Tyler Childers
Location: OVO Hydro
Tyler Childers bluegrass, honky-tonk and neotraditional country is a gritty modern update on this classic style. Coming to Glasgow’s OVO Hydro on 6th March 2026.
Appalachian storytelling is raw, rich and unfiltered in the deft hands of Tyler Childers, whose vivid tales of life on the road, miners and moonshine are steeped in country lore – and come straight from the beating heart of Kentucky.
A preacher who’s drinking after his love walked out the door. A drug-prone son unable to catch a break and follow in the footsteps of his coal miner father. Escapist nights in barrooms. Drinking moonshine and getting “higher than the grocery bill” on cocaine.
Born in Lawrence County, Kentucky in the creative crossroads of the Appalachian coal country and US 23, the ‘Country Music Highway’, Tyler Childers released Bottles and Bibles in 2011, setting the stage in stripped-back opener ‘Hard Times’: “Whoever said you could raise you a family / Just a’workin’ your ass off knee deep in coal?” Childers was with one foot out of his teens, but it was crystal clear, “Hell’s probably better than tryin’ to get by.”
The singer-songwriter’s breakthrough, though, came a little later: 2017’s country classic Purgatory was recorded in Nashville but, tellingly, boasted the outline of Lawrence County on the front cover. Produced by outlaw country maven Sturgill Simpson and David Ferguson, the sound engineer in Johny Cash’s American Recordings, it’s a sheer celebration of Appalachian fiddle-and-banjo-inflected storytelling, bluegrass and honky-tonk-fuelled adventures inspired by the time when Childers left his family home, getting into trouble and seeking direction: “Purgatory is hell, with hope. You have a fighting chance,” he said in a Rolling Stone interview as he steadily climbed the Billboard charts and made several end-of-year lists. Childers was the voice of country’s future, firmly rooted in Eastern Kentucky traditions. And fans far and wide listened.
Country Squire
Country Squire followed in the same vein in 2019 and dominated Billboard’s Top Country Albums, with blues-rock-hued love song ‘All Your’n’ earning the singer a Grammy nod for Best Solo Country Performance. The fiddle-driven Long Violent History (2020) culminates in the heartfelt bluegrass title track, which discusses racism and civil unrest powered by the Black Lives Matter movement. Next, three-disc opus Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven? (2022) saw Childers explore ideas of faith and the afterlife over country and gospel, with soul and Dixieland touches. Just a year later came Rustin’ in the Rain, juggling varied strains of country.
The album included the gorgeous, Grammy-nominated piano ballad ‘In Your Love’ that sparked Childers’s most controversial moment to date – a video capturing the love story of two gay male coal miners in 1950s Kentucky. As many times before, the songsmith had firmly placed himself as a force out to explore the full spectrum of the genre, daringly broadening its potential – and appeal.
One by one, these steadfast creative steps laid the groundwork for the Childers of Snipe Hunter, his 2025 collaboration with producer Rick Rubin, whose genre-spanning resume included Run-DMC, Ed Sheeran and Metallica. Together, they crafted a record weaving themes from Hinduism to opioid addiction in Appalachia with local folk, ragtime, gospel and psychedelic diversions. The album affirmed a genuine anticipation in where the songsmith is going to take country next, and in how many shades his Appalachian legacy is truly capable of manifesting itself.
