Tyler Childers

One Liner:  Great lyricist making fine Americana and country music.

Wikipedia Genre: Country, bluegrass, Folk
Home: Lawrence County, Kentucky

Poster Position: 4 (the fourth freaking line!?!  Really?!?)

Both Weekends.

Thoughts:  A Kentucky Americana guy whose most recent album was produced by Sturgill Simpson?  Yeah, I'm in for that.  I give you that nugget of fact, but know that if you are looking for the next Sturgill, you'll likely be let down.  He has some great turns of phrase and very strong lyrics, and some of these tunes are good, but nothing on here is so genre-bending and powerful as what Sturgill brings to the table.  This is pretty straight-forward country/Americana with great lyricism.  

Fascinating that he is on the fourth line of this poster, with no track that breaks 25 million streams, and no name recognition among normal folks who I know.  I'm sure in country circles he is known and rising, I just find it interesting that a relative unknown like this is above people like Jenny Lewis or Metric or Third Eye Blind.  That being said, he may just be a star on the rise - he won Americana Music Honors' Emerging Artist of the Year in 2018.

I reviewed his 2017 album Purgatory a year or so ago when a friend told me about his live show, and there are two songs on there that stand out enough to be immediately noted here.  Funny thing, I was sure that I had pegged his top song with the reverb-filled "Universal Sound," but instead it is "Feathered Indians" by a mile - 24.4 million streams versus only 7.0 million.

Look at that opening couplet, man:

"Well my buckle makes impressions
On the inside of her thigh
There are little feathered Indians
Where we tussled through the night"


Freaking fantastic love song - well told tale of finding something to finally live for in the Appalachian hills.  This guy reminds me more of a Chris Knight or Slaid Cleaves, relatively simple tunes anchored by very good lyrics.  Which, I mean, I love both of those dudes.

The other killer song on that album is "Banded Clovis."  While I don't know squat about a banded clovis arrowhead, the story of "Banded Clovis," in which a desperate digger murders his buddy for a great arrowhead, is a banjo-fueled fine tale.  Perfectly told story, all in good rhyme and good music.  It's unbelievable that he's not a big time songwriter doing battle with Jason Isbell for the Crown or Townes.  

And although "Universal Sound" isn't his top streamer, it is still a great track - more appealing and less country-ish.  And it isn't even his second (or third, or fourth) most streamed track from this album.  Second most streamed is "Whitehouse Road" at 12.6 million.  Also, he had a 2017 three song EP thing called OurVinyl Sessions that boasts a track with over 12 million streams that is currently his second most popular track on Spotify top ten.  I'll give you that raw and ragged track as well, "Nose on the Grindstone."

Like an Appalachian or Irish folk hymn for modern times.  Feels like something that would have soundtracked a difficult scene in Justified or something, like a character falling back into heroin use and sinking into squalor.

His only other album as of now is his first, 2011's Bottles and Bibles, which is a much less polished disc of stories told over sparse accompaniment.  His voice is less strong, his guitar play less nuanced, it doesn't hold a candle to the newer album.  Lyrically interesting, but the music itself isn't there yet.  That being said, he was 19 years old when it came out.

He's from Lawrence County, Kentucky, and if you click on the Wikipedia entry for that county he is listed first as the person from there, before a dead Chief Justice of the USSC.  About 15k people in the county, and this is coal country bordering West Virginia.  Childers' dad was in the coal industry.

He has two new singles from 2019 - "All Your'n" and "House Fire" - which leads me to believe a new album is on the way.  And Wikipedia confirms that a new album is due on August 2.  "All Your'n" has a jammy, organ/piano fueled southern funk to it that is different than many of the prior songs.  But "House Fire" is winning the stream battle for now with a more traditional Americana direction.

That video is weird as hell - like some choreographer was like "y'all seen that Hamilton thing with all them dances?  We should do a redneck version of that with people from 1800's Kentucky!"  And meanwhile the guy with the red mustache just keeps chuckling by the fire while Childers burns his guitar.  SYMBOLISM!  Anyway, another good track though.

Loving this guy.  Would totally go see him do it all live.