Tyler Bryant & The Shakedown

IT’S A CLASSIC-ROCK REVIVAL AS THE TEXAS FOURSOME COME UP OUT OF THE BASEMENT WITH A SPARKLING NEW DIY ALBUM.

- Tom Beaujour

MOST NOVICE GUITARISTS are introduced to the blues via superstar practitioners of the genre like Eric Clapton or Stevie Ray Vaughan, but for 26-year-old Texas native Tyler Bryant, frontman of classic-rock revivalists Tyler Bryant & the Shakedown, the indoctrination was more unusual. “When I was 11, I met a guitarist named Roosevelt Twitty in a music store who mentored me and introduced me to the blues in the order that it happened,” recalls Bryant, who became an internationally recognized blues phenom in his early teens. “So I was into Lightnin’ Hopkins and Muddy Waters before Jimi Hendrix or Johnny Winter.”