This is a reprint from a story in the Sherman Herald Democrat Oct. 5, 2010, issue. The first two pictures are from Tyler’s Web site… www.tylerbryantmusic.com — Don’t know the photographers, but they have snapped the kind of picture I wish I could take! The others, (click here), I took in 2005 when Tyler played the Honey Grove Music Hall.
By Mary Jane Farmer, Herald Democrat
Tyler Dow Bryant, unknown photographer
Tyler Dow Bryant’s dad, Scotty Bryant, turned down a half-million dollar contract offered his juvenile son several years ago, on the belief that “the good can sometimes be the enemy of the best.”
Tyler was wowing crowds at the Honey Grove Music Hall and points around North Texas then. He couldn’t branch out much farther at age 15 and still in high school. Things aren’t so confined for the young blues turning rock guitarist, now 19. He moved to Nashville at 17 years of age and since then his climb to fame is what legends are made of.
Tyler Bryant, his talents, and his progress are the subject of a movie, “Rock Prophecies” which is being aired at 10 p.m. Tuesday on Dallas’ Public Broadcasting System television station, Channel 13.
The movie was the inspiration of rock ‘n roll photographer Robert Knight, renowned for his photographic captures of the same bands for which Bryant is now opening. Knight, according to Scotty Bryant, was close to the late blues guitarist giant Stevie Ray Vaughn and took the last pictures of Vaughn and his band before Vaughn’s 1990 death in a crashed helicopter. He said that Vaughn’s last words to Knight were, “You will know me when you see me.”
Tyler, unknown photog, 2010
He first saw a younger Tyler playing when he was 15, and knew he was watching the next blues giant comparable to Vaughn. Knight wanted to do something different, something daring, by featuring Tyler in a film; something that music lovers could keep over the years and watch again as Bryant’s music, renown, and life advance.
“It’s my way of staying youthful and connected. Watch what is happening to Tyler. He was 15 when we started the film, now he’s 19 and opening for Heart, REO Speedwagon, and B.B. King,” Knight said. Imagine seeing documentation of Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones bands years before their world-wide acclaim, and Knight said that’s what this film is all about.
Tyler just completed a tour with Pat Benetar and REO Speedwagon, and now is in the recording studio on a project of his own music. He added quite a bit of guitar work on Johnny Cooper’s most recent CD, “Follow.”
Part of the film will also document the personal life, Tyler’s growth during these years spent so differently than the average teenager. “You’re a boy from a small town in an obscure part of the world playing guitar. To the people in that small town, you’re the party. Now everyone wants to date you, to give you everything. These young musicians have to be in a constant state of energy. A lot of them succumb to drugs. There is huge baggage that comes with the world of rock and roll.”
Bryant returned to Honey Grove for part of the filming, and played with B.B. King in front of the camera at Dallas’ House of Blues, just portions of the trips he took with Knight, director John Chester, and the extensive film crews. Executive Producer on this project and also acting as Tyler’s management is Tim Kaiser, a 20-year entertainment business veteran, two-time Emmy winner, and producer of more than 500 episodes of the television classics “Seinfeld” and “Will & Grace.” “Rock Prophecies,” he said, “has energized him as a new type of endeavor.”
Tyler has been a musician of some aspiration all his life. When he picked up his first guitar at 7 years of age, he, figuratively, never put it down. At age 11, he walked into a guitar store and first heard the man who inspired him into the direction of the blues, Roosevelt Twitty, who was picking a guitar in the corner of that small music store. Twitty mentored Tyler for years, with a guest-of-honor spot on that Honey Grove Music Hall stage every time Tyler and his band played there.
Scotty Bryant said he wanted his son to graduate with his Honey Grove High School class. When Nashville, through booking agent CCA (Creative Artists Agency) and music licensing agency BMI (Broadcast Music Incorporated), called, he and the school district worked it out where Tyler could walk across the stage with his graduating class, and still have gone to Nashville to pursue his musical career.
The musician’s management has dropped the middle name, and now the billing is “Tyler Bryant.” And Tyler’s music is moving over toward a rock ‘n roll style he’s perfecting himself, but Scotty Bryant said you can still hear all the blues riffs in his son’s guitar licks.
Twitty’s passion, along with his talent including those blues riffs, spilled over into Tyler, and it’s that passion that drives him daily. Because of that combination of talent and passion, Tyler is destined to fame beyond anything Honey Grove could have believed, but that Scotty Bryant knew and still knows is out there for his son.