Tyler Hilton

Tyler Hilton has been a songwriter and musician for most of his life. The son of an electrical contractor and a teacher, Hilton grew up in a musically inclined family in Palm Springs, Calif., where he took to playing guitar and singing at a young age. A huge fan of Elvis Presley, Robert Johnson, and Muddy Waters, Hilton spent several years performing at open mic nights and clubs, and playing blues and jazz covers for tips in coffeehouses and restaurants. “I did pretty well with the older clientele because they loved that stuff,” Hilton says. “Usually, I’d get feedback something like ‘My parents heard you at the Crab Shack and they loved your rendition of ‘Wonderful World’ and I’d be like, ‘Thank you.’ That’s when I realized I had reached a ceiling and it was time to get the hell out of Palm Springs.” Hilton moved to Los Angeles to launch himself as a musician. After releasing a self-titled independent CD which his uncle produced, he signed to Warner Bros. imprint Maverick Records, which released his major-label debut The Tracks of Tyler Hilton the same year that he made his acting debut starring as the musically talented but totally arrogant Chris Keller on the second season of One Tree Hill. Other roles followed, including playing his idol Elvis Presley in the critically acclaimed Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, co-starring in the indie film Charlie Bartlett with Robert Downey Jr., and returning to One Tree Hill for its final season in 2012. Yet while his cover songs appeared on the Grammy Award-winning Walk the Line soundtrack and his Americana-flavored originals were featured on each of One Tree Hill’s popular soundtracks, Hilton had yet to release another full-length album of his own. He recorded one, The Storms We Share, in the fall of 2010, but its release was thwarted by a shake-up in leadership at Warner Bros. “So much had gone down at the label and I just wasn’t up for going another round with them,” Hilton says. In December, he was released from his contract, with the label retaining the rights to The Storms We Share. “At that point, I was really down on the music industry; I wasn’t even sure I wanted to make another album.” But, being an artist, Hilton did what artists do and channeled all of his frustrated emotions into a batch of songs that quickly became his follow-up album, Forget the Storm, which Hilton released on his own label, Hooptie Tune Records. “It was the first time in nine years that I was in a position to make music without asking anyone’s permission,” he says. The result was a spirited and engaging collection that found Hilton finally representing who he truly was both personally and artistically. “Part of what made making the last record intriguing as an artist, was that there was nothing in between what I wanted to do and doing it,” said Hilton, “There was no permission to be asked, so it was a streamlined approach from creativity to finished product. Before I knew it, the record had arrived.” While on the road, touring for Forget The Storm, Hilton found another kind of freedom in performing whatever he felt like playing in the moment. “I just found myself doing a lot of the songs that never made it onto any other records. A lot of them were songs I wrote in Nashville, and that really started reconnecting me with the rootsier side of my personality and my music.” When touring wrapped, Hilton quickly found himself back in Nashville writing new songs, which were naturally and without intention drawing him to more of a country sound.