Tyler Hilton has been a songwriter and musician for most of his life. The son of an electrical contractor and a teacher, Hilton grew up in a musically inclined family in Palm Springs, Calif., where he took to playing guitar and singing at a young age. A huge fan of Elvis Presley, Robert Johnson, and Muddy Waters, Hilton spent several years performing at open mic nights and clubs, and playing blues and jazz covers for tips in coffeehouses and restaurants. “I did pretty well with the older clientele because they loved that stuff,” Hilton says. “But I’d always be shocked when a kid came up and said he liked my music, because usually it was: ‘Oh my parents heard you at the Crab Shack and they loved your rendition of ‘Wonderful World’ and I’d be like, ‘Thank you.’ And that’s when I got the hell out of Palm Springs.”

Hilton moved to Los Angeles to launch himself as a musician. After releasing a self-titled independent CD, he signed to Warner Bros. imprint Maverick Records, which released his major-label debut The Tracks of Tyler Hilton the same year that Hilton made his acting debut starring as the musically talented but totally arrogant Chris Keller on the second season of One Tree Hill. Other roles followed, including playing Elvis Presley in the critically acclaimed Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, co-starring in the indie film Charlie Bartlett with Robert Downey Jr., and returning to One Tree Hill for its final season in 2012.