Tyler Childers

“The voice that I want to write in is a voice for me and mine and where I grew up.”

“The first thing that comes to your head is probably the only thing you should say. If you have to sit down and spend ten minutes trying to have something genuine, it may not be all that genuine.”

“I've grown up in church and Gospel music was a big thing - and Bluegrass - but I just think of that music my buddies and I listened to growing up in the hills, it was as meshed together as what people now call Americana.”

“My first song was a hardcore knock-off of 'Tangled Up in Blue.' It was based on a story maybe I had heard before. I was 13. The woman died in the end - she was sleeping on the railroad tracks. Pretty edgy, ya know.”

“The problem with country is we've turned the props into the play. Let's not just Solo cup and pickup truck it to death. Let's handle this in a smart way. Nobody is thinking about lyrical content, or how we're moving people, or what's going on in the background of their minds.”

“I've been listening to Stapleton for a long time. He's a hometown guy. I remember when I first heard word of him down there: songwriting and hearing those demos that were used for his publishing house and when he started Steeldrivers.”

“Life is hard enough without being worried about the smallest interaction with a public servant.”

“I hope that I'm doing my people justice and I hope that maybe someone from somewhere else can get a glimpse of the life of a Kentucky boy.”

“Long Violent History' is a collection of instrumental pieces intended to create a sonic soundscape for the listener to set the tone to reflect on the last track, which is my own observational piece on the times we are in.”

“Where I grew up, I feel lucky to have been from there. The culture in general is rooted with a strong sense of family; of kin; of place, geographically; of tradition. There's a resilience, a strong will to make it. I mean, heck, it was settled by a bunch of outcasts that didn't fit in.”

“I remember there were two tapes that my papa had in his truck at all times when I was younger. It was a Ralph Stanley gospel cassette and the 'Hee Haw' gospel album.”

“A writer can write an essay, but the writer can never control how that essay is interpreted by the reader.”