Tyler Childers

“That's what music is supposed to do. It's supposed to help people out.”

“Purgatory is hell, with hope.”

“The more it looks like home, the more I feel like people are understanding my accent.”

“I think that's why Sturgill and I worked so well together. We came from similar backgrounds as far as a sense of place. We were surrounded by the same culture. We listened to a lot of the same music growing up.”

“I'm chasing a feeling more than a sound and I try to reflect that in my turns of phrases. Growing up in church, people would get up and sing, and the conviction reflected in their vocals; I try to carry that in my sound.”

“Born Again' is a love song. It's just these two people - two forms of energy - meeting and losing each other and finding each other again and coming together and being the same thing.”

“I've been writing a lot of road songs. Writing a lot of homesick songs. But once you start playing them out, it all ain't no secret anymore. Everyone knows how you feel.”

“I grew up on 23, country music highway, which is a stretch of road where Ricky Skaggs and Dwight Yoakam and Loretta Lynn played. Driving up and down that on the way to school - to baseball games, to anywhere - you see all these signs commemorating these artists. It was a point of pride for my area growing up.”

“I just liked the Beat poets. It was rapid fire, in the moment.”

“In my opinion, with political and religious views, how can you 110 percent, full-hearted say without a shadow of a doubt say that this is how I feel, and this is where I want to be in my life, if you haven't looked at it any other way than just one angle?”

“A lot of commercial country does speak to people in some way. It's more of a ear worm or a melody that's really catchy. That's something that you certainly want, but it's only one piece of the criteria for a good song.”

“Sometimes you get the pinball machine and sometimes the pinball machine gets you.”

“We've all witnessed violent acts of police brutality happen around the nation that have gone unaddressed.”

“What I consider country music doesn't make it the end all be all, but if you ask me my opinion, that's what you're going to get.”

“I really didn't like anything the way I liked playing music and writing songs.”

“Songwriting is telling short stories. But instead of 15 to 20 pages, it's three to five minutes.”

“I'm a creature of habit.”

“A lot of times, you'll be flipping through country radio and there's just no substance. Like I've said before, it's all about props: Solo cups or whatever. It's not about a dude's work day or someone that lost a good friend or relative. There's nothing to hold onto when you're going through something.”

“If your hobby is playing sports, at the end of it you might get a few concussions.”

“There are different pockets of the rural U.S. and each one of those has their own colour, their own language, the things they're worried about. They're so different.”