A Way Without Words: The Triumph Of The Solo Guitarist

William Tyler

William Tyler

William Tyler is your favorite Nashville guitarist’s favorite guitarist. A veteran of the indie rock scene, including stints with Superdrag and Silver Jews, Tyler’s sophomore album Impossible Truth is the cresting edge of America’s current wave of music for solo guitar. With one foot in folk tradition and one in the world of experimental music and a lifetime spent steeping in Nashville’s music community, Tyler manages the liminal act of making art music for folks that hang out at rock clubs.

“I use a lot of gear that shouldn’t be going on tour,” says Tyler. The son of musicians and a son of Music City, Tyler’s touring set-up is simple: three guitars, pedals and an amp. But his sound is more complex than you might imagine, part hill-country fingerpicking, part eastern drone with detours into the realms of blues, jazz and rock, Tyler’s music is built upon stellar compositions that flow and ebb like water.

At the heart of both his recording and touring rig are his Martin D-28 – an enduring songwriter favorite and a custom Telecaster with a tail piece that he picked up for the final Silver Jews album Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea. But the piece de resistance is his electric 12 string built by retired Nashville guitar-maker Jerry Jones.

“He’s actually a Mississippi guy that went to high school with my mom, moved to Nashville and started making Danelectro copies,” says Tyler. “Everything about them, the lipstick pickups, the bodies, everything looks exactly the same as Danelectro.  The sound is sort of the same but they’re still better.”

Purchased in high school, the guitar lay dormant for years and years – “I was like ‘I have a twelve string and it sounds like the Friends theme song’” – only to be reevaluated when Tyler began working on his solo guitar material. And though the Jerry Jones only comes out on stage for a couple of songs per set – Tyler acknowledges that tuning a 12-string can be “trying for the audience” and is “like tuning a piano” – the depth that it brings to his sound is immense.

“Our ears have been so conditioned to hearing 12-string a certain way, which is this post-Byrds post-Tom Petty ‘there’s a 12 string’ thing,’” says Tyler.

“I realized [these songs] would sound sooo much better and so different on electric 12-string, it would totally change the context of the way people hear it.”

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