Tyler Childers taps into the dark side on Purgatory by Robert Dean
After years in the shadows, Tyler Childers is finally emerging. On his official debut record, Purgatory, Childers is ready to step out and into the sunlight, and boy, is he gonna need a pair of shades. In contrast to that bright light of likely success, he's bringing along with him a deep look into the darkness of life.
One thing Tyler Childers is not is your typical country singer. Even at just 26, he’s already a battle-tested road warrior, having logged a lot of miles and while out there, tallied up many sins. Tyler Childers isn’t banking his career on wack songs about trucks and little shorts. Instead, he’s logged down his transgressions, his adventures, and gives them out as cautionary tales via the tracks on Purgatory. When you’re writing about long nights, casual cocaine use, or swallowing a handful of pills, that ain’t the stuff Jason Aldean is singing about. It takes bravado to confront those topics and sing them with mastery. That’s the difference between the songwriters who get out and live, their songs carry weight because they’re genuine, not some crap that a songwriter in an office dreamt up.
While all of the playboys in tight muscle tees and cowboy hats pack the arenas on the message of their bullshit persona a few suits crafted, guys like Tyler Childers live what they dream about. You can buy an “outlaw” branded tee shirt, but until you write some songs about being whacked outta your mind on the shit and ripping down some back road in intimate detail, brother you’re just posing.
Childers is cut from the same cloth as artists like Bruce Springsteen and Jason Isbell; and despite his spacey eyed producer Sturgill Simpson being an influence, the two artists aren’t similar in sound, only in honesty and spirit. Don’t let the album credits fool you. Tyler Childers is his own man.
Purgatory is an incredible welcome to the world for Tyler Childers because under Simpson’s watchful eye, the songs they’ve collected feel like a testament to the hard life, but one that’s not met with dire pessimism, but instead with baring down and letting the knuckles get white.
"Feathered Indians" is a big-hearted, open-armed love song that doesn’t feel dismissive to the rest of Childers’ tracks because of the raw honesty that’s laced throughout the narrative. Directly following the joy of that previous track, "Tattoos" feels like the aftermath of that love taking a swan dive …and without much grace. Right there, plainly and simply, shows what Tyler Childers is capable of as a tactician of the human experience: he’s managed to draw you in with a romantic escapade of close encounters of a belt buckle pressing against a thigh, following it with a whispered dirge, calling back to when times were good.
The main thread that runs through Purgatory is its sheer authenticity. There’s no doubting the songs come from a real place, or that they at least were constructed through the haze of hard living, always with a strong sense of storytelling. Either way, real or make believe, the stories that Tyler Childers tells on Purgatory aren’t far-fetched concepts, but looks into the all too familiar hard lives in a small town.
To say that Tyler Childers taps into the past, and the darker side of country music, is understatement – this is a continuation of the dark masters, and Tyler Childers has surely been welcomed into the family.
You think this next text message can be a point of leverage.
“Fine. But I get 30 minutes.”
Tyler Childers’ publicist, frantically shuffling timelines
all morning and into lunch, is profusely apologetic after the third (or was it
fourth?) shift.
“Ugh! I wish I had 30 min. But he has something right at
3:00, so the best I can do is 2:30 to 2:55…I’m so sorry. Seriously. Is that
ok?” The lady is a first-rate pro, earning every bit of her keep from one of
the Gold Standard music-publicity firms. Which, in turn, is evidence that Tyler
Childers is springing from relative obscurity to the next big freaking deal in a short period of time; these folks
rep the A-listers. So what’s with this guy?
The album does a lot of things early: Grabs your attention
with the tagline of a Baptist hymn, then ticks off a checklist of lies borne of
infidelity, all on the opening cut. Poignant lines about the impressions a
feathered-Indian belt buckle makes on a lover’s thigh. And later: hopeful,
helpless, thoughtful, and crushingly resigned reflections of an Appalachian
existence summed up in last
year’s best nonfiction book.
And like that, you’re done. Hooked. A captive of the record
of the year. We’re calling this fight. The guy’s 26. You really can’t
appreciate the “bigness of the deal” until you’ve run through the record – out
on Friday – several times.
But wait. 2:30 p.m. and our 25 (under protest)
minutes are nigh.
Dang. Note to self: Tyler didn’t answer, and I leave a
polite message. He calls back 5 minutes (OUR FIVE MINUTES) later. Oddly, it wasn’t
a media call that (like the rest of them) ran long.
“Man, I’m sorry,” Childers explains. “I’m going to England
next week and need a certain guitar. So I’ve been doing some horse-trading.
What you wanna talk about?”
Well, lots. But we
ain’t got but a minute.
The guy’s a little tired. Well, a lot, maybe. At one point
he pauses in the middle of a sentence and says “Wait. What day is today?
Tuesday.
“Yeah,” he says. “Caroline Spence, who played with us the
last two nights at Eddie’s…”
Here, you get ill, with a swimmy head. Eddie’s Attic. He
played in Atlanta the two nights before you’re flinging sharp elbows at
imaginary writing rivals for a bit of time. The room spins. Ugh.
The drummer on Purgatory, Miles Miller, introduced you
to Sturgill Simpson. I’m interested in how that came about. Was it an
oh-by-the-way thing, “How’d you like to meet Sturgill Simpson?”
About a year and a half ago I was opening for Caroline
Spence and Miles was at one of the shows. He came up and introduced himself and
it got to where we’d hang out whenever he came back to Kentucky. And he showed
some of my stuff to Sturgill and talked him into coming out to a show I was
playing at the Basement East. He made the introduction, and that’s about it.
If Sturgill Simpson
shows up at your gig…is that maybe a source of nerves?
There was definitely a feeling of “Holy s**t, Sturgill
Simpson’s at my show.” But to be honest, I had also said, “Holy s**t, there’s
Miles Miller at my show.” I get nervous playing in front of people of a high
musical caliber. But I dealt with it.
Purgatory is being called your debut album, but you released Bottles and Bibles six years ago. How
long have you been making music in your 26 years?
I mean…I’ve just been playing in one form or another for… well,
a long time, you know? I started out in high school playing for free beer. Then
I graduated and started playing for money on the side. And free beer. And now
I’m to the point of playing for my job, my income. And that’s a pretty cool
thing to be able to do: making a living at something you enjoy doing.
Some of the cuts on Purgatory have been floating around out
there on EPs – there’s a stripped-down version of “White House Road” I almost
wish Sturgill had left alone. Of
the songs on this album, how many of them were essentially ready to record, and
how many of them did you write before going into the studio?
I had ‘em all when I walked in, and a lot of them I had been
playing out for a while. I think there was one – “I Swear to God” – I was
halfway through that song when we sat down to talk about recording. And it was
pretty much done by the time we went into the studio. But the majority of these
songs I had been traveling and touring and singing for a good while. “Feathered
Indians,” I had written it not long after Red
Barn I was recorded, but it’s been ready to be on something for a long
time.
What would you be
doing for a living if you weren’t making music?
The last day job I had, I was workin’ for rent, building
fences on a farm this older couple had in Lewisburg [West Virginia], and I was also
working at a brewery washing kegs, just to have some side money on top of the
little bit I was makin’ playin’. Before that, I was de-nailin’. And easy job to
get days off from, ‘cause I could say “I’m gonna de-nail for three days and go
play four.” But if I wasn’t playin’ music, I’d probably be…layin’ floors or
something else carpentry-wise. Framing houses…some kind of manual labor.
Several of these
songs have a real antihero vibe to them. And you’re not bashful about addressing the opioid crisis
ravaging the country – and your neck of the woods in particular. When it comes
to corn liquor, snorting pills, and riding the roads, do you speak from a
little bit of experience?
Do I speak from a little bit of experience? Well, yeah, you
know…
Let’s go at it this way:
the song “White House Road.” Is that song borne of observation, experience or a
little bit of both?
It’s both. I mean, there are parts of me inside of all my
songs. But there’s parts of people I’ve hung around in those those songs, too.
Like in “White House.” I wasn’t gonna be found… “Hey, Tyler’s up on White
House.” But plenty of people I knew were. A party’s a party wherever it’s at.
I kinda want to
follow up about that song.As I
hear it, and knowing you’re on the cusp of taking things to the next level, one
could envision that one becoming your signature show-closer, kind of a party
anthem. I don’t think that’s
necessarily what you’re going for; were you just making an observation, free of
any value judgment, about life in Lawrence County?
Well, it’s an observation, sure. And even at the end of the
song, the character’s looking at his future “in the cold hard clay,” he
realizes that the way he’s chosen to live means death’s not a whole lot farther
away.But it seems a lot of people
don’t take that line into account, so it has kinda become a party anthem. And
we’ve been closing out the show with that one for like four years. And if
that’s what somebody wants to take out of it, then that’s their prerogative.
But it’s one of those songs that in a different time in your life, you can get
something from.
A lot of the songs I grew up listening to – like Truckers’
songs – those were my party anthems. We’re
gonna get s**t house wasted and listen to Truckers’ songs! And the older I
get…
…the Drive By
Truckers, you mean?
Yeah. You grow up and you think what you’re singing along to,
and you start thinking, “There are some pretty dark characters in those
Truckers’ songs.”
Give us a thumbnail
biography. What kind of family did you grow up in, and what about your early
life and upbringing inform your songwriting?What was your life in Eastern Kentucky like?
I grew up in Lawrence County, Kentucky and my dad worked in
some form or fashion in the coal industry. He started out on a backhoe for Kentucky
May, then it went under and then kinda had a job fall into his lap as a
purchasing agent for Miller Bros. Coal. He worked hard and was persistent and
showed up. He did that and my mom was a nurse for the health department in
Johnson County.I had a good
raisin’. They busted their ass to make sure my sister and I were taken care of.
Did a lot of huntin.’ Went to church with my parents and
grandparents. Listened to a lot of old men on the front steps jawin’. Listened
to a lot of yarns spun by old timers in front of a wood stove in a coon
[hunting] club and a barbershop. People around here have their own way of
sayin’ things, and I’ve always had an ear for it I guess. Somebody would say
somethin’ and I’d think, “That ought to be a song,” know what I mean?
Yeah. “Get me higher
than a grocery bill” is one of those lines. That is a poignant, well-spun,
local line.And on that, there are
spiritual themes sprinkled all over this record. “Born Again.” The title cut, with the mythical, Eastern
Kentucky Catholic girl. And I think I hear the tag line for “Just As I Am” in
the intro to “I Swear.” How big a part of your life was faith growing up, and
today?
Yeah, that is the tag from “Just As I Am.” Growing up in a
Freewill Baptist family, -- I don’t know how they do it in other faiths – but
that was the invitation at the end of the service…
…all six verses, then
over and over, till somebody came down the aisle…
…yeah, man. So I just had that phrase in my head, as being
the invitation to, well, this album. Everything that happens after you leave on
Sunday. Or however you want to take it; I don’t know.
I’d like to circle
back for a minute.You’re 26, and
you’ve got Sturgill Simpson – arguably the biggest voice in authentic country
music – producing your record. It would be really easy for a fella to let that
go to his head. Was there an “Oh, wow” moment when that came together? How do
you keep yourself grounded in a situation like that?
Lady May! Any time I get a big head, she lets me know where
I stand. Everybody has their own way of being accountable, whether it’s the
congregation, or just waking up one day and deciding it’s time to have some
self-respect. Or sometimes you luck into finding a damn good woman. Like I
did.
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Purgatory is
available Friday on Amazon , iTunes, and other usual outlets.
