Alverno Presents’ William Tyler

Alverno Presents’ audiences met Nashville guitarist and composer William Tyler as part of last season’s Nick Sanborn: Lend Me Your Voice. William spent years woodshedding and touring with groups like Lambchop and Silver Jews before breaking away to focus on his own version of instrumental guitar music. Behold the Spirit, William’s first album under his own name, was celebrated by Pitchfork as “the most vital, energized album by an American solo guitarist in a decade or more. It accepts John Fahey’s legacy while escaping its shadow. Moreover, it’s simply a joy to hear.” “You don’t get perfection with William (I suspect he’d be OK with that assessment); you get brambles and wandering, the wide and deep and arcane path to transcendence.” (MC Taylor)

Tickets are available online at http://alvernopresents.alverno.edu or at Alverno Presents Box Office at 414-382-6044.  Artist bios, video clips and links to artist’s web sites as well as artist jpegs may be downloaded at http://alvernopresents.alverno.edu/shows/william-tyler/

William Tyler is a Nashville guitarist and composer. He spent years woodshedding and touring with Nashville groups like Lambchop and Silver Jews before breaking away to focus on his own version of instrumental guitar music.

2010’s Behold the Spirit, William Tyler’s first album under his own name, was celebrated by Pitchfork as “the most vital, energized album by an American solo guitarist in a decade or more” and established him as a critical favorite, the picker who, according to his friend and tour mate M.C. Taylor from Hiss Golden Messenger, “connects the dots between Sandy Bull, Richard Thompson, Bruce Langhorne, and Reggie Young.”

Writes MC Taylor:  “I met William Tyler on the Exeter line out of London, and never such an autodidact had I met. He’ll tell you about James Kunstler, about Rudy Wurlitzer, about how Michael Cimino got a raw deal with Heaven’s Gate. We were both far hungover and lugging plenty gear, guitars and records and books, more than we could carry.

“William Tyler comes from good Southern stock, a Nashville lifer who’s played with Lambchop, the Silver Jews, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Charlie Louvin, Candi Staton. People love this man, rightfully so. When you meet him, you’ll feel that compulsion. William’s father Dan came from Mississippi; he wrote songs and lawyered around Music Row in the 1970s and later worked with Eddie Rabbitt, who toted a monkey on his shoulder and smoked grips of weed. Dan was once accosted by David Allen Coe, who chased him with a knife.

“[Behold the Spirit established] him as a critical constellatory star, the picker that connected the dots between Sandy Bull, Richard Thompson, Bruce Langhorne and Reggie Young. You don’t get perfection with William (I suspect he’d be OK with that assessment); you get brambles and wandering, the wide and deep and arcane path to transcendence. My notes from Liverpool read, “Body impulse/no thought.” I was writing about William Tyler that night.

“On Impossible Truth, his latest long player for Merge, William takes it further out than anyone has been ready to go. I’m not talking about choice of note; I’m talking about emotional devastation. He gallops as though in steeplechase and then creeps like purple dusk on the Cumberland. He steps lightly, he burns effigy, he comes on with the debt of an angel and we are all children of God. William will worry a phrase—some tangled chordal wormhole—until you are certain it’s all that exists, he’ll take you over the stiles, he’ll love you up and down and then he’ll make you cry for the world and what we’ve done to it. Willy T’s got the vampire blues. And there’s only one like him.

“I could lay in the far rolling fields of North Somerset and listen to Willy play all day long. What kind of world would that be for me? Better than the one ahead? So call it the Extermination Rag. The Glory Rag. March of the Jokers, you know? A hillbilly devotional with the lateness of dancers. I call it Impossible Truth.”

MC Taylor, Durham, NC, 26 November 2012

…. March 21, 2015 at Alverno’s Chapel of Mary Immaculate.  Single tickets are $25 and are available online at http://alvernopresents.alverno.edu or at Alverno Presents Box Office at 414-382-6044.

Sponsors
National Endowment for the Arts, Wisconsin Arts Board, Pepsi, Brenner Brewing Company

Media Sponsors
WUWM 89.7 FM, Radio Milwaukee 88.9 FM, WMSE 91.7 FM, Milwaukee Record

Alverno Presents 

Alverno Presents, the performing arts series of Alverno College, is celebrating its 55th year.  The series has innovated beyond our history as the longest running, continuous arts presenter in the city, to our niche of presenting contemporary dance, world music and jazz and an array of performance events. Alverno Presents shares the school’s mission by ensuring broad access to and participation in learning, experiencing and developing the arts for the learning community of Alverno, and our community as a whole.  For more information on Alverno Presents, special projects, media reviews and more, visit alvernopresents.alverno.edu, contact Alverno Presents Managing Director at 414-382-6151, or e-mail rory.trainor@alverno.edu.

NOTE: This press release was submitted to Urban Milwaukee and was not written by an Urban Milwaukee writer. While it is believed to be reliable, Urban Milwaukee does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.