Top 33 Tyler Childers Quotes

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.

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.

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.

In the midst of our own daily struggles, it’s often hard to share an understanding for what another person might be going through.

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.

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?

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.

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

We can stop being so taken aback by Black Lives Matter. If we didn’t need to be reminded, there would be justice for Breonna Taylor, a Kentuckian like me, and countless others.

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 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.

Maybe I can bring my own perspective and connect with people from my home area by giving them my two cents of a different angle.

Songwriting is writing about the human experience.

I listened to a lot of Ricky Skaggs’ Country stuff.

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.

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.

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.

Love each other, no exceptions.

Covid has been a strain on all of us in some form or fashion.

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.

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.

I was always writing on something: short stories and journal entries of what had happened that day, always thinking about something to write down.

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

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.

I don’t sit down and say, ‘Today I will write a song.’ I know a lot of people that do that, but if I’m not in the mood, what’s the point of beating my head against the wall?

I admire John Prine and his way with words.

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.

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.

We just played whatever we could get ahold of. If we were at a party and we had a banjo, a mandolin and guitar or 10 guitars, that’s what we played that night.

I was pretty partial to Kerouac and I also liked Flannery O’Connor and the Southern Gothic writing and local writers, like Jesse Stewart. They became an inspiration for how I wanted my writing voice to be.

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 really didn’t like anything the way I liked playing music and writing songs.

Purgatory is hell, with hope.