Singer Gives Up TV To Pursue Music

Kris Tyler, who won an investigative journalism award working for KNXV-TV in Phoenix, Ariz., is now a recording star, thanks partly to some conflicting advice from Mary Chapin Carpenter and Trisha Yearwood.

The Nebraska native was at the University of Nebraska at Omaha studying classical guitar when she bought Carpenter’s first album, “Hometown Girl,” in 1988. She was so impressed she wrote Carpenter a letter.

“I told her that what she was doing reminded me of what I wanted to do,” Tyler recalls. “And I asked her if I should move to Nashville.”

Three months later, Carpenter wrote her back, advising that she should live where she felt most comfortable because that would make her write better music.

After college, Tyler drifted not to Nashville, but Phoenix, and landed a job at the TV station. Promoted to the investigative unit, she became a producer for it and even went undercover on a story about telephone solicitation scams. As part of her cover, she padded her stomach to look pregnant and hid a camera in the padding. The story earned Tyler and her co-workers an Emmy.

However, her focus remained music. Her friend sent one of her tapes to Yearwood’s husband, Robert Reynolds of The Mavericks. One Saturday when she was still in bed, Tyler received a call from Yearwood.

“Trisha said, ‘I love this song. I’d love to cut it, but I’m not doing a record right now. I never call people.’ Then she gave me her number and said, ‘You’ve got to come to Nashville.”’

Tyler’s soon-to-be-released but still-untitled first album for Rising Tide Records was co-produced by two of Nashville’s best-known producers, Tony Brown and Emory Gordy Jr.