My name is Tyler Rifley. Until now, I haven’t really been able to tell my story publicly. Instead, I’ve had to watch from the sidelines as local cancellations and incomplete narratives tried to write it for me. But as my music begins to cross state lines and build a national footprint, the time for silence is over. It is time to put the uncut version of events on the table. Whether you stumbled onto my songs, or are considering stepping into my world as a musician, collaborator, or a client of the studio, I believe in radical transparency. I refuse to hide behind a public relations wall, and I refuse to let a cold internet search or small-town gossip define my legacy. I wanted to put this here so that you have all the facts before you decide if you want to stream my music, support my journey, or create art with me.

My battle with the “system” began when I was just five years old. That was the year I entered my first youth mental institution and the foster care system, beginning a childhood that would be spent shuffled endlessly between state and out-of-state treatment centers, foster homes, to no home at all, and youth institutions. It was in the beginning of all this that I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Asperger's syndrome, and a variety of other mental issues that essentially made me a parasite to my own family and my peers because of my behavior. I didn't breathe actual freedom until the system finally let me go at 22 years old.

However, even though “the legal and foster care” system let me go at 22, the same family that originally cast me out at a young age had gone to court the moment I turned 18 to apply for guardianship over me and the court granted it. I never saw any of my own paychecks or was able to shop for my own groceries with my own money, or had any control over where I was allowed to live, until I was 24. It was then that I finally was able to fight for myself in court and get them to rescind the guardianship that my family took over me.

When most of your formative years, from five years old until adulthood, are spent institutionalized without a family to anchor you, yet with that same family trying to control you from afar, you enter the adult world completely blind to normal boundaries, healthy mechanics, and the gravity of real-world choices. Survival in that world means navigating chaotic, toxic, dangerous environments with other displaced youth. Inappropriate activities had been occurring in my life since childhood, and then adolescence, and then continued into adulthood. At 21, still trapped in that survival mindset and still in the system, I made catastrophic mistakes while navigating a chaotic social environment and peer-group dynamics where I was technically the legal adult in the room. While I cannot go into the exact details right now, engaging in inappropriate contact, boundary failures, providing substances and alcohol, providing explicit materials, and other reckless behavior, are the actions from that period that resulted in a conviction for Sexual Abuse of a Minor in the Third Degree, a 90-day jail sentence, 3 years of probation, and a temporary registry requirement in March 2017. I take full personal accountability for my part in these events.

I am not sitting here claiming total innocence or playing a victim. Real wrongs occurred, I take full personal accountability for my part, and I have spent every waking hour since then actively correcting my course.

However, there is a massive, structural gulf between the reality of my actions and what was permanently stamped onto state paperwork. The initial charges were centered on allegations of contributing to the delinquency of minors involving inappropriate materials I was showing/giving to them, and alcohol. But at the very last minute, as part of the high-pressure plea negotiations, which included last minute changes to witnesses’ stories, prosecutors completely switched the legal labels, demanding that I plead guilty to the Third Degree charge on paper to secure a resolution that required me to register, while telling me that it would still be “no jail time” just a different label. Within 3 months of my arrest, the State of Alaska rushed to offer me this ultimatum to "get out of jail tomorrow." Given the circumstances, not taking the deal and going to trial meant waiting behind bars for a year or more. I would have signed my own death warrant to get out of jail at that point in my life. I told my attorney when they brought me to court that I didn’t agree with the changes I was reading that they were laying on me last minute, but he said “look.. sign and you’re out today, don’t sign and you maybe get out in a year or 2 if you win.” At the end of the day I’m guilty of TONS of things, some of them I’ve been held accountable for, others I haven’t. I plead guilty because at the very least, some of it is true. And it was my ticket out.

But just 30 days after my release from jail, this time the Federal Government re-arrested me and pressed federal cyberstalking charges involving me contacting and harassing the exact same individuals that were victims of the case. This time, I refused to sign a deal out of fear; if I had, it would have been 3-5 years in federal prison. These are the FEDS. My attorney and others, said they win 98% of their cases so I was going to lose, there was no way to win, and I needed to take the deal, I was told. But I didn’t this time.

I stayed in a cell for 9 months and took the case all the way to trial. On the federal witness stand, the contradictions collapsed under oath. The court saw the truth: I was found NOT GUILTY, fully acquitted, and immediately released.

When the public hears a specific registry label, people automatically default to the most monstrous, worst-case scenarios imaginable. But that monstrous narrative, in this particular case, is completely false.

Today, I’m on good terms with some of the people that were involved in that case. Some key individuals who were directly involved in that past situation with me actually approached me when I got out and tried to apologize. You know who you are. But you do not owe me an apology. I was the adult and I owe it to you. The point is, not everything you see online is accurate, especially if you’re just reading a headline.

I found God on the concrete floor of a cell. At 22, I walked out of that system onto the streets of Anchorage completely homeless, penniless, and carrying the heaviest social stigma a man can bear. By all statistical metrics, a kid who spent 17 years in the foster-to-prison pipeline is supposed to fail or end up back in a cage.

But God had a different plan, and He provided a foundation right out of the gate. Immediately upon my release, a major, rapidly growing church in Anchorage looked past my registry status, saw my heart, and hired me as their main audio engineer. They gave me a room inside the church to start building, and that single room became the birthplace of my career. I have been mixing and engineering for major growing churches ever since.

Over the last 10 years, I used that foundation to do what the industry standard says is impossible. I built Midnight Sound Studios from absolute dirt into one of the most successful, high-tier commercial recording hubs in the state of Alaska. My engineering and production work have earned credits associated with major powerhouses like Universal Music Group and Amazon Publishing. My drive and music has forced the industry to take notice, leading to active, recurring collaborations with Grammy-winning session musicians who see my hustle and treat me as a peer.

I do not walk this path as an outcast. The people who actually know me, work alongside me in the trenches, and see my daily life stand by me without hesitation. My music videos are regularly broadcast on major local television stations, and my community actively backs my business and my art because they judge me by the fruits of my labor. They see who I am today: a dedicated husband, a protector to my child, a Jesus lover, and a serious businessman.

WHY YOU NEED TO KNOW THIS

The internet is designed to freeze a human being at their lowest moment forever. But a man transformed by God and driven by pure obsession cannot be stopped.

Whether you are a listener who connected with the raw emotion in my songs, or an artist choosing to book time at Midnight Studios, I want this page to serve as the unfiltered truth.

I am a man who was handed the absolute worst bricks life could throw at a kid, and I chose to build an independent empire out of them straight out of the Alaskan frontier. I let the music, the visual art, and my daily character do the talking.

Thank you for listening, and thank you for standing with me. Let’s make history.

-Tyler

OCT 30th, 2026