The Americana Music Association emerging Artists

Tyler Childers was born and raised in Lawrence County, Kentucky. He then moved from Lawrence Co, KY, to Paintsville, KY, and attended high school there. Notably, this is the same town as fellow country music icons Chris Stapleton and Loretta Lynn (Van Lear, KY). His father worked in the coal industry, and his mother was a nurse. He learned singing in church, where he sang in the church choir. He started to play guitar and write songs when he was around 13. He moved to Paintsville, Kentucky, where he attended Paintsville High School and graduated in 2009. He studied for a semester at Western Kentucky University and enrolled at Bluegrass Community and Technical College for a few semesters.

Childers began performing in Lexington, Kentucky, and Huntington, West Virginia. In 2011, when he was 19, Childers released his first album, Bottles, And Bibles. He has also released two EPs recorded at Red Barn Radio, a radio show from Lexington.

He had his first success with Purgatory, an album released on August 4, 2017. The album was produced by Sturgill Simpson and David Ferguson and recorded at The Butcher Shoppe in Nashville. Simpson also played guitar and sang backing vocals on the album, with Miles Miller on drums, Stuart Duncan on fiddle, and Russ Paul on other instruments. It debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Heatseekers Albums chart, No. 17 on the Country albums chart, and No. 4 on the Americana/Folk albums chart.

Real music rises above the Corporate music machine, like a Narwhal out of the deep and frigid Arctic Sea-here on Durham Cool.  No premium is sufficient to reward musicians like Tyler Childers.  A voice like his must be heard, and it stands to good reason he made it to the critic’s top Itunes tracks.