Life & Work with Tyler Matock

Today we’d like to introduce you to Tyler Matock.

Hi Tyler, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I feel like I got started playing guitar later in life. It wasn’t until 19 or 20 that my dad bought me an acoustic guitar.

From then I immersed myself in learning how to play enough chords to help me write songs. Writing songs came out of wanting to learn how to sing and find my voice because I never had any experience singing before. Once I felt good enough to perform, I started going to local open mics that eventually lead me to meet people who had asked me to open for their bands at some of the premier local venues. Everything just sort of came one step at a time. I owe a lot to my family and friends for having supported me in those early years – if it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t be here doing what I do today.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I definitely had struggles literally from the beginning. I obviously can’t speak on everyone’s story, but I’d imagine there’s always a little bit of strife along all of our journeys. It’s taken me a long time to get to this point that I’m at now, but I’m working on having somewhat of a sense of humor in this world of being an “artist”. I think it’s really easy to focus on the struggles or bumps in the road that aren’t necessarily in our control – I waste a lot of time on that stuff within the music and everyday life, but now the struggles I’m mostly facing come from within myself.

Self-doubt, not feeling good enough, existentialism, taking myself too seriously – they can all be jumbled up and impactful to where they consume a lot of time, but with that, comes inspiration. I think some of my best ideas come from looking back at my struggles and forming this sort of tongue-in-cheek approach to how silly it all is. There’s nothing cliché with saying “I’m working on myself” – the stigmas of mental health are slowly being recognized and I think only the best can come from that. The more we see that the struggle within ourselves is actually real, we can eventually begin to understand each other. I’m currently allowing those ideas to live rent-free inside my music more and more.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I think I specialize in songwriting – I’m knocking on wood as I say that. I also take a lot of pride in the live performance. That may be the most important part of what I do. I love performers. The idea of taking a song or idea and being able to perform it with an audience is fascinating to me.

I grew up around performers. My grandma used to tap dance at family parties and there’s video footage of me as a toddler staring at her the whole time. She used to sing me to sleep as well because I was such a crybaby allegedly.

I’m a song-and-dance baby!

Risk-taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I feel like I live a double life when thinking about this question. As much as I overthink about taking any risk, if I’m feeling good about it, there’s almost no thought. I think stepping out on a stage is a major risk, writing a song and putting it out there is a risk, but I end up doing it anyways.

I think risk takes this weird combination of fear and confidence. Like my approach is, “okay I feel good about this, but this could also be a terrible idea” and I usually go with the good feeling. It doesn’t always work out to my liking but the good thing about being fearless is that you’ve got this short-term memory that doesn’t allow those bad thoughts to fully take over. I’m really good at bad ideas…

Contact Info:

• Website: http://sureson.net/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sureson.tv/?hl=en
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3L2JSLuMrIRWrqTWhuvFdw
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7BO8VC84igIBfmi2yAIaEg?si=tADuCB8CRDqWBmGaYpSJ6w0

Image Credits
Cole Seefus, Dani Boots, and Raechel Smith (Ray Squared Productions)