Tyler Hilton
Upton, Massachusetts, United States
Music
Press
We love Tyler Hilton as an actor — he was awesome on One Tree Hill as arrogant rockstar Chris Keller and gave a most memorable performance as Elvis in Walk the Line. But, what we love best about Tyler is his amazing music and soulful lyrics. He's left us hanging for a new album for almost four years now but this summer he's finally back with his latest called The Storms We Share. He revealed to CG just what was taking so long and the support group he counts on to keep making music! Phew — we couldn't wait another four years!
CosmoGirl: Tell us about your new album The Storms We Share.
Tyler Hilton: The Storms We Share has been a project that I've been working on for so long. In the process of making the record, I learned a lot of real important life lessons and a lot those lessons actually came about half the record. There are songs about girls and love and all that stuff, which I love to write about and will always inspire me, but this record has a lot more of a universal tone and inspirational tone — which I don't know if my other records will have again. It just kind of came out of this time and this process. I just kept trying different things. I moved to Nashville, came back to L.A. and just kept trying different things and scrapped the record maybe five or six times. That's why it took me three or four years to make this thing.
CG: Were you worried you would never come up with something you were happy with?
TH: In the process, I started getting really bummed and really down because I kept thinking, "I don't know how this is going to turn out." And then the songs that I was writing to myself were really kind of uplifting inspirational songs. I ended up kind of taking a step back and being like, "Maybe I should put these on the record." Just true to form with life sometimes — what you're trying to do doesn't necessarily work out, but what ends up happening can be a lot better. I just relax and say whatever is going to happen — happens.
CG: Even with those setbacks, you seem so confident and self-assured. Were you always that way?
TH: I was always confident, but I always did things a little differently, so there was always that trepidation. In general, I'm pretty shy and nervous about a lot of things. For me to get on stage for the first time took so many times at an open mic before I finally got on stage and did it. Getting on stage, for me, was a huge thing when I first started. And back in high school, everyone was in rock bands and I was a singer/songwriter. It just seems kind of lame. I never was strutting through the hallways like, "Yeah, I'm a singer/songwriter." That's never a cool thing to do — to be the brooding guy.
CG: Which is your favorite song on The Storms We Share?
TH: Sunset Boulevard which is about Los Angeles. I kind of call it When It Comes Part Two because When It Comes, which is on my first record and Sunset Boulevard are the two autobiographical songs. I have one autobiographical song on each record. Sunset Boulevard just talks about where I'm living in L.A. It's pretty random, but yet it's really, like the song says, "We’ll watch this devil city fall apart. From the top if this town, we'll see these dreams come crashing down." There's a lot of bad in L.A., a lot sadness and whatever. But you know, at the end of the day, that makes it all part of it. Like me, I'm this hopeful songwriter who came from the Coachella Valley to try to make it because I had fans in L.A., and I'm doing good.
CG: Who do you surround yourself with for support and motivation and even positivity?
TH: There are a lot of talented people in Los Angeles. I always think that the ones that are real classy, the ones that I really like to be around are the ones that know the bigger picture and see that their life and who they are is more than just what they're doing because it's easier for them to deal with it when it starts to come up from under them. In L.A., you could even not be a musician or not be i - Cosmogirl
Tyler Hilton, 28, (his new album, Forget the Storm, is out on April 3 and the series finale of One Tree Hill airs April 4 on The CW), shares the 25 things you don't know about him with Us Weekly.
1. I'm a really good juggler.
2. My first words were in Spanish.
3. I have flat feet.
4. I was Elvis at least five times for Halloween as a kid.
5. I used to work at a cotton seed plantation.
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6. I love going to open houses for homes I can't afford.
7. Everyone on my mom's side of the family is a teacher.
8. I've been dating and slowly being groomed into a much cooler person by Megan Park for the last five years.
9. I learned to swim at 18 months.
10. My first car was an '82 Oldsmobile and the namesake for my label Hooptie Tune Records.
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11. I love to cook and have an amateur cooking show on my Website where I have friends teach me how to cook things.
12. I wrote a song called "You Don't Know What You're Doing To Me" that I hoped would make me sound like Joe Cocker...and Joe Cocker stole it and recorded it. And now I feel like the coolest person ever.
13. I've spent more nights sleeping in cars and on trains then I can count.
14. I was a raging Jim Carrey fan when in middle school…I'm so sorry to everyone I knew then...for everything you had to listen to me say, over and over again.
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15. I'm trying to get my pilot's license.
16. I love self exploration and it scares the s--t out of me.
17. I'm a massive Gleek.
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18. I grew up going to a bluegrass festival every summer called The Strawberry Music Fest.
19. I'm a super safe driver.
20. I've always wanted my life to resemble something between a Jack Kerouac novel and a Robert Johnson song.
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21. I was born and raised in Palm Springs, Calif.
22. I have a younger sister who is loud, crazy, and hilarious and one of my best buds.
23. Growing a mustache and long wizard hair are on my lists of things to do at some point in life.
24. I am fascinated by all things Sherlock Holmes.
25. I hate that I can't nap…but I can't.
Read more: http://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/25-things-you-dont-know-about-me-tyler-hilton-201234#ixzz1wwU7yov3 - US Weekly
Discography
Tyler Hilton (2000)
The Tracks Of (2004)
Better on Beachwood EP (2009)
Ladies & Gentlemen EP (2010)
Forget The Storm (2012)
Photos
Bio
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. But Id always be shocked when a kid came up and said he liked my music, because usually it was: Oh my parents heard you at the Crab Shack and they loved your rendition of Wonderful World and Id be like, Thank you. And thats when I got the hell out of Palm Springs.
Hilton moved to Los Angeles to launch himself as a musician. After releasing a self-titled independent CD, he signed to Warner Bros. imprint Maverick Records, which released his major-label debut The Tracks of Tyler Hilton the same year that Hilton 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 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 Hills 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 wasnt 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, he says. I wasnt 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, the bulk of which make up his new album Forget the Storm, which Hilton has 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 anyones permission, he says. The result is a spirited and engaging collection that finds Hilton finally representing who he truly is both personally and artistically.
What inspired Hilton to begin writing again was the sheer thrill of playing live. I was booked to play a residency at the Hotel Caf not long after leaving the label and I was not looking forward to it, Hilton admits. I thought, I don't care if anyone comes, Im only going to play music that I want to play, and if people don't like it, I've got one foot out the door anyway." He asked two of his friends, musician/songwriters Dave Hodges and Steve Miller, to join him. I said, I'm not going to pay anything, but if you guys want to have some drinks and mess around on stage, let's do it. I want to do a lot of covers; I want to do some blues songs."
The Hotel Caf shows were packed each night. We were doing Stones, Dylan, and Ryan Adams covers and lots of blues, and at the end of it I remembered that I love playing music, Hilton says. I thought if Im ever going to do another record, it should have this vibe. Whats the worst that could happen? I had been playing by the rules and it hadnt worked.
Hilton began writing with Hodges (a songwriter who has worked with Daughtry, Carrie Underwood, and Christina Perri) and his guitarist Steve Miller, and over the course of a few months, came up with the songs on Forget the Storm a title he calls a direct reference to throwing away my las
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