About the Artist
Tyler Halverson grew up in South Dakota, one of eight kids who showed cattle around the country and got his start singing at 4-H and FFA talent shows. He picked up a guitar at 10, following an uncle who played, and left South Dakota State University and a plan to teach grade school to finish at Belmont University in Nashville. After a couple of early projects, he released his debut full-length album, In Defense of Drinking, in February 2026. His songs run on western wordplay and honky-tonk storytelling, shaped as much by George Strait and Chris LeDoux as by the emo and skate-punk records he wore out in a buddy's garage.
Tyler Halverson
About the Episode (Episode 124)
Tyler Halverson: Enough Cows to Tell the World to Get Lost
Tyler Halverson joined Jason English from his kitchen table in early February, a few days before In Defense of Drinking came out. He has spent the last couple of years between a writing room and a van, and the conversation keeps circling the same pull: a long-term dream of land and quiet against a daily grind that happens to be the thing feeding the songs.
Key Conversation Points
Sing songs, buy cows. Halverson's long game is land. The original plan was to sing enough to buy cattle, and own enough cattle to tell the world to get lost, with a future spot in Texas or back on the South Dakota farm. The trouble is that the life funding that dream keeps him moving: "You don't make no money sitting still, so you gotta stay on the run."
A little truth, a little invention. His western wordplay does the heavy lifting. "More Hearts Than Horses" leans on cowboy jargon that has nothing to do with horses, "Like the Rodeo" came out of a trailer outside Seymour, Texas where a friend was breaking horses, and "Fort Worth" started with a rack of "I'm Fort Worth it" t-shirts and the hunch that the woman in the song probably wasn't. He calls it part truth and part invention.
The misfit and the church van. He grew up split between skate-punk in town and George Strait on the farm, which is where a song like "Western Marijuana" comes from. Faith runs underneath it: one of eight kids in the first pew, now hauling his band around the country in the family's old church van. "Son, Brother, and Believer" is his reminder to hold onto who you are when you land in a hard place.
Asked what he is most curious about, Halverson did not name a bigger stage. He wants to figure out how to be something other than a singer, and finally put some roots down in Texas or South Dakota. For a writer whose curiosity runs inward more than out, the question left hanging is what he becomes when he stops running.