Why Tyler Childers’ two Rupp Arena concerts will be a home team win this weekend

Cheering on the home team is something of a duty. It’s doesn’t always matter what kind of “team” is at work or even what activity it represents. It could a sports hero, an entertainment celebrity or a business innovator. Celebrating them is a matter of pride, an acknowledgement of achievement for a neighbor and/or neighborhood. It’s an affirmation that what is good about the community you are part of is making a positive and public imprint on the world around us.

Sure, enthusiasm surrounding such instances sometimes blurs objectivity, whether it bends to simple favoritism or to broader, more jingoistic extremes. But nothing quite matches the sensation of when the ol’ home team — whether it’s an individual or ensemble — plays out on a national stage. Such an occasion makes those that have been devoutly supportive when the celebrant’s work blossomed on smaller, more formative and, yes, more community-driven platforms feel their pride has been honest and justified.

This bring us to Tyler Childers.

It would be easy to champion the Lawrence County songsmith simply for his heritage — specifically, one forged by a line of fruitful, collectively rooted stylists that continue to mine the traditions of Appalachian music and culture. Among them are artists who lean to more rustic accents of country, folk and bluegrass music but then find their own voice within that art. Certainly, Childers has done that, much like fellow Eastern Kentucky ambassadors like Ricky Skaggs, Dwight Yoakam and, more recently, Chris Stapleton have before him.

But cheering Childers on, especially within the past few years, isn’t as simple as bragging on a fellow Kentuckian because of geographical alliances. His music onstage, as well as actions offstage, present a devotion to a culture that, while rooted in the sounds and spirits of rural Appalachia, speaks to something far bigger than home state devotion.

Let’s turn back to 2020 and examine that idea. Childers had already established a national reputation at the time thanks to two albums, “Purgatory” and “Country Squire.” Both gained considerable traction with country music audiences, among other factions, without any lasting push from country radio. Then Childers threw a curve call.

An album titled “Long Violent History” surfaced during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and the heat of the social madness that exploded concurrently with it. The music was largely traditional in design — a set of public domain works played with the antique clarity of old-time fiddle tunes. The catalyst was the title song, the lone Childers original, which was set within the acoustic traditions of the music that prefaced it. But the words spoke to the present day. “Long Violent History” surfaced in the aftermath of the shooting death of Breonna Taylor by Louisville police. A protest song at heart, it was also a plea for empathy, a call to shed tired Southern stereotypes and open one’s self to calling out social injustices fed by racism.

Not exactly something you would expect to hear on a Morgan Wallen record.

Flash forward to last summer. As a preview of his sixth and newest album “Rustin’ in the Rain,” Childers issued “In Your Love” as a single. An epic but steadfast romantic anthem, Childers enlisted Kentucky Poet Laureate Silas House to create a storyline for the song’s accompanying music video. House’s vision presented the video as a romance between two gay coal miners in the 1950s, from the emotive bonds formed to the inevitable prejudicial outrage it sparked. It was a masterful interpretation of a tune every bit as empathic as “Long Violent History.”

In viewing the video again recently, one somewhat overlooked aspect was illuminated: in a world full of generations-old prejudice, black lung still kills. It doesn’t care if you’re gay or straight.

All of this came home again just two weeks ago while watching Childers most recent regional performance. In the 13 months prior, he had been featured at two of Lexington’s biggest concert events. The first was the Kentucky Rising benefit at Rupp Arena alongside Stapleton and Yoakam that raised $2.9 million in relief funds for victims of the devastating Eastern Kentucky floods from July 2022. The other: a headlining performance at this year’s Railbird festival at The Red Mile. Both events were immediate sellouts. This month’s showing, though, was different.

It placed a suit-and-tie Childers alongside his Food Stamps bandmates Jesse Wells and CJ Cain at the steps of the Capitol in Frankfort for the second term inauguration of Governor Andy Beshear. The selection of choice was, as described by Beshear advisor and fellow Eastern Kentucky native Rocky Adkins, who introduced Childers, “one of our governor’s favorite songs” — namely, “Universal Sound,” a profession of country faith that helped break open the artist’s career in 2017.

The song’s specific imagery (“the Cranberry Glades”) may cite West Virginia, but the sense of light and insight are applicable anywhere.

“I’ve been up on the mountain, and I’ve seen His wondrous grace I’ve sat there on a bar stool, and I’ve looked Him in the face He seemed a little haggard, but it did not slow Him down He was humming to the neon of the universal sound”.

So this weekend, to ring in 2024, Childers is bringing his songs, his Appalachian authority and a large chunk of the Kentucky cultural heritage he is now part of back to Rupp. The mammoth venue sits mere blocks away from the clubs he cut his musical teeth in a decade ago. The two Rupp concerts, to no one’s surprise, were immediate sellouts.

And that is one massive win for the home team.

Tyler Childers

When: 7:45 p.m. Dec. 30 and 9 p.m. Dec.31

Where: Rupp Arena, 430 W. Vine

Opening act: Shovels & Rope

Tickets: Sold out

Online: ruppareana.com