Tyler Childers rewards sold-out Starlight crowd with a dense 25-song set

Tyler Childers. // photo by Tyler Schneider

Kansas City fans had paid, on average, just short of $500 per ticket to see Kentucky star Tyler Childers play a sold-out show at Starlight on Thursday, June 15, in a trend that has become the norm at almost every stop on his latest “Send in the Hounds Tour.” 

The 31-year-old and his longtime six-piece backing band, The Food Stamps, in turn, did not disappoint as they dished out a polished 25-song setlist packed with all the zest, grit, and showmanship that has popularized Childers as a staple of today’s “neoclassical” country, bluegrass, and folk genre.

All in all, Childers would play seven of the 10 tracks off of his 2017 breakthrough album, Purgatory. He added six more from his fifth studio album (and the namesake of this tour), Can I Take My Hounds To Heaven, released last September, plus six total covers and four tracks from 2019’s Country Squire, among a few other scattered singles.

Emerging, finally—following a quick-and-soulful six-song opening set from the 27-year-old South Carolinian, Marcus King—was Childers himself standing alone beside an old tube TV playing looped footage, surrounded by vintage lamps, furniture, and other bits of plundered small-town antique gems.

Tyler Childers. // photo by Tyler Schneider

Childers had only his high-strapped black acoustic guitar and familiar drawl to ignite the crowd with his opener, “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” a cover of a 1949 single by Hank Williams With His Drifting Cowboys. The combo was, not surprisingly, more than enough to handle the job.

He continued into “Nose on the Grindstone”—one of the many Sturgill Simpson-produced gems in Childers’ discography hailing from 2017’s OurVinyl Sessions—which spins a harrowing tale of addiction in Eastern Kentucky, where Childers grew up as the son of a coal miner. 

“Now keep in mind that a man’s just as good as his word / It takes twice as long to build bridges you’ve burnt / And there’s hurt you can cause time alone cannot heal / Keep your nose on the grindstone and out of the pills,” Childers’ narrator howled in the song’s most confessional moment.

It’s also especially powerful to see Childers—sober since 2020—once again playing his somber, whiskey-laden hits of the past in conjunction with his newest works and everything in between. It had been some time since he had played anything reminiscent of his more rebellious, substance-laced days. 

Sipping tea with his shirt buttoned all the way up, Childers seemed to have been through something personally transformative. 

Childers stayed without backing and strummed into “Lady May,” the first track off his aforementioned breakout, Purgatory. This got people singing along, surprised to have seen one of his most popular hits in the three-slot. 

“Follow You To Virgie,” a heartfelt tribute to the death of a childhood matriarch and the subsequent reunion that follows (also off that OurVinyl Sessions release), is one of my favorite Childers songs and fit perfectly as the last of Tyler’s strictly solo performances on the night. 

The Food Stamps assembled as the group burst into one of Childers’ most established hits, Purgatory’s “Whitehouse Road,” in which bouncing strings lead into an earworm chorus that nearly everyone seemed to know all the words to: “Get me drinkin’ that moonshine / Get me higher than the grocery bill / Take my troubles to the highwall/ Throw’ em in the river and get your fill / We’ve been sniffing that cocaine / Ain’t nothin’ better when the wind cuts cold / Lord it’s a mighty hard livin’ / But a damn good feelin’ to run these roads…”

“Whitehouse Road” contains Childers’ hardest-hitting hook and is a lot of fun even despite the self-destructive behavior that begat its creation. It was truly encouraging to know he is at a place in his sobriety where he can play it again for fans, and it was very audibly appreciated.

Childers and the Stamps then rolled into the organ and finger-plucked bass-laden intro of another Hank Williams cover in “Old Country Church,” which the headliner had featured on his latest album in a split track that led right into “Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?” They followed that same formula live, with the latter song coming in with a twangy, funk-ish accent that switched up the tone just enough to keep the energy fresh.

Next up was “Rock Salt & Nails,” a Utah Phillips cover and frighteningly bitter love song written in 1961, which has been a staple of Childers’ live work for a while now. Phillips wrote the song while drunk and never played it live, but his effort of deep emotion paved the way to a fantastic version that Childers makes all his own.

“Angel Band (Hallelujah version)” followed and serves as yet another solid counterpoint to those who may have thoughts that the Bluegrass State crooner’s latest work couldn’t deliver the old Tyler charm.

“Tattoos,” another of Purgatory’s fiddle-fused and haunting harrows of heartbreak, came as yet another testament to the sheer depth of that album. In it, Childers chimed somberly amidst gentle fiddle and quarter-plucks on the bass, lamenting a lost love. 

“I am now her ‘used to be. He is now the one she needs,” he sang with an achy warble to a slow-shuffling audience. As the song picked up, Tyler offered the line that many mouthed with him, “Whiskey kills all things in time,” just before he reeled in the somber yet sonically potent hook: “The past is fadin’ / over time / but it’s still hanging on for life.”

“All Your’n,” a top-three Childers recording and hip-swaying roadside love ballad hailing from the 2019 album, Country Squire, was another obvious favorite. The crowd again echoed each word of the signature line—“So I’ll love ya ’til my lungs give out / I ain’t lying / I’m all your’n, and you’re all mine.”

Tyler Childers. // photo by Tyler Schneider

Opening on more fiddle and banjo twangs, “Purgatory” came next, followed by Childers’ and The Food Stamps’ take on the popular Appalachian fiddler tune “Cluck Ol Hen,” complete with a preface that featured chicken clucking and rooster calls. 

The band then went into another new piece in “Two Coats” before returning to “Country Squire,” a 2019 single that has Childers singing about turning “songs into two-by-fours” as he takes on the identity of a middling musician looking to shelter himself and his wife in a Squire camper: “Dreamin’ ’bout the day that I sit by the fire / huddled with my honey in our Country Squire,” he rasped ahead of a bangin’ fiddle-solo stretches the third act of the song.

“Tom Turkey,” a cover of the Charley Crockett song (an artist whose show I covered for The Pitch last fall), offered a timely switch-of-pace and an appreciative nod to Childers’ frequent touring partner. The set continued on with “I Swear (to God) and “Honky Tonk Flame,” both from Purgatory, “Way of the Triune God,” from Hounds to Heaven, and Country Squire’s “Peace of Mind.”  

“House Fire,” the third and final track from Country Squire, with a kickin’ riff that bled into more classic Tyler warbling, drew massive applause that continues into the introduction of “Tulsa Turnaround,” a Kenny Rogers & The First Edition cover.

“Universal Sound,” from Purgatory, was a pleasant ode to an intentional moment of peace, a release from all that aches and ails the riddled mind. Childers will often play this last, or close to it, and it’s worth that billing as it sounds fantastic onstage as some fans begin to trickle out.

But Childers had a few more up his sleeve in the Hounds track “Heart You’ve Been Tendin’” and closer “Sour Mash,” a Cory Branan cover. 

It’s notable that Childers did not include a single song from his 2020 album, Long Violent History. Nor did he play two of my favorites and among his most confessional in “Creeker” and “Shake the Frost,” in addition to his breakout radio-friendly hit, “Feathered Indians.”

With all that said, as someone who had initially become a fan of Childers via the suggestion of an old flame many years back, I have been following his unfolding career on my own ever since, appreciating his ability to spin a lived-in, more introspective brand of country music tale. 

If you happen to be one of those people who “like everything but country,” Childers still may not be the one to change your mind—though he certainly has just as good a shot at it as any of his top-tier contemporaries. Either way, it doesn’t look like his ticket sales will be slowing down any time soon.

Tyler Childers. // photo by Tyler Schneider

Setlist

Acoustic
I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry (Hank Williams With His Drifting Cowboys cover)
Nose on the Grindstone
Lady May
Follow You to Virgie

Full Band
Whitehouse Road
Old Country Church (Hank Williams cover)
Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?
Rock Salt & Nails (Utah Phillips cover)
Angel Band
Tattoos
All Your’n
Purgatory
Cluck Ol Hen
Two Coats
Country Squire
Tom Turkey (Charley Crockett cover)
I Swear (to God)
Honky Tonk Flame
Way of the Triune God
Peace of Mind
House Fire
Tulsa Turnaround (Kenny Rogers & The First Edition cover)
Universal Sound
Heart You’ve Been Tendin’
Sour Mash (Cory Branan cover)