Tyler Halverson

These days, everybody wants to play cowboy. But Tyler Halverson doesn’t have to pretend — the South Dakota singer-songwriter has cowboy running in his blood. He worked his family feedlot and showed cattle all across the country at stocks shows and fairs. But Tyler always had the most fun at the rodeo and found a way to get in on the action, without breaking any bones.

“I loved going to the rodeos and watching my cousins compete. I always wanted a spot at the party,” he says, “and making music was my way in.”

Informed by his own experiences, he wrote plainspoken yet clever songs about the action that happens outside of the rodeo arena — like the flirting and drinking that goes on in the adjacent beer tent in fan favorite “Beer Garden Baby” — and started playing them on the circuit for the cowboy and cowgirls competing for the buckles. Tyler’s songs are honest country music, but they’re not throwback or steadfastly traditional.

Tyler has christened his sound “Country & Western Amerijuana Music.” A pair of major-label EPs from Atlantic Records, Western Amerijuana (Part 1 and Part 2) were produced by Eddie Spear (Zach Bryan). A collection of 10 songs all co-written by Tyler with collaborators like Jon Decious, Aaron Raitiere, Meg McRee, and the late Keith Gattis, Western Amerijuana announces Tyler as a new voice of the modern American West.

Listen to "Anybody But You" and "Takes 8" out now.