The Universal Sound: A Five Song Guide to Tyler Childers

A Tyler Childers song often tells a story, but within those narratives about a ‘Charleston Girl’ or a ‘Whitehouse Road’ exists the tale of the artist himself.

With his music, Childers draws from experience, inviting listeners to see who he was, who he is and who he’s longing to be.

To know Tyler Childers is to know where he began, and you don’t really need a roadmap to show it–just a song will do.

In order to better understand the artist, the Holler team has chosen five songs from his decade-strong catalogue that we feel best tell his story. We’ve dissected his well-worn themes of love, religion, regional pride, addiction and recovery, as well as mules (just trust us here). We’ve traced their origins and unearthed the truths within their lyrics, all to come away with a broader picture of the man whose music we love so well.

With the arrival of Childers’ new album, Snipe Hunter, join us in getting to know the Kentucky native through these five songs.

The closing track on his career-defining 2017 album, Purgatory, ‘Lady May’ is an unashamed, passionate and devoted love letter to the otherworldly admiration Childers has for his wife, Senora May.

Throughout the development of Childers’ discography, a collection of love songs has bloomed, enough to rival that of an ancient poet, each one sculpted by the Appalachian’s pen and painted in a shade of gold by his simple acoustic melodies. However, whilst ‘Shake The Frost’ or ‘All Your’n’ could’ve easily made this list, with lyrics comparing the comfort of his love to “a Sunday back home in 'ole Kentucky” or proclaiming “I’ll love you til’ my lungs give out, I ain’t lyin’” to anyone willing to listen, each and every thread ties back to his “Lovely Lady May.”

May has been in Childers’ life since 2013, when the pair met on a Kentucky farm. The couple married in 2015 and so, on each of his releases, there’s a glimpse of May nestled into the lyrics–whether boldly or deceptively.

‘Lady May’ is a love song devoted entirely and wholeheartedly to one woman, but it takes the world Childers knows to be able to express just how all-consuming this love is, and for that reason, he turns to the very land, roots and earth he grew from to express himself. “I’m a stone’s throw from the mill / I’m a good walk from the river / My workin’ day is over / We’ll go swim our cares away,” he writes, immediately pulling the listener into the peace and contentment he feels when he’s alongside May.

Childers has a habit of seeing himself as somewhat downtrodden, damaged and inadequate. Throughout his career, he hasn’t shied away from talking about his struggles with alcohol and addiction, something that has found its way into these lyrics, too. Through it all, though, he’s had a constant source of love and support that has seemingly washed away his sins. His religious references demonstrate the kind of spiritual value that he places on May’s love, but he goes one step further by suggesting that it’s only comparable to the mightiest of universal blessings: nature.

Childers’ connection to the world around him has been evident from the dedications to his Appalachian roots that have sunk deep into his music, but even the oldest of mountains with their centuries of knowledge, experience and strength solidified in their historic existence would cower in the presence of Lady May. Her love keeps him safe through the coldest of winters and harshest of winds, a warmth as appreciated as the first sun soaked day in spring. From their first meeting in 2013m to welcoming their first child a decade later, May’s love has been there to embrace and cushion Childers any time he has been “crashing through the forest.”

It’s a simple, classic love ballad, and it’s a Childers signature. It’s everlasting and it's the heartbeat of all the serenades that have found their place in the Childers collection, all of which are for his “Lovely Lady May.”

Childers doesn’t just sing about where he’s from, he carries it in every chord, every lyric, every cracked but real note. Eastern Kentucky isn’t just a backdrop in his music; it's the beating heart of it. His music is rooted in the red clay and coal dust of Lawrence County, shaped by stories passed down from front porches to church pews.

Pride of place isn’t just a theme in his work, it's the framework that holds his art together, and to understand him, you have to understand how deeply his love of the land and the people raised him.

In 'Nose on the Grindstone,' Childers does what he does best: tell the truth. With only a finger-picked guitar and a voice scraped raw in the hills of Kentucky, he delivers a ballad that not only honors where he’s from, but defines it. Though up until recently it was unreleased, passed around through YouTube videos and bootlegs like a family story at the kitchen table, the song has carved itself into the canon of Appalachian songwriting. More than that, though, it gives us a window into the man behind the music.

The price in the song isn’t loud, or tourist-friendly; it's not even always pretty. It's the kind of pride born from hardship and the heavy legacy of survival. The lyrics impart simple wisdom: “Keep your nose on the grindstone and out of the pills,” a line that hits with a double weight as advice handed down like an heirloom and commentary on the opioid crisis that has gutted much of rural Appalachia. It's a sort of love masked as toughness, the kind of parenting that doesn’t come with many warm hugs but a deep, wordless devotion.

Childers doesn’t romanticize his songs, but doesn’t apologize for it either. His Kentucky isn’t some dusty relic of Americana, its a place with pride and pain. He sings about it like someone who’s witnessed it from every angle and still comes back around with his heart full of it.

What makes 'Nose on the Grindstone' particularly powerful is how it encapsulates the central thread of Childers' artistry: place as identity.

His music is steeped in the soil of Lawrence County. You hear it in the turns of phrase, in the minor chords that echo through hollers and how it sounds more like a memory than a recording. He's preserving a culture, giving a new voice to people who rarely get one in country music’s broader narrative.

There's a sacredness in the way he approaches where he’s from. 'Nose on the Grindstone' is exactly that: it's a love that doesn’t budge, and a song that knows the terrain of home can be both a place to stand and one you might have to survive.

It was with the release of his 2011 debut, Bottles and Bibles, that Childers first held his faith up to the light, turned it over and cast it in song for all of us to examine alongside him. While consistently posing his relationship with organized religion as a complicated one, it’s been a prevalent theme throughout his catalogue since.

With that first album, its title track initially introduces the complexities–and frequent hypocrisies–of the artist’s Southern Baptist upbringing. He sings of a preacher addled by his vices and at odds with his beliefs, having to face his own guilt and the judgment of his congregation. Its following number plays like a Sunday school lesson, ‘The Gospel (According to Fishermen)’ a parable of his journey outside his faith and into the arms of the secular world.

“I was raised in the house of a real holy roller,” he sings in the shuffling tune, mixing autobiography with scripture. “Warned the people about the ways of sin / He said ‘Go out yonder to the water and travel / ‘Cause disciples they were fishers of men’ / Yeah disciples, they were fishers of men.”

Today, with his catalogue of deeply honest and refreshingly incisive works, he could be described as that fisher of men, someone who unites listeners like disciples and creates community around music that moves. In his lyrics, he’s erected his own Gospel. Still, he continues to sing of God, never shying away from mentions of Heaven and Hell, virtue and sin, his early beliefs cropping up with the occasional “Oh, lord’s” and “Have mercy’s.”

The tenets of Childers’ learned faith are perhaps most prevalent throughout his fifth studio album, 2022's Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?. Mixing traditional hymns with original ruminations on the Hereafter, the three-part collection explores his relationship with religion, tracing the line where Biblical love and Godly compassion morphed into the hellfire and brimstone of the church in which he was raised. The album was born from his attempt to reconcile with both.

As he explained when the record was first announced, “I grew up Baptist and I was scared to death to go to Hell. A lot of that stuck with me. Filtering through that and trying to find the truth, and the beauty, and the things you should think about and expelling all that nonsense has been something I’ve spent a lot of time on. This is a collection that came together through those reflections. In a lot of ways, this is processing life experiences in the different philosophies and religions that have formed me, trying to make a comprehensive sonic example of that.”

However, where we meet his truest beliefs isn’t in ‘Old Country Church’ or ‘Way of the Triune God,’ it’s more likely in ‘Universal Sound.’ In the Purgatory tune, we are introduced to something intangible but ever-present. The song dips into the metaphysical to present an abstraction of God and eternity, this vibration that connects us all, a ubiquitous hum from which we sprang and will one day return.

In the subtle song, he sings, “I’ve been up on the mountain / And I’ve seen His wondrous grace / I’ve sat there on a barstool and I’ve looked Him in the face / He seemed a little haggard, but it did not slow Him down / He was hummin' to the neon of the universal sound.”

Whenever Childers does venture into his faith, it's often met with a heavy dose of spirituality and ‘Universal Sound’, especially, poses the idea that God is more than what can be found in between church walls or on the pages of some book. Instead, He comes from within and exists all around.

Born and raised in Lawrence County, Kentucky, Childers grew up in the heart of Appalachia—an area rich with musical history yet ravaged by substance abuse and addiction.

Childers has consistently explored substance abuse through his music, allowing listeners to consider the complexities and consequences of addiction, as well as the search for redemption. While his songs often delve into a reckless, destructive lifestyle that includes substance use, they also reflect a deeper desire for personal transformation.

‘Whitehouse Road’ highlights the destructive nature of such addiction, partying and reckless behavior. In the track, Childers paints a vivid picture of a man both driven by, consumed and buoyed by that next hit; all in an attempt to soften the pain at the root of the narrative. The song conveys the numbness, escapism and cyclical nature of addiction, particularly those caused by the consequence of pain.

The track is raw and unflinching, almost fatal in its depiction of a character stuck in the cycle of drinking, using and partying, but there’s unquestionably tight-rope tension between the lifestyle’s allure and its destructive consequences.

Childers doesn’t sing about escaping from that road here, because he’s aware enough to know what it means and how it feels to be trapped. It’s a true example of how Childers doesn’t glorify addiction, rather paints the portrait of both the chaos it causes and control it holds.

‘Whitehouse Road’ blends both the recklessness of addiction and the cold hard nature of regret and self-awareness. As much as Childers explores hopeful redemption through songs like ‘Born Again’ and ‘Universal Sound,’ this song captures the true duality of his work: his ability to show addiction’s destructive side while still portraying a want for something better.

On the album artwork for his lauded 2023 album, Rustin’ in the Rain, Childers stands proudly alongside a mule. To the uninitiated, this may look like nothing out of the ordinary, with country artists often posing with horses and farm animals in an attempt to bolster their "authenticity."

To Childers, though, mules have long been a symbol of something much more intricate and deep-seated. During an interview with The New York Times, he recalls a particularly impactful encounter at a fancy party, during which someone cruelly remarked, “You look like a mule looking over a picket fence.” Rather than rebuking this mean-spirited comment, Childers embraced the comparison, “I thought, ‘I’m a mule.’ I’m a poor working man’s animal, and I’m looking over the fence in somebody else’s yard. Do I even belong here?”

Particularly across Rustin’, mules stand as a dualistic embodiment of two key traits Childers sees in himself. On one hand, he champions how hard-working, loyal and determined they are, silently toiling away for hours on end with no respite. On the other, he acknowledges that they are often overlooked and belittled, and seen as being inferior in beauty to horses.

Childers frequently speaks about how out-of-place he feels in the country and Americana landscape, with the ‘Oneida’ singer-songwriter viewing himself as a bona fide country artist, yet rarely–if ever–receiving recognition from Nashville’s establishment. The Americana world, by contrast, hails Childers as a modern trailblazer, yet when he was being honored with the Emerging Artist of the Year award in 2018, he frustratedly underlined, “As a man who identifies as a country music singer, I feel Americana ain’t no part of nothin’.”

Few songs epitomize Childers fond, yet complex, relationship with these animals as effectively as ‘Percheron Mules,’ which finds him celebrating their work ethic, while referencing that snide characterization of him looking like one. This kind of imagery can be traced much further back, though, with Childers toasting on his now-iconic offering, ‘Nose on the Grindstone’–thankfully now released as part of Snipe Hunter.

At various points, Childers uses mules to portray himself as dedicated, as overlooked and as an outcast, but there are other times when Childers gives this a more playful, jovial tone, such as when he played into the self-deprecating comparisons by riding to the Kentucky polls on the back of a mule.

Whether he is conveying pride or self-doubt, his depiction of mules is always underpinned by a fondness and admiration for these diligent creatures, to the extent that you can’t help but feel that, through better understanding each mule that emerges in his discography, you better understand Childers himself.

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