Tyler Childers is a singular country artist.
On the one hand, the Kentucky singer and bandleader who sold out the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion in Camden on his On the Road tour in Wednesday is country to the core. He is the son of a coal miner, and his music is steeped in traditional styles like bluegrass and honky tonk.
But, along with his band, the Food Stamps, he also has a subversive taste for distortion and an affection for flat-out rock n’ roll.
There’s a wildcat twang in his voice, shot through with regional pride that’s as pronounced as ever on his strange and satisfying Rick Rubin-produced album Snipe Hunter. Its cover is a painting depicting Childers at rest in a hunting club, turkey leg in hand and trusty hound at his feet.
But Childers doesn’t hew to hillbilly stereotypes or pander with pickup truck cliches. He peoples his songs with fully human God-fearing characters who might react to finding themselves in desperate situations in irrational ways, but are always grounded in working class reality.
“Getting me drinking that moonshine,” he sang on the joyriding “Whitehouse Road,” a song from his 2017 breakout album Purgatory about drug and alcohol abuse in his native Appalachia. “Get me higher than a grocery bill.”
Childers loves to challenge his audience. And as he has, it’s continued to grow. Last fall, he played the Mann Center, with a capacity of 14,000. This year, that room couldn’t hold him, and he moved across the Delaware to Camden, where the amphitheater holds 25,000.
In 2020, he expressed solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement with “Long Violent History,” in which he implored his white audience to empathize with Black Americans dealing with racism on a daily basis. “Could you imagine, just constantly worrying, kickin’ and fightin’, begging to breathe?”
Love songs are a Childers specialty. “In Your Love,” the heartbreaker from 2023’s Rustin’ In The Rain, that came with a video that depicts a romance between two gay coal miners, was left off the set list on Wednesday. But there were plenty of other opportunities for the trucker cap and cowboy boots crowd to hug their honeys.
On “Oneida,” from Snipe Hunter, Childers sang in the voice of an earnest young suitor to an older woman he hopes will take him seriously, even though he’s not old enough to buy her a bottle of wine.
And on “All Your’n,” he sang “I’ll love you till my lungs give out, I ain’t lyin’/ I’m all your’n, your all mine.”
Everyone sang along.
Along with being on a journey of self-discovery and spiritual fulfillment, Childers — who co-founded Healing Appalachia, “the largest recovery based music festival,” which he headlined in Ashland, Ky. last weekend — is a funny guy.
My current favorite Snipe Hunter song is “Bitin’ List,” which Childers dedicated to “everyone you can’t stand” on Wednesday.
The hard driving stomp is directed at the singer’s worst enemy. “To put it plain I just don’t like you, not a thing about the way you is,” he sang. “And if there were ever a time that I got rabies, you’re high on my bitin’ list.”
That’s funny, as were the animated visuals created by the Olivia Besky Design team that made this show much more fancy looking than when Childers played the Boot & Saddle in South Philly in 2017.
For “Bitin’ List,” the video screen showed six cartoon spiked-collar dogs whose fur matched the color of Childers hair looking like they were ready to bite his head off.
But as amusing as “Bitin’ List” is, it’s not all fun and games. In his intro, he preached: “Hate is a thing that will poison your veins. Hate is a crazy chemical, inside of your heart, killing you slowly.” It’s best to release it, “so that’s what I did: I wrote this song.”
Childers has ditched his former beard and wild mane, and sports a clean cut look. Together with the cardigan and striped pants he wore Wednesday, he looked like a redheaded Mister Rodgers.
But don’t be fooled. The 34 year old singer-guitarist still has a glint in his eye, and multi-instrumentalist Food Stamps band members like Matt Rowland, Jesse Wells, and James Barker brought his unvarnished sound to life with fiddle, banjo, accordion, and pedal steel.
Midway though the show, Childers disappeared and then materialized at the back of the seated area under the Pavilion roof, and played with his back to the expensive seats, instead delighting those assembled on the packed lawn on a drizzly night.
They got special treatment in a three-song set that included an acoustic trio version of “Nose on the Grindstone,” a harrowing blues that’s been a live fan favorite for years and appears on Snipe Hunter.
“I remember your words, Lord, they bring me to chills,” he sang in lyrics directed to his father. “Keep your nose on the grindstone, and out of the pills.”
Childers’ songs are restless and filled with native curiosity. And sometimes, are just plain goofy, as with “Down Under,” an ode to Australia with boxing kangaroos and cute disease carrying koalas.
More serious about spiritual inquiry is “Tirtha Yatra,” in which he calls himself a “cousin-lovin’ clubfoot somethin’ somethin’ backwood searcher” and is about how reading the Bhagavad Gita “taught me all about Dharma, the thing I ought to do.”
Childers did not perform that song in Camden, but he did invite SOMA, the New Jersey band of musicians that plays traditional Indian kirtan call-and-response music and whose acronym name stands for Sacred Order of Mystics Apogees to be his opening act.
The quintet — which includes members of the hard-rock band Monster Magnet — sat cross legged in the lotus position chanting and playing hand drums, playing songs from their new album Your Soul Is A Holy Sound, which was recorded in a church in Asbury Park.
SOMA was followed by Medium Build, the songwriting project of Alaska-born Nashville-based songwriter Nicholas Carpenter. He intrigued with his mix of R&B, emo and country, and told of his father taking him to see Phil Collins at the Camden amphitheater when he was a boy, many naming rights ago.
Carpenter also thanked Childers for selecting him as an opening act. “I love Tyler,” he said Wednesday. “And I’m so glad he didn’t get Raptured yesterday.” Same.