He got his start playing local clubs in Huntington. Today Tyler Childers is a Grammy-nominated artist who some call the new voice of Appalachia.
By Jean Hardiman
HQ 109 | SPRING 2020
Patrick Guthrie remembers the first time Tyler Childers walked through the door of the V Club. “It was open mic night,” recalled Guthrie, owner of the popular Huntington club and several local restaurants. “He was clean-cut, wearing a polo shirt. I think he was 18. The first time I heard him I thought, ‘Holy cow!’ I knew right away he was special.”
Childers started showing up every Wednesday for open mic night — and making an impression.
“He had that writing ability,” Guthrie said. “Eventually, we started putting him in shows, opening up for other performers, and he built a Huntington following. He had die-hard fans at the time, and we’ve just been watching that build.”
And build. And build.
Today, Childers has sold out some of the most prestigious music venues in the nation. His most recent album, Country Squire, topped Billboard charts, and his song All Your’n was nominated for a Grammy for “Best Solo Country Performance.”
All this for a 28-year-old who grew up singing in church in nearby Lawrence County, Kentucky, learning guitar, writing songs and fighting odds. His dad worked in the coal industry, his mother as a nurse. As recently as about five years ago, he was living with his new wife, fellow musician Senora May, in a used camper with the words “Country Squire” written on an awning. The words inspired the title of his latest album, which follows his breakthrough album Purgatory, featuring the outline of his home county on the cover.
Childers’ music has fallen in the category of “country,” but is grittier and paints a clearer socioeconomic picture than what many other artists in that category release. His sound pays tribute to the classic country and bluegrass that he grew up hearing. But his lyrics — which sound like people talk — have a current edge. They’re both a time capsule for his own generation and older truths about life — in Appalachia or pretty much anywhere. His music talks about hard work, about loving his wife, about coal, pills, fishing, the Lord and the land.
“He’s a storyteller, and he has this raucous side to him,” Guthrie said. “Where country music has gone — it’s poppy. His music is edgy. A lot of people relate to his music because it’s raw.”
Childers has also garnered a great deal of attention on the national level. In 2018 an article in Rolling Stone magazine carried a headline that read, “How Songwriter Tyler Childers Became the 21st Century Voice of Appalachia.” His music was compared favorably to that of country folk singer-songwriter John Prine, who passed away in April.
“Childers’ sound — a fusion of folk, bluegrass and country with a raw, emotionally gripping tinge that’s halfway between a confession and a holler — is born of his life growing up in East Kentucky, a place rich with forgotten stories and people just trying to do the best they can,” the article stated. “It was a childhood that now enables him as a songwriter to not glamorize Appalachia, but to capture the beauty in its flaws: the bond between families generations thick; the calloused skin of hard days and harder pasts; the black dust of coal and the white dust of cocaine.”
Childers told the magazine he originally wanted to be a journalist or English teacher, but that all changed after his grandfather bought him his first guitar. He also said a segment on the ABC News magazine 20/20 about Appalachia left a clear impression on him at an early age.
“They took all the worst stereotypes and exploited them for show,” he told the Rolling Stone writer. “I’ve always kept that in mind. There is a lot of tragedy, if you want to look at it that way, but there is hope. There is a sense of family, and a sense of looking out for your own.”
His music has also earned the respect of his peers.
“Tyler Childers is one hell of a songwriter,” said Margo Price, a country singer-songwriter who was nominated for “Best New Artist” at the 61st Grammy Awards. “He’s a down-to-earth dude who doesn’t care about anything but writing well-crafted, honest songs. The world needs more musicians like him.”
Country music is worth fighting for, Childers said in an interview last year with GQ magazine.
“It’s a big part of my identity,” he told GQ. “I grew up with it. I grew up on 23, Country Music Highway, which is a stretch of road where Ricky Skaggs and Dwight Yoakam and Loretta Lynn played. To be able to be part of that community — not only because of my birthplace — as an artist, is special.”
Childers takes Appalachia’s story to the world. His lyrics are thoughtful and provocative. “Hell’s probably better than trying to get by,” he asserts on Hard Times. “Get me higher than the grocery bill,” he pleads on Whitehouse Road.
“I’m doing what I’m doing and it just so happens that it speaks to the people from my area,” Childers said in his interview with GQ. “That’s where I still live. That’s where I get my inspiration from. The goal of a writer in any situation, be it songs or novels, is to speak to the people in the setting they write about. It means a lot that people take to my music and are touched by it.”
“He’s really singing about our people and their plight,” said Huntington’s Joe Murphy, who is president and CEO of Murphy Media and has watched Childers’ career explode. “He’s talking about the opioid crisis, about hard work — things you can relate to in Appalachia, but people all over connect to it. People in this day and age are looking for something to connect to. I know a fishing captain in Alaska who said Tyler is his favorite singer.”
Melissa Stilwell, who grew up in Barboursville, is a fan and a friend. She met Tyler for the first time after seeing him and his wife perform together for W.B. Walker’s Old Soul Radio Show podcast in 2016. The show is based in Dingess, West Virginia.
“His wife and I became fast friends, and I’ve followed their journey ever since,” said Stilwell, a recreational therapist at the Hershel Woody Williams VA Medical Center in Huntington. “It’s been so beautiful watching their rise upward. For those of us who followed him early, it’s no surprise what he has done. His music is infectious, relatable, original, refreshing and spiritual.”
Watching music venues sell out around the country suggests that there are people everywhere who feel the same way as the many fans Childers has here in Huntington and in his home state of Kentucky.
Childers’ band, The Food Stamps, is made up of Huntington-area musicians including Craig Burletic on bass, Chase Lewis on keyboard, Rod Elkins on drums, James Barker on pedal steel guitar and Jesse Wells on fiddle. His manager is Ian Thornton of Huntington-based Whizzbang Booking and Management.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re in the music scene, you know these guys,” Murphy said of the band. “One of them either played at your sister’s wedding or taught you music lessons at Route 60 Music.”
Some of the band members studied music at Marshall University, and some teach music locally. They’ve performed at the Huntington Music and Arts Festival and all over the area. Watching their sound take shape locally and then move on to stages as big as the Grand Ole Opry and Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado and on TV on shows like The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon is mind blowing. They’ve shared a stage with Willie Nelson. They’ve shared a stage with Ricky Skaggs. The list goes on.
Guthrie recalled the first time he heard Childers play with the group that would become The Food Stamps.
“A lot of his singer-songwriter stuff came to life with that band,” he said. “It just grew and grew. New Year’s Eve 2015 was his first sellout show. A year later tickets to his show were gone in 10 minutes.”
It doesn’t mean that success came easily, though, Stilwell said.
“He’s worked very hard, and nothing was handed to him along the way,” she said. “He went out and put in the miles and worked for it. It’s hard not to root for someone with a work ethic and drive that matches your Appalachian papaw’s.
“He and his manager, Ian, have trailblazed a path for the hoards of other talented artists from this region to follow,” Stilwell explained. “It’s been wonderful watching his fan base grow to what it is today. It’s very surreal. I can speak for a lot of people when I say that we could not be prouder of him and his team. I feel privileged to have been a witness to a small part of it.”
Joe Murphy agreed.
“There’s not a person in Huntington who saw Tyler and his band who didn’t think this was going to happen,” Murphy said. “It was just a matter of time. Watching that journey has been amazing.”
Murphy and Guthrie both went to Colorado to see Childers and The Food Stamps play at Red Rocks, one of the premier music venues in the nation. They’ll never forget it.
“Here’s a guy who started out at open mic night in Huntington that is now selling out Red Rocks,” Guthrie said. “That’s pretty amazing.”
