Guitarist, singer and songwriter Tyler Grant is coming home to Jamul for the holidays, a trip that will include an opportunity for local fans to hear him perform live at Templars Hall in Poway.
The 7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 3 concert organized by San Diego Folk Heritage will have Grant singing not only some of his longtime tunes, but giving a preview of his new “Flatpicker” album that will be released on March 28. It is his seventh solo album.
“It has songs with local significance, like ‘Goat Canyon Trestle,’ about the largest wood trestle in the Anza Borega Desert,” Grant said.
Another piece is actually a series of tunes called “Suite Lodore,” inspired by Grant’s experiences over the past four years as a river guide, something he began while returning to post-pandemic life, he said.
After living in Nashville for seven years, Grant moved to Colorado in 2009. That is where he lives most of the year. But Grant, 48, said he returns to Jamul each winter where his mother, Lynn, lives in the house where he grew up and that his great-grandparents built.
“The house is a living member of the family,” Grant said when talking about why he spends part of the winter in California.
Longtime San Diegans may his late father, Michael, who was a San Diego Union features columnist from 1978 until his retirement from the newspaper in 1992. The two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee was known for delivering “sharp observations on life in San Diego and elsewhere, with a voice that was folksy and cultured, sometimes prickly and always comionate,” according to his 2019 obituary in The San Diego Union-Tribune.
He left the newspaper when the San Diego Union and Evening Tribune merged in 1992, but wrote several books and stayed active in the journalism community as a full-time professor in Grossmont College’s Media Communications Department.
It was not only young journalists whom the elder Grant inspired. His son’s sixth solo release, “Trying’ to Have a Good Time,” was inspired by his father’s advice to him: “Tyler, no matter what the situation, the best thing you can do is try to have a good time,” according to Tyler Grant’s website.
“… it turned out to be one of the most valuable pieces of advice I received from my dad,” Grant wrote on the website.
The time spent with his father playing music also inspired his album “Guitars & Trains,” which featured not music he had already performed but new works like “Ease Your Mind,” “Joyful Song” and “Golden Spike.” They all revolve around the themes of home, life lessons and family bonds.
Grant said he began his musical journey in high school, when his parents gave him guitar lessons as a freshman at Valhalla High School. That led to his ing the rock’ n’ roll-focused Electric Waste Band and earned him a spot in the San Diego Music Hall of Fame.
“It was over from there,” Grant said of picking anything other than music for a career. He continued his studies at Grossmont College, where he studied under noted guitarist Fred Benedetti, then transferred to the California Institute of the Arts, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in music performance.
Grant said he grew up listening to classic rock, blues and country, but initially was on the path in college to be a classical recital guitarist. However, an introduction to bluegrass changed his focus and he learned the flatpicking style of guitar playing.
According to Grant, it is “a specific technique where you are using the pick versus fingers. It has a stylistic connection to traditional fiddle music … old-time music in the Appalachian string bands and bluegrass. It has roots in that style, but then branched off.”
Grant said flatpicking is “a very toneful and powerful way to generate songs out of steel string guitars. It is also a technique that enables a flashy fast tempo when playing on the instrument.”
In 2008 Grant was named “National Flatpicking Champion” at the Walnut Valley Festival in Winfield, Kansas.
Grant said he had always been interested in songwriting because he grew up with a journalist. While he took a composition course in college, Grant did not seriously pursue it until 10 years ago. He credited that to Benny Galloway, “a well-known songwriter in Colorado who has mentored many songwriters in this area,” and the book “Writing Better Lyrics” by Pat Pattison, a professor at Berklee College of Music.
Fans of his music have insights into him as a person, Grant said because it reflects him.
“I write quite a bit from my own perspective … mostly from my figuring out who I am,” he said. “Listen to my albums and they are inspired by the natural world because a lot of my time is spent in the wilderness. It is the greatest source of inspiration for me. … Also a longing to get back home. Leaving and coming home are standard themes of my music.”
One of the songs he will play at the Poway concert is his recently released single “Been Away to Long,” he said. The Poway concert will have just him on guitar, but other times he plays with a full band accompanying him.
This is Grant’s first time playing at Templars Hall, but not his first time in Poway. He performed at San Diego Folk Heritage’s 2023 Train Song Festival.
Opening for Grant at the Jan. 3 concert will be Ocean Beach resident Travis Oliver, an acoustic guitarist, singer and songwriter who specializes in flatpicking guitar and roots music. The 10th generation Appalachian grew up in the southeastern United States.
Concert tickets are $18 for general ission, $15 for SDFH and free for youths 17 and under. Buy at the door or in advance at ticketweb.com. There is a small online fee.
Templars Hall is at 14134 Midland Road in Old Poway Park. For details, visit sdfolkheritage.org.
