobie Brothers, ‘Hummingbird’ by Ricky Skaggs—so I got to do that crazy Albert Lee stuff—and Marty Robbins ‘El Paso’ with that Grady Martin backup…it is like a six-page piece because there are no repeating figures! Anyway, all these actual song lessons are up on TrueFire.
“So ArtistWorks had been following me and contacted me to say that they were interested in getting me in to do a school for them. ArtistWorks is different because you are not just doing a lesson series, you are setting up your school of music and people subscribe to you. Instructionally, I’ve been able to hone in on ten years of online teaching experience with my twenty-eight years as a guitar instructor and put together my best teaching method from top to bottom and it is really extensive and thorough.”
Having played music in a variety of genres, Tyler is using this new teaching platform to help other guitar players learn how to do the same. He said, “I’m teaching what I do, which is keeping acoustic guitar flatpicking as the baseline of my technique and using that to branch off into all of the other styles that I play.”
When asked to summarize his approach to teaching a top-to-bottom flatpicking method, Tyler said, “It is a series of short lesson stepping stones that are put together in such a way that a student can move through it at their own pace and start to really understand how the music works. They learn how to figure out a tune by ear and then how to arrange that into a piece using all the tools that flatpicking guitarist use. So, I run through scales, chords, songs, tunes…self-accompaniment methods like melody-strum and crosspicking…soloing methods…how to kick songs off. In the end the student will have the ability to put together a piece to perform and be able to do it with anything that they hear out there in the world. If they hear someone do a song that they like, they will be able to learn it and arrange it and interpret it and really own it, not just learn a transcribed guitar solo.”
Tyler said that he has taken his approach to teaching flatpicking from the structured learning methods that he experienced during his years of classical guitar training. He said, “In classical guitar training we follow these very tried and true stepping stones of mastering that style. So, I’ve arranged my Academy in that way. When I learned flatpicking, I had taken all of those steps that I learned from the classical method and adapted them to the flatpicking style. So, it is meant to be very clear and simple if the student follows the steps of the method.”
Tyler provided an outline of the course by explaining, “There is a ‘Beginner’s Corner’ so that very entry level players can get in on that. Then there are three main sections of the course. There is ‘Fundamentals’, and then ‘The Journey’, followed by ‘Branching Out.’ I am a real stickler on the fundamentals and believe that they are important to players at any level. If you are an advanced player, I still want you to hit my fundamentals because I work on them every day and advanced players do that. They work on the fundamentals everyday.”
Monday Night Play Along Bluegrass Jams
Another project that Tyler has initiated since the start of the COVID pandemic is his Monday night play-along jams. He said, “During COVID I started, every Monday night, to host an online play-along jam. Every Monday there is a slow jam, a mid-tempo jam, and a fast jam. I post all the set lists the week before so that people can look it over and see what songs we are going to play and then, on Monday night, folks will show up and play along with me on these sets. I’m leading them just like I would lead a jam session at a camp or a workshop—I give a brief run through of the song and then I’ll say, ‘Here is how I might kick that off’ and I’ll play my kickoff. Then I’ll turn on my metronome and say, ‘OK, now you kick it off and I’ll back you up. They’ll kick it off and we’ll sing the song and then I’ll say, ‘OK, I’ll take one now,’ and presumably they will play rhythm to back me up and work on their bluegrass rhythm playing. During COVID a bunch of people were telling me what a life saver the jams were because they couldn’t go and jam with other people. My online community has been thriving based on these play-along jams and they are now all archived. There are over 100 sets on my YouTube channel and Facebook page.”
If you want to jam along with, or learn from, Tyler Grant, go to tylergrant.com and navigate to his “Learn” page. You will find links to the Monday night jam archive and also to his ArtistWorks Flatpicking Academy, his JamPlay.com lessons and any other camps or workshops where he is providing instruction.
