Tyler Bryant’s Rock Conviction Runs Deep On New Album with The Shakedown – ‘Shake The Roots’ (INTERVIEW)

Changes often have to happen for someone to move forward in their life or their career. They can be scary, stressful, or exciting; usually a combination of all three. So when Tyler Bryant and his band The Shakedown made the decision to leave the safety of a record label to form their own, they took the leap with all emotions spiking. They are glad they did. With the recent release of their twelve-song Shake The Roots, it goes to show that good things can come from being bold. “Sure, there’s some insecurity in what we’re doing, but that insecurity is fuel. If you know what you’ve gotta do in your heart, you’ve just gotta do it.”

Shake The Roots is a pivotal moment for the band. Their maturity as songwriters and musicians is showcased to the hilt on songs such as “Hard Learned,” “Bare Bones,” “Ain’t None Watered Down” and “Ghostrider.” The bluesy swampiness of their sound gets into your veins and you sweat out the vibrations reverberating within the music. The rhythms are rocking and the crustiness of the guitars just makes everything pure and exciting to feel. These guys – Bryant, Graham Whitford and Caleb Crosby – just keep getting better and better.

For Tyler, a Texas boy who transplanted to Nashville at seventeen, it’s been a thrilling but not always perfect ride. New songs such as “Sell Yourself” and “Hard Learned” attest to the hard knocks that he has encountered along the way. But the band has held steadfast and is now leading the pack of the younger generation of rock & rollers. They’ve opened for Guns N Roses, Blackberry Smoke, AC/DC, Black Crowes, and Aerosmith as well as headlining their own shows in clubs the world over.

But blues has always been at the core, at least for Bryant. “Say a prayer for me cause the devil don’t seem concerned” and “I hear shackles rattling in the walls” sound as if coming from the mouth of an old bluesman who has been there, done that, and stared into the eyes of the hellhound in the room. “I play music because it moves me and I believe that it has a lot of power to affect people in good ways,” Bryant said during a 2013 Glide interview. “I mean, that’s why I started doing it, it made me feel something.” And back home in Texas, it was Roosevelt Twitty who guided that passion, as he still does in spirit today. “I think what I learned from Mr. Twitty is to just play it because you mean it, not because you want something. And that’s very important.”

Bryant has also been spending more time behind the knobs producing and writing songs with other artists. Shake The Roots features a song penned by Bryant with his wife, Larkin Poe singer/guitar player Rebecca Lovell, called “Ain’t None Watered Down;” and he’s currently working with Frankie Ballard. 

But it all swings back to The Shakedown. I spoke with Bryant recently about starting his own label, writing the songs for the new album, the scars he wears, and the impact of Tom Petty.

Before we talk about your new album, I want to ask you about Rattle Shake Records. That’s a new big deal for you guys.

Yeah, I feel like we’ve kind of been taking steps towards this our whole career and we’ve had the privilege of working with great record labels and very talented, passionate people. My wife is in a band called Larkin Poe and I’ve watched them do the independent release thing, you know, for so long and it seems so empowering for an artist to actually own their own music. We’ve constantly kicked around the idea and I think as you get older you start looking at things a little bit different and we were like, why aren’t we doing this?

Some of the best things I’ve ever done in my life involved taking a chance that you were a little bit unsure of. It’s sort of like, you got to bet on yourself to a certain extent, and I think for me the way I’m looking at this is, this is not only empowering us it’s empowering the people who support us, our fans, and for them to know that when they buy a record, it’s fueling more records, it’s fueling more touring. So I’m excited about it. We’ve been cultivating a great team. Some of the people are people that we’ve worked with in the past from other record labels; we’ve just been hiring them ourselves to go out and work. I’m sure there will be things we learn along the way but I’m looking forward to it.

Is this just for you guys or will you have other talent coming in?

We’re going to use ourselves as the guinea pigs (laughs). Then who knows what the future will hold. I’ve been doing a lot of production outside of writing and recording and touring with the Shakedown. I just produced a song for an artist out of Texas named Zach Person and co-produced and recorded the new Larkin Poe record and have been working on a record I’ve been producing for an artist called Frankie Ballard, which is like this low-down, dirty, bluesy, gospel record – it’s super cool. So I don’t know exactly when we will bring other people into the fold but it’s something that I do aspire to do.

So what do you think is your greatest gift as a producer?

Well, I think being an artist is a huge asset because I can’t tell you how many times as an artist if you have a boneheaded idea and you spit it out and someone makes you feel stupid, it’s the fastest way to deflate an artist. Even when I was working with Frankie Ballard the other day and I heard him talking to his band and he said, “The thing I like about working with Tyler is he lets me try my ideas even when they’re bad ideas.” (laughs) Cause sometimes it might be a great idea and I believe the spirit of creation is: I don’t remember hearing that but let’s try it, let’s see what happens, within reason of course. But I just think being an artist and understanding artists and that sometimes you got to try the off-the-wall stuff.

But yeah, I feel very lucky. I got to do another batch of songs for this artist named Nate Bergman from Washington DC. Those aren’t out yet but it’s just been cool to kind of get to work with artists that I love. And honestly, I’ve been learning more about myself in the process, you know. When you get to experience someone else’s workflow that’s totally different from your own, cause the Shakedown, we’ve been writing songs and recording together for so long, it’s sort of like, it happens naturally. So it’s cool to get deep into someone else’s process and figure out what comes natural for them.

Since you started Rattle Shake Records, what do you think was your biggest achievement on this record because of having all this total control?

Well, to me, when I listen to this record, and I’m very close to it, my interpretation of this album is it sounds like people having fun, and that’s what it was. There are certain songs on this record, like there is a song called “Tennessee,” and the guys were hanging out over here one night and Caleb said, “Aw man, I better get home.”  It’s late, it’s probably midnight or something, and we went down in the studio kicking around some ideas and we’re talking about starting our own label and stuff and we’re getting excited and I pick up the Resonator and he goes, “Oh no, really? Like you’re going to start writing a song right now?” (laughs) I was like, “Come on, I’m just feeling excited about everything.” And sure enough we wrote that song and recorded it in one hour and that’s the recording. We didn’t do anything else to it. It’s a moment that’s captured and I think that’s such a cool thing that gets overthought sometimes, especially whenever you start thinking about all of the places it could fit and how it could be monetized and how are we going to get on the radio with this. But sometimes you put that aside and go, who cares, it’s a moment! You’re basically taking a musical snapshot, something you can show somebody that this is where we were on this night.

For me, I love the idea of basically inviting our fans into this, like, yeah, this is what it sounds like when we’re hanging out in the studio. And that intro there, that was a mistake so we just started it over and left it on the recording. Who cares! And to me, I love records that have personalities like that. In the making of this record, we tried to preserve some of that personality with some of the songs, you know.

Which song on here would you say changed the most from its origins to its final recorded version?

I would say the song “Roots,” cause “Roots” is a song that I wrote on an acoustic guitar by myself and it was pretty much a simple cowboy chord song. I wasn’t really even pushing for that song to be on the record but Graham really liked that song. Caleb was like, “It doesn’t sound like Shakedown, it doesn’t sound like something we would do.” I remember getting frustrated that he kept saying that and I was like, “Well, go jam, go get behind the drums and stop talking about it. Do it!” (laughs). I set up an amp right next to Caleb and like what has happened with so many songs with the Shakedown, all of a sudden this thing didn’t work, as soon as he and I started playing, it took on a whole different life. And Graham was sitting in the control room going, “Hey guys, do that again.” So really, a lot of songs take on their identity no matter how many of the pieces are there. Once the band starts playing it, the song starts coming together when the three of us get involved.

Are all of these songs from a creative writing batch recently or are there some older ones that you might have rehashed out?

The only song that’s an old song is “Shackles,” and that song is like old-old for the Shakedown. I mean, I probably was maybe twenty or twenty-one when I wrote that song. We’ve been playing it in the live show for so long and we’ve never had a recording of it that felt as exciting as the way that it goes down live. I can’t believe it took so long to go, “Why don’t we put it down live.” (laughs)

I noticed there is a lot of testimony in these songs, from name-dropping in “Roots” to the lessons that you’ve learned the hard way. When you were writing these songs, was that a conscience thing going through your brain or was it just the way they came out?

I think it’s just how they came out. It’s interesting sometimes, in songwriting I’ll be writing a song but I don’t even know that I’m writing a song. Then I’ll listen back to a voice memo and go, “I said that.” It’s almost like getting out of the way. I’ll start singing – sometimes it’s like mumbling words, mumbling sounds that sound like words – and I think sometimes too if I feel I don’t know what I want to write about, then I’ll just start saying the things that I know I believe. Like in “Roots,” “I miss my old friend Rosie but he knew what would become of me.” Like, there’s these things that are really personal to me and I’m so inspired by, especially with music and the way that somebody like Roosevelt Twitty was sharing music with me has changed my life. It’s like that is so deeply ingrained in my sense of creativity, my sense of passion. The way that I hold music sacred is because of the joy that is basically gifted to me by another person. So even talking about that kicked off a song. 

Then “Hard Learned” is another thing where it’s, yeah man, I’m a stubborn dude (laughs). And most of the time I’m not going to learn something unless I get burned. So yeah, it’s easier for me to write from my own experience and just hope that someone else can relate to it.

There’s a line in that song about the scars you’ve earned. What is your deepest scar and how did you get it?

That’s a great question. I have to think about that one. I think one of the things that has been hard learned for me is staying true to yourself. I moved to Nashville when I was seventeen, completely on my own, and this is a town of validation. There is Music Row, there is Berry Hill, there’s all these places and the music business is thriving and well and alive here and I think so many times I would walk into a meeting and play a song for somebody and they’d be like, “Where does this go? Where does this fit? This doesn’t sound like a hit. We can’t play this on the radio.” That kind of thing. 

I was a staff songwriter for Sony ATV for eight years and I had another publishing deal. I’ve always been kind of on the peripheral of that scene and I think that something I needed to learn was to embrace that, embrace being on the outside a little bit and go, yeah, I’m bringing something different to the conversation. It’s okay if you don’t understand that. And I think that’s something that’s been good to learn over time, to find how to validate myself rather than looking for it from someone else.

Tell us about “Sunday No Show.” How was that one born?

It’s so funny. My wife and I bought a house a few years ago and we live next door to this really sweet family and the husband is a Baptist preacher. Sometimes I’ll go over and trim their hedges for them and we’ve become friends and one day I go out and Rebecca is standing by the fence talking to them, agreeing for us to come to church on Sunday. Then the next Sunday she’s out of town and I didn’t go to church and I remembered talking to her going, “I bet the preacher is going to be a little mad at me cause I didn’t show up in church today.” (laughs) And I started kind of just cracking up at this idea of Sunday no-show. 

I grew up in a small town in Texas and every Sunday you’d go to church and church would let out at noon right when the football games started. It was like, we love Jesus but we really love football (laughs). I don’t know, I think sometimes you write what you know and growing up in that church, especially in a small town, boy, everybody is talking about who wasn’t there and I think that’s so funny. I think my Grandma literally only went to church to see who was there and who wasn’t there. Then she’d call and tell everybody who wasn’t there. So I’m just embracing that. I think it’s funny.

What was it like writing “Ain’t None Watered Down” with Rebecca?

Oh man, it’s such a joy to make music with her. We’ve written so many songs together, the majority of which have never been heard by anyone except for our close friends who come over and we’re like, “Check this out!” The original idea that Caleb, Graham and I were kicking around was to make a straight acoustic record. We wanted to make a record called Bare Bones and we started doing it and we actually finished doing it. We made the whole record. But then once we finished making it, songs kept coming and we kept writing and we ended up kind of changing course a little bit and going, let’s just make a rounded out Shakedown record. We robbed a few songs from the acoustic record and “Ain’t None Watered Down” was one that we robbed. It was actually the first song that was written for that project and that recording is as it was. I wrote the song with Rebecca, went downstairs, and started recording it, called Caleb and Caleb came over. That was one of the first songs done for this album.

There is a great swampy sound to the guitars. What were the main ones you guys used on this record?

I used a lot of Resonator guitars for the acoustic stuff. I love that you mentioned the swampy sound being you’re in Louisiana. But I used this old National guitar. It’s like this tiny little thing called a National Reso-Phonic and that guitar, I realized if I tune all the strings, if I tune it to two different notes across the six strings, just only two notes, the small inconsistencies in the pitch make it sound kind of like a sitar. It’s really interesting and I would use that to layer over the top of. I’ve got these Resonators made by this company in Michigan called Mule and they sound phenomenal. Every time I pick one up I get inspired to play or write something. Then of course my old trusty beat-up pink Stratocaster’s on just about everything.

You got your pink Strat back a couple of years ago that had been stolen. What kind of condition was it in when you got it back?

It just needed to be kind of set up and cleaned up. It had been traveling around in the back of a car without a case for God knows how long. I wish it could tell me where it was and what happened to it cause when it came back it was yellowed. I had a hard time making it even fret a note. But luckily in Nashville, we have the best luthiers in the world and I got it taken care of pretty fast.

When you first started playing guitar, what was the hardest thing for you to get the hang of?

I think just having confidence. I’m glad I learned when I was young cause kids have a lot of confidence and then you start losing your confidence in your teens or twenties or whatever and then you start getting it back the older you get. I think I had enough confidence but also just anytime that I would play with someone else I would be afraid of hitting a bad note or embarrassing myself. Luckily I had a very supportive mentor in Roosevelt Twitty. He was constantly telling me, “Don’t worry about messing up, that’s part of it.” I think embracing that and embracing that human aspect of music is still something that I really love, and that’s one thing I want to do in my production. Music has gotten so sterile. A lot of music in the studio is perfected to the point of it almost being impossible for someone to really do. A friend brought a brand new album over last night and I was listening to it and there’s one part where the singer’s voice, he’s going for a note, and his voice kind of cracks a little bit. It was one of the most memorable things to me, because you go, that’s a person, they’re singing that and they’re pushing it. I appreciate that.

You told me in our first interview back in 2013, “If I’m ever not happy with my life, it means I need a new song to get me inspired.” Do you still believe that?

Yeah, I do. I mean, and I don’t know how healthy that is, but  I do put quite a bit of my self-worth in what I’m making and what I’m writing. Honestly, when my wife’s on the road, I spend the majority of my time alone at home so it’s really just a way to keep myself entertained and engaged. I don’t have a ton of hobbies. I like to go fishing, I like to work on my old truck, but other than that I like to just sit in the studio and make things because it’s the thing I’ve been working for and if I wake up and do it every day, I feel like I’m putting in my hours, you know. And if I don’t feel inspired and feel like taking a sick day, I will. I’m not just forcing myself to do anything. I do get a lot of joy out of making something I feel excited about and I want to call somebody and ask them to come over and hear this. I can’t tell you how many songs on this record I’d be working on and then next thing I know it’s two in the morning and I got my speakers up and I’ve got my eyes closed and I’m listening to it by myself, getting lost in the whole joy of it. That’s what I love about music. It can completely take you out of where you are for a little while.

You mentioned your home studio. What is the coolest thing you’ve been able to add to your studio?

Oh man, recently I added an RCA 44-BX mic. It’s the mic that you see Elvis singing into at Sun Records. Pretty much every great singer has sung into one at some point. This one I’ve got is from the mid-fifties and it’s been kept in great shape. There’s a guy in Nashville that restored it to perfect working condition. And it’s so inspiring to stand in front of it because you don’t know who’s sung into it before but you know it’s been around and you know it’s heard a lot of songs and it’s heard a lot of voices. I stood Frankie Ballard in front of it the other day and he mentioned, “I feel so inspired knowing that this microphone has heard so much.” It’s so cool to take something old like that and keep making new stuff with it.

I asked Rebecca, in regards to playing blues, had she ever felt the hellhound in the room. Have you?

Oh man, you know, I can’t say that I ever felt the hellhound. I think I’m too positive. I think I probably scare that dog off (laughs). That dog be like, that’s too much sunshine around this boy. Ain’t making no deal today (laughs).

What is the impact Tom Petty has had on not just you but the whole band?

We’re huge Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers fans. We actually got to play on the Hyde Park bill with The Heartbreakers at their last show in London and that was a huge dream come true for me to get to just have our name on a poster with Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. It just felt like a huge victory. I think he is one of the greatest songwriters of all time, a constant source of inspiration to all of us. You know, when my pink guitar was stolen, I had taken the back plate off of the guitar and I put it in my back pocket when we went to see Tom Petty in Alpharetta, Georgia. We drove our band van down there, years and years ago, and a friend of mine was working on the tour and she asked Tom to sign it as he was walking off the stage. He normally didn’t do that but he signed it: To Tyler. And I keep it hung up in my studio and it’s the only part of my guitar that didn’t go missing. I had it the whole time and I keep it hung in my studio as a reminder to always try to write a better song because he is just a constant source of inspiration.

You have a new bass player. When did Ryan Fitzgerald come into the picture and what has he added?

Ryan came into the picture in the pandemic. I think he’s been very patient and it’s a huge role we’re asking of him cause we had a very concrete relationship with Noah Denney. So he’s coming in as the new guy into something that is very cemented in it’s ways and he’s been doing a great job on the road and he’s got a great voice and he’s a great player and we’re lucky to have him playing with us.

Is he on the new record?

No, that’s me. And the reason behind that is it’s nothing to do with Ryan or his playing, it’s just some of these songs, it’s the way that they were written and kind of the inspiration and the way that the record was produced; like this is how it kind of went down so we weren’t trying to go in and alter too many things. If Graham’s playing guitar and it was like an organic hang, that’s so much what our music is about. It’s not planned out, it’s let’s get together and write. It all starts with hanging out. We have written some songs with Ryan and recorded some songs with Ryan and look forward to doing more of that.

What’s coming up for you guys?

We’re starting to confirm some tour dates and confirming more tour dates for next year as well. We’re going to go back to Europe and do some headlining dates here in America. We’re just very excited to get the record out.

What is the most important thing you and your band are aiming for at this moment in time?

I think at this moment in time it’s making things out of a place of integrity and having fun while doing it. I’m a firm believer that you can hear it whenever people are enjoying themselves on a record and we just want to keep doing that. We’ve got a stockpile of recordings on deck and we’re recording more when we’re not on the road. And that’s part of the reason for this record label: so we can put out more of the things we’re excited about.

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