Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Canon Tyler. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Canon, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

Coming into the summer of 2022, I was met face to face with what was both an exciting and terrifying reality. By this point, I had been steadily building a show schedule – growing from a sporadic show here and there during the late summer of 2020 to a constant 1-3 shows a weekend into ’22. At the time, I had been doing this while working full-time at a non-music related job Mon-Fri. The turning point came when I began having to refuse weekday, out-of-state shows – the type necessary to continue building a following – because of my day job.

From the day that I picked up a guitar, I knew that writing songs and performing them in front of people was what I wanted to do with my life. Through high school and early adulthood, however, I played the safe cards by going to college and getting the proverbial “real job”. Until now, making any kind of sustainable living by playing music seemed like a pipe dream that could only be attained by people of freakish talent and/or overly good luck. Now, this reality was staring me dead in the eyes, and it was on me to decide how far I was going to run with it.

So, I went for it. I spent a couple months paying off any debts I had, stockpiling all my pay and booking any and every show that came my way. Initially, I figured I would give it a trial run for the summer and by fall I’d probably be looking for a new job upon realizing that being a “full-time musician” was unsustainable. But i’ll be damned, summer came and went, then fall and into winter and I never did go hunting for that new job.

Today I’m still performing as my main source of income, and there are no signs of slowing down. I’ve been able to play new, exciting places and have the beginnings of what you might call a fan base popping up in little pockets across where I play. Some of the runs I do are even starting to look like “real” touring, having me out on the road without coming back for multiple days at a time. How long will it sustain? There’s no telling, but I plan to see it out as far as I can, wherever that may take me.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

My name is Canon Tyler and I am a singer-songwriter from the hills of north Georgia. I picked up a guitar at the age of 9 or 10 and haven’t looked back since, I dabbled around in rock bands for a while, but I realized as I began to write more and more of my own music that I’m a folk singer at heart. Today, I write folk music about life where I grew up in the Appalachian foothills, and try my best to tell genuine stories about the pride, hope, and natural beauty that fills these hills. I draw a lot of inspiration from Bluegrass and contemporary acoustic & folk music, as well as the Laurel Canyon-era singer-songwriters of the late ’60s and early ’70s. I perform my music for a living and travel across north Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina playing bars, breweries, coffeehouses, listening rooms, etc., to anyone who will listen.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

The biggest challenge facing independent singer/songwriters specifically is making a sustainable living. In the old days, album sales were the biggest source of income for musical artists, but today that’s gone. As we all know, streaming through Spotify, Apple Music, etc. is how 99.9% of people listen to music, and while it’s great for getting your songs out to massive amounts of people, it pays almost nothing.

To put things in perspective, when you buy a piece of merchandise from a local artist – whether that’s a CD/Vinyl, or a T-shirt, sticker, coozie, etc., they’ll probably make somewhere between $5 – $20 off that item, depending on what you buy. When you stream one of their songs through a streaming service, they will make roughly $0.003. You read that right – it’s less than a cent per stream. You’d have to stream their songs AT LEAST 1,667 times for them to make $5. So PLEASE, buy some merch and support your local singer/songwriters.

Also, go to their shows! When you see they’re playing near you, go see them play. Usually, it’s not going to cost you anything to get in. If there is a cover charge, it likely won’t be more than $15 (usually around $5), and that’s money that’s going to go directly towards paying the artist. The small venues your local artists are playing at judge the artists by how many people come to see them, and what the crowd reaction is (and how much extra food/drink they sell that night). If people come to see them play, and are enthusiastic about the music, they’ll probably get to come back again!

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

For me, the best part about getting out and performing is making connections with other people through music. Songwriting as a solo artist, by nature, is a very introverted act – it’s all about expressing inner thoughts and emotions through an instrument, your voice and words that rhyme (usually). However, taking those songs out with you on the road and playing them in front of people turns all that introspection into a very social event. The ultimate payoff is when a piece of that music you created illicits a response from a person in the audience. Whether someone laughs at a funny lyric during a song about getting beat up at a bar in Dahlonega, or sheds a tear during a song about spending my summers with my great-grandfather as a kid, there’s no greater feeling on Earth than when your own words and chords stir someone else’s emotions.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.canontyler.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/canontylermusic
• Facebook: facebook.com/canontylermusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@canontyler5934

Image Credits
Photography by: Melissa Poloncarz (MM Studio Co.)