TNT | Thursday Night Things | William Tyler: Corduroy Roads

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.His 2010 record Behold the Spirit, the 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 Messenge1 “connects the dots between Sandy Bull, Richard Thompson, Bruce Langhorne, and Reggie Young.”

The American Civil War has been close to Tyler’s heart since early childhood. So, when he discovered that Duke University had recently acquired copies of two of the most rare and iconic portfolios of Civil War photographs, Alexander Grader’s Photographic Sketchbook of the Civil War and George Barnar’s Photographic Views of Sherman’s Campaign, he jumped at the chance to create a new work with this material. In collaboration with Duke Performances, Tyler set out on a yearlong journey of history, research, ruminating, revisiting and composing that resulted in the world premiere of CORDUROY ROADS in Durham, NC in November, 2014. OZ Arts Nashville is honored to present this work in Nashville.