One of the super powers of Mountain Stage founder and host Larry Groce is diving deep, early and often for audio pearls hidden in an ocean of sound. Artists he reeled onto Mountain Stage well before they become known include: Lyle Lovett, Chris Stapleton, Ben Harper, Sarah McLachlan, Norah Jones, Old Crow Medicine Show, Brandi Carlile, The Avett Brothers and Phish.

No recent finds are as meaningful as the meteoric rising country star, Tyler Childers, a native of nearby Lawrence County, Ky., which produced kindred country spirits Ricky Skaggs and Larry Cordle. The once bow-tie wearing kid singing songs well beyond his years, Childers armed himself early with an all-star band from neighboring Huntington (Craig Burletic, bass; Rod Elkins, drums and James Barker, guitar/pedal steel and long-time friend, Morehead State University professor Jesse Wells on fiddle, mandolin, baritone) proving it all night in Appalachia’s clubs and festivals before getting national notice.

Childers and that band, known as The Food Stamps, (which added keyboardist Chase Lewis in the past year), made their third sold-out visit to Mountain Stage at a Dec. 1, 2019 at a Culture Center Theater show in Charleston. That show also featured Mary Gauthier, Miss Tess and the Talk Backs, Johnny Staats and The Delivery Boys and storyteller, Bil Leep.

Introducing Childers at the December show which sold out in minutes, Groce, who booked Childers for FestivALL Charleston in 2014, said he knew two things when he first heard him. “I knew number one I wanted to get him on Mountain Stage and number two I knew the potential for him was unlimited – and that has been proven.”

Fresh off the launch of his RCA debut, “Country Squire” and a Grammy nod, Childers and the band immediately started “turning those songs into 2X4’s” nail-gunning with a workingman’s band spit, polish and precision: “Country Squire,” “Bus Route,” and the gospel-soaked, “Creeker.” That song – and really all of Childers’ offerings – come served with an earnest mountain-hewn urgency that lands like The Stanley Brothers giving a penecostal altar call, “He’d rather be dead/Than alive one more minute/In this godforsaken town/When he was a kid/Lord, he’d never have dreamt it/All the ways that the city/can bring a country boy down.”

After a quick thank you, and one of his colorful trademark band introductions of Lewis, Childers and his blue collar band dug their work boot heels back into this hearty 10-song set with “All Your’n,” the love song single from “Country Squire,” prominently featuring Lewis on keys, before offering up two masterfully-written songs from “Purgatory” – “Feathered Indians “ and “Born Again.”

Showcasing why Childers and the band have rocked festivals from Bonnaroo to Lollapalooza, guitarists Barker and Wells’ let their amplifiers bleed rolling clean from “Born Again,” right into their fuzz-rippling raucous take on “Tulsa Turnaround,” a rarely dug up First Edition (with Kenny Rogers) gem from 1967, before downshifting and seamlessly washing into the quiet emotional build-up of “Shake The Frost,” one of Childers’ first sing-a-long songs that Wells first cut with Childers live back in 2013.

After “Matthew,” a Bluegrass song about his brother-in-law, Childers stood alone on the stage, staring and shouting down the double barrel-blasting hurt and words in “Nose on the Grindstone,” field dressing the guts of the opioid epidemic down raw to the bone.

Tyler Childers and The Food Stamps are on the Good Look’n Tour with fellow Eastern Kentucky artist, Sturgill Simpson through May. Go online at www.tylerchildersmusic.com. Childers and his non-profit Hope In the Hills will present the third annual Healing Appalachia concert on Sept. 26, 2020 at the State Fair of West Virginia. Proceeds go to non-profit groups fighting opioid addiction in Appalachia. Go online at www.healingappalachia.org.

Set list

“Country Squire”

“Bus Route”

“Creeker”

“All Your’n”

“Feathered Indians”

“Born Again”

“Tulsa Turnaround”

“Shake The Frost”

“Matthew”

“Nose On the Grindstone”

Originaly posted Here: https://www.npr.org/2020/03/11/814616028/tyler-childers-on-mountain-stage