Hailing from the Appalachian Mountains in Kentucky,
Tyler Childers is part of a wave of 2010s Americana artists who prize authenticity both in their songs and sound. Sonically,
Childers borrows heavily from the weathered, ornery, progressive country records of the '70s, a comparison brought into sharp relief on his second album, 2017's
Purgatory, which was produced by the acclaimed Americana rocker
Sturgill Simpson.
Purgatory may have been
Childers' breakthrough. He has played since his childhood in Lawrence County, Kentucky, and had been playing professionally for over half-a-decade. As a young adult, he relocated to Lexington, Kentucky, and played with a band called the Food Stamps. He began his solo career with the self-released 2011 album Bottles & Bibles and continued to write and perform for the next five years.
Miles Miller, a friend of
Childers' and the drummer for
Sturgill Simpson, introduced the two singer/songwriters and
Simpson decided to produce a record for
Childers with the assistance of engineer
David Ferguson. The resulting
Purgatory arrived in August 2017 on Thirty Tigers, followed in 2018 by
Live on Red Barn, Radio Pts. I & II, a reissue of a pair of EPs taken from two 2013 performances for the Lexington-based Red Barn Radio program.
Childers' third studio album,
Country Squire, appeared in August 2019 and included the singles "House Fire" and "All Your'n," the latter of which earned him a Grammy nomination for Best Country Solo Performance. He returned in September 2020 with his fourth full-length, the Grammy-nominated
Long Violent History. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine