Ty Myers, 18, Drops Soul-Inspired 'Heavy on the Soul'
Why it matters: An 18-year-old with a gold album, a platinum single still climbing the chart, and a stadium slot opening for Luke Combs is a rare commercial trajectory — and Myers is using that momentum to push a sound (soul, blues, Motown recorded at FAME) that country radio doesn't typically platform. The genre-labeling debate he sidesteps in the interview is also the one reshaping country music's commercial mainstream right now, making his positioning a live test case for where the format's boundaries actually sit.
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- Ty Myers, 18, released his second album "Heavy on the Soul" (subtitled "The FAME Sessions") on RECORDS Nashville/Columbia, recorded last fall at FAME Recording Studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama — the site where classic R&B and rock albums were tracked in the '60s and '70s
- Myers' debut album "The Select" was certified gold and produced a platinum single in "Ends of Earth," which the source notes is still climbing the country chart a year after release
- Myers is opening for Luke Combs in stadiums this year and launched his own headline run dubbed the Legal Tour — a name his team picked because it starts now that he's 18, complete with tour laminates showing him "in a baby crib with a full suit on"
- Stevie Ray Vaughan's El Mocambo live video was the "domino effect starter point" that sent Myers toward guitar at age 11 or 12, opening a path to B.B. King, Albert King, and Jimi Hendrix
- Myers cites John Mayer as his No. 1 influence and credits Kris Kristofferson — whose lyrics he was dissecting at age 6 — as the first songwriter who "set the stage" for him
- Myers identifies his mother's car playlist of Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Gladys Knight, and the Temptations as the turning point that pulled him from his father's traditional country into the soul and blues vein the new album was built around
