Tyler Childers Steps Out on a Limb with Long Violent History
The Kentucky-based singer/songwriter urges his fans to empathize with Black Americans on surprise album
As his career in country music has taken off over the past few years, Kentucky-born-and-bred singer/songwriter Tyler Childers has proven to be a bit of a tough nut to crack.
On his two excellent first albums—2017’s Purgatory and 2019’s Country Squire—Childers sings eloquently about drinking and drugs, making music, missing his woman, raising hell and living the hillbilly lifestyle. He’s a top-shelf storyteller, but if you’re looking for lyrics that reveal how he feels about certain issues or current events, you’re out of luck.
Live, Childers is wild-eyed and workmanlike, cranking through songs with his killer band and only occasionally stopping to chit-chat with the audience, or even crack a smile. In interviews, he usually comes off as warm and polite, though not especially forthcoming. He seems already a bit weary of his success and/or his industry of choice. Perhaps he just values his privacy.
All of this is perfectly fine, of course. There is no rule that Childers must express his opinions through song or dance around on stage to prove he’s having fun. His style is his style, and it has worked well for him as he has quickly built a sizable nationwide fanbase of people who connect with his authentic twang, working-class anthems and credible perspective on life in the rural American South.
But even Childers is done playing it close to the vest after the year we’ve had. It’s not immediately obvious on his new album Long Violent History—surprise-released on Sept. 18—but to ensure absolutely no one misses the main point, Childers released a six-minute-long video along with the album to act as an introduction to the work. For clarity’s sake, let’s approach Long Violent History in three parts:
The fiddle tunes: The album begins with a fiddle-driven cover of Stephen Sondheim’s 1973 showtune “Send In The Clowns,” followed by seven fiddle tunes—six traditional, one modern—performed with the skill and certainty of a man who is still learning to play the fiddle, backed by a group of string-bending experts. (Childers has been fiddling for “under a year,” according to an essay on Long Violent History written by old-time music ambassador Dom Flemons). In the video introduction, Childers detailed his original goal for the project (“to make fairly legible sounds on the fiddle”) and the purpose of the eight fiddle tracks: “to create a sonic soundscape for the listener to set the tone to reflect.”
In that respect, he succeeded. “Zollie’s Retreat” is a mournful tune about the death of a Confederate general in battle not far from the border between Kentucky and Tennessee. The sprightly “Squirrel Hunter” is a crystal clear reminder that many old-time Appalachian songs are direct melodic descendants of traditional music from the British Isles. Similarly, the roots of “Camp Chase” extend back to the Civil War and Irish reels, and “Jenny Lynn” is an ancient and irresistible dancefloor banger. If it’s technical wizardry or fiddle innovation you seek, Long Violent History may not be for you. But in terms of setting the scene, Childers’ choice of songs here will drop you right in among the hills and hollers of Eastern Kentucky. Porch pickin’ sessions aren’t supposed to be perfect, anyway.
The protest song: On the album’s final and title track, Childers breaks his silence—literally. The tune starts and ends by referencing Kentucky’s state song, “My Old Kentucky Home.” In between, Childers’ band ambles through a mid-paced, boom-chick-chick waltz as their leader directly addresses the ongoing movement against systemic racism and police brutality toward Black Americans, contextualizing the issues within our world of overwhelming media saturation and increasingly elusive truth. In the song’s second half, he cleverly couches his argument in a way that’s designed to evoke empathy in the listener’s mind, and specifically in the minds of his listeners, most of whom are white, many of whom live in the South, and some in the rural South. In the song’s fourth verse, he reminds those listeners of the way the world often portrays Southerners, and contrasts that with the Black experience in America: