Tyler Farr

Tickets available at the Buck Owens’ Crystal Palace Box Office, Charge by phone 661-328-7560 and Vallitix.com

Tyler Farr’s a thinker, an observer of the human condition, a man in the middle of a surging testosterone country movement in today’s Nashville who insists on digging a little deeper, getting a little realer and owning how hard it can be. On Suffer In Peace, the son of a Garden City, Missouri farmer opens his veins and examines the pain that comes from being truly engaged with living.

From the wracked hangover of what you don’t see coming in love “Withdrawals,” the smoky acoustic “I Don’t Even Want This Beer” or the spare run-from-the-memories title track, the classically-trained vocalist knows that love isn’t just hard, it’s risky. With a resonant tenor that has a powdery bottom and a warm center, Farr heats up difficult emotions and peels back what most men barricade behind bravado.

One listen to “A Guy Walks Into A Bar,” Suffer’s lead single, is to hear the tension, the exhaustion and the devastation that comes with a stiff upper lip. It falters just a bit, buckles and throws unspeakable pain wide open without going for melodrama as he transforms the joke into a punchline that is the hero’s life.

“I could sing you heartbreak ballads for over an hour and a half,” laughs the easy-talking Farr. “I have a lot of heartbreak ballads, because I think there’s a lot more heartbreak than happily ever after… But happily ever after is still what keeps you going after it.”

Not that he’s looking to throw an industrial strength pity party. From Craig Wiseman’s thumpin’ “C.O.U.N.T.R.Y.,” the hillbilly word-tumble a la Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” straight through to “Damn Good Friends,” which features tour mate and pal Jason Aldean trading verses celebrating good ole boy’s hanging tough, Suffer is also the gusto of cold beer after a hard day’s work, the notion of raising Hell and chasing the night and the grass roots eroticism that happens when you lose the posturing.

Farr evokes old school rednecks, hellions and honky-tonkers like the Hank Jr of Major Moves and 5-0, the John Anderson of “Swingin’” and “Let Somebody Else Drive,” Gary Stewart in his prime and Keith Whitley channeling Lefty Frizzell in “I Never Go Around Mirrors.” Confessing, “I chew tobacco, I don’t smoke. I drink whiskey ‘cause I like it,” he suggests his vices qualify him straight up and honest.

But his affinity for hard country and honky-tonk comes from an even more bedrock place: his parents. Following behind his father’s tractor raking the hay on the 150 acres he raised cattle on, Farr was basted in Ronnie Milsap, Conway Twitty’s “She’s Got A Single Thing In Mind,” Vince Gill’s I Still Believe In You and Sammy Kershaw’s Politics, Religion & Her – and his Mom, an aspiring singer who loved Dan Seals’ “Bop,” ended up married to George Jones touring guitarist, which pulled Farr right up to the bumper of one of country’s greatest raw lightning vocalists, as well as being exposed to Merle Haggard, Vern Gosdin, and Gene Watson.