Tyler Childers

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, Kansas, 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 <I>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. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi