It’s hard to talk about Ty Myers without starting with the fact that he’s now on his second studio LP before he can legally buy a beer at most of the venues he’s playing in. The reality of it is as in-your-face as his grisly lyrics and palpitating guitar runs, when the ruddy-cheeked country music freshman beams, while most of his counterparts snarl beneath weathered skin. He tells me he lets most of the comments about his youth roll off his back, or that he likes to interpret them as a compliment. He draws the line when it makes his stardom sound trivial.
“I’ve been making music for a long time,” Myers said. “For 10 or 11 years, because I started so young and took it seriously at such a young age. So I have a lot of experience compared to other people my age. Other than that, it doesn’t really bother me. I know the truth.”
But the songwriter is used to being forced to prove himself at this point. He first picked up a guitar around age eight, shortly before he’d take his newfound talent to smoky barrooms in his hometown, where the patrons were there for any reason but the music. Naturally, it was up to little Ty to convince them to stay for another round. It’s an attitude he’s carrying with him into his “Legal” tour this summer, and one he knows he’ll have to be mindful of when he hits the legs of that tour, where he’ll be supporting Luke Combs exclusively in arena settings. The two scenes aren’t that dissimilar, he explained.
“You have to kind of convince them to stop their conversation and pay attention to what you have to offer,” Myers said, comparing his childhood days in a pool hall to his new reality of supporting arena acts. “But that was really a big part of how I fell in love with music. I think some of it was me realizing that I could do that to grown people at my age, strike an emotion with adults. But it reminds me of that, obviously on a bigger scale.”
His stop in Neyland along the “My Kinda Saturday Night” Tour isn’t his first time on Rocky Top, and it’s also not his first time playing a major venue in the city, having blown the roof off The Mill & Mine back in 2024. Myers said he has fond memories of bouncing around cabins in the Great Smoky Mountains on weekends as a kid, or dreaming of running onto the field he’ll be stomping boots on come Saturday night when he was a high school football player. The sanctity of this stadium in particular, that still has a single-digit number of headlining acts who can say they’ve played there, isn’t lost on him.
“It’s an honor,” Ty said about his stop at Neyland on May 2. “It adds a sense of accountability; we [the band] understand the weight of the whole situation, and that does nothing but prepare us and make us better as musicians all around. The venues with Luke are amazing, every night kind of blows your mind, and Neyland will be no different.”
There are a few punches he’s had to roll with along the way, Myers said, as he gets acclimated to environments that are far vaster in space and size than the cramped venues he was shredding in as a tyke. He’s learning how to make up for the delay in energy an arena can bring, with an unprepared set and stage crew making the night feel like “a long-distance cell phone that has bad service,” as he puts it. He says his youth gives him an advantage in that department as well.
The reassurance only gets amplified with a spin-through of his latest LP, Heavy On The Soul, which came out in early April. There’s a certain level of confidence required in trying to emulate Stevie Ray Vaughn or John Mayer, two of Myers’ biggest points of reference, but his previous statements on showmanship and self-confidence should tell you all you need to know about how he handles it before you even push play. There’s charisma oozing out of his amplifier on “Me Neither,” a sultry swing at a former lover, or a ballad of binary chemistry like “Through A Screen,” which puts its finger on the pulse while keeping its favorite records close to its chest. For country listeners, it might take some unfamiliar detours, but for Myers, the route is as familiar as the back of his hand.
“When I was brainstorming the project and what I wanted it to be, the main thing that kept kind of popping into my mind was that I wanted it to embody my mom’s car,” Myers said. “I remember every time I would get into my mom’s car, she was really into Motown and blues. Otis Redding, Sam Cooke, and that was the first time I had a change of perception on music, I guess. Before that, it was country music and other music, and it kind of made me listen in a different way. If it wasn’t for that, who knows what I would listen to now?”
Regardless of where exactly his songs get sent to in regard to radio, Myers is pretty unbothered by genre classification. He tells me his dad put him on Willie Nelson while his mom was spinning The Dock of the Bay, and there never really was a personal preference for him once it came time to create. He seems more worried about how he can marry the two, explaining that it feels restrictive when he comes across hard lines and demarcations of sounds. “I have so many different styles of music that impact my creativity, and I feel like that’s how true, unique sounds come to life by merging them. To box them in and call it one genre feels like you’re holding it back.”
Still, that soul-centered attitude is pretty prevalent in his songwriting this go around, but he’s quick to point out that it’s noticeable in the record’s production as well. It’s the reason he decided to go down to Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to cut tracks like “Come On Over, Baby” or “Gone Too Long,” two tracks that would probably make some of the studio’s most storied alums do a double take.
He fawns over standing over the same wood where Etta James and Bob Seger ran through their greatest hits, with a reverence for the space that usually comes from a far older crowd. But Myers, swagger-filled as his studio presence is, explains how intentional and pious he tried to act within the walls where his heroes spilled out some of America’s greatest musical moments. The gravity of the situation wasn’t lost on him, and probably made him that much more intentional in his approach. “When I finished a song, I wanted to surprise myself and outdo what I thought I could do,” Myers said. Sometimes, it meant quitting when he knew he was exhausting options rather than creating new ones.
“My brain is kind of strange when you compare it to a lot of other songwriters,” Myers said. “Most songwriters will say you have to sit down to complete every song you start because you’re working a muscle in your brain. To me, if I know I’m not going to like a song, why would I finish it? It’s like doing a life wrong, and you know it’s wrong, but you’re like, ‘Well, I have to finish it.’ Like, maybe just do it right.”
As worn and weathered as his songwriting is, and as commanding as his stage presence has become, there are refreshing bits of Myers’ inner child popping out when you hear him talk, and especially when he gets to ramble on about his idols. He recalls the first time he watched Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Lenny” Live at the El Mocambo, where he was mesmerized by what felt like a god amongst mortals, sweat dripping from under that felt black hat and cigarette smoke. “I just sat back and was like ‘whoa, that’s what I want to do.’” He was eight at the time.
He’s also still finding his footing and leaning on some familiar faces as well as some new ones to get him walking down the straight and narrow. Off the top of his head, he names Kix Brooks and Marcus King, the latter another former child prodigy who had to get a permission slip to play his first gig. “We both grew up very fast, because of what we’re doing,” Myers explains. King even joined the Austin native on his new LP covering Little Feat’s crate-diggers cult classic, “Two Trains.” You can imagine the two sharing playlists as easily as war stories.
Most people would tell Myers to tread lightly as he enters his new life of fame at such a young age. But the energy, the drive, and the grown man’s taste all seem to complement his style and point to a budding star whose head is firmly square on his shoulders. He tells me he’s not taking anything for granted, trying to be present in every moment, but he’s not exactly sweating about wasting his time yet, either.
“I have 10 years before I’m 28,” he quips. “So I have a lot of time to figure stuff out. I don’t feel rushed in the least bit.”
Adam Delahoussaye is a freelance writer for KnoxTNToday who loves telling stories about music, arts, and culture in and around his hometown. Have a story for Adam? He can be reached at delahoussaye1267@gmail.com or by text at 865-919-5059 with your story idea.
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