NOTE: To refrain from "clogging up the system" both here and on YouTube, I have scheduled one video to "go live" every three days on YouTube for the next three months until all 31 videos are posted there. Any videos I post here to BHO (may be only a select few, who knows?) will all be funneled through this one thread to keep it compact. As I post videos I will edit the thread title to reflect that, and add the updated video info here.

The first video is "Early Morning Rain" Track 1/31 added to this thread below.

A Tribute to Tyler Balkind (1992--2022)

This is one of 31 recordings from practice sessions with my friend Tyler Balkind between 2010 and 2012. The story behind these recordings and my tribute to Tyler follows. I apologize for this long post, but it's painless, I promise.

I have created this Playlist to honor the memory of a musician friend whose passing I only recently learned about, nearly four years after the fact. It’s mid-November 2026 as I write these words, so it came as a surprise to learn that Tyler Balkind died at age 30 on December 30, 2022.

I met Tyler at Country Jam in Blacksburg, SC sometime in 2009 and made a musical connection that would span only a few years. We talked about putting together an acoustic duo to gig at local coffee shops, music venues and even do some street busking ... and toward those goals we got together maybe 5 or 6 times over 18 months to put together set lists and work up tunes.

Tyler was absolutely in love with all things Tony Rice, absorbing all the available Tony Rice tunes and licks, books, recordings and videos and you can definitely hear it spill out in his playing. So Tyler introduced me to all these cool and new-to-me songs made popular by Tony Rice. (Yes, I live under a musical rock for sure.) Around that time I had purchased the tablature for Bela Fleck's Drive album and was trying to work up some of those tunes, and was able to share those with Tyler as part of our set lists. So between these influences, and an existing shared repertoire of Bluegrass and traditional tunes, and some weird tunes I knew, we worked up about 50-60 tunes that we could pull from if we were ever to gig.

Soon after we started practicing together in late 2009 Tyler showed up with a new Zoom H4 recorder and began recording the tunes we were wanting to work up. These 31 tracks are raw cuts from those practice sessions, each recorded in one take warts and all. They represent about half the tunes we had worked on. I am grateful that he captured these sessions and am happy to share them here. A musical snapshot in time that I cherish.

But that musical duo was never to be. In short, unfortunately, difficult circumstances in Tyler's life eventually overwhelmed him, circumstances beyond his control and to which I could only bear witness from the sidelines. This dark time culminated in the tragic death of Tyler’s younger brother in a car accident, soon after which, I completely lost contact with Tyler.

I heard again from Tyler years later right after the death of Tony Rice, his hero in music and Life. Tony died on Christmas Day 2020 and as a tribute to him, I created and uploaded a video a few days after his death featuring my attempt at "Manzanita." In the video description I credited a young “Tony Rice fanatic” for showing me this cool instrumental. Tyler found that video a few days after I posted it to YouTube and he left a comment identifying himself as that "fanatic" and gave me his phone number to call him.

I called and we spoke for well over an hour, catching up on things. After the craziness in Tyler’s life and the death of his brother he had to get the hell out of dodge to stay sane, and he escaped Upstate South Carolina and eventually landed in Johnson City, Tennessee. There, he met the love of his life, embraced her two young children as his, and together they had a child of their own. It was clear to me that he was more at peace and settled in his new role as husband and dad, clearly in love and happier than I'd ever known him to be. He was finally at home, it seemed to me. He talked about maybe picking up guitar and music again and we brought up maybe doing that duo idea after all...

That was the last time I spoke with Tyler. As I reflect on this sad news over the last few days, what stands out most clearly as I remember Tyler is how joyful he always was, a joy that was absolutely contagious. I think it’s fair to say that whoever he met in his life was affected by a joyful and shining light. Through the hardships he never lost that. Also, I remember him being musically fearless; Tyler was and remains one of the few musicians I’ve met willing to actually work up weird complex tunes, it didn’t faze him at all. He threw every Tony Rice lick at any tune I threw at him!!

Tyler’s life was brief but bright and filled with joy despite the hardships life threw at him. It was my privilege to count him as a friend, and for those who may listen to some of these tunes, I think you’ll agree -- the joy is impossible to miss, as well as that elusive thing we Bluegrassers call “drive.”

Rest is Peace my friend. Godspeed.

Edited by - banjoy on 11/14/2026 21:40:49