Review: In Tampa, Tyler Childers ditches tropes in showcasing country music’s brighter future [PHOTOS]

Country music is having a moment. It rules streaming, and it’s dominating the summer tour market. But rarely is that music from the actual country.

Consider what happened in Tampa last Wednesday night an exception.

In front of what looked like about 19,000 people at MidFlorida Credit Union Amphitheatre, Tyler Childers—900 miles from his birthplace of Lawrence County, Kentucky, pop. 16,109—brought a little bit of the holler to the big venue just off of Interstate-4.

His 21-song setlist spanned just under two hours, and celebrated so many aspects of rural life whether he was deploying sing-along love songs (“Lady May”) or boogieing with the seven-piece Food Stamps band on straight-up farm jams like “Percheron Mules.”

“I hope y'all are staying hydrated, because Lord have mercy, it's hot,” Childers—who previously played shows in Ybor City and St. Petersburg—told Tampa.

The thermometer did touch the high-90s in the hours before the show, but temperatures didn’t keep fans from dancing in the aisles on songs the title track of his new record Rustin’ in the Rain or “Whitehouse Road.” The sing-along was almost deafening on the life-affirming meditation “All Your’n,” topped only by Childers' clarion vocal that wears generations of Kentucky backcountry on its sleeve.

The 32-year-old’s followers, at least last Wednesday night, were almost exclusively non-POC, but appeared to come from a broad spectrum of backgrounds. They wore man buns, and cowboy hats, and walked around in footwear that ranged from square-toed boots to exposed-toes Tevas. Volunteers registered voters. There was someone wearing a t-shirt that said “Unvaxxed and overtaxed,” and yes, another person draped in a Confederate flag.

And while Childers has taken to the soapbox in poignant fashion in the past, he left his most political material off the table in Tampa. Instead, the country’s long, violent history of racism and unfair labor practices was addressed in coy fashion by openers Valerie June—who masterfully worked in old hymns (“The Unclouded Day”) and roots blues songs (“Walk That Lonesome Valley”)—plus show opener, alleged queer and communist Willi Carlisle.
Carlisle, who alluded to his Tampa Fringe set in Ybor City seven years ago, deployed guitar, banjo, harmonica, and hand percussion in a rousing six-song set that featured acapella protest songs (Steve Goodman’s “The Ballad Of Penny Evans”), vices (“Cheap Cocaine”), banter about raising the minimum wage, and revival-worthy anthems.

“Gotta let everybody in. Doesn't matter who they are, if they do right or where they've been,” he sang on “Your Heart’s A Big Tent” from 2022’s Peculiar, Missouri. “Everybody gets in.”

Childers—smiling big at so many points, fit, and draped in his tight-fitting fresh "Mule Pull" air-brushed t-shirt—spoke to that idea of community at the tailend of a solo acoustic set in the middle of the show.

“I hope that you meet at least one person you didn't know when you got here,” he said after “Follow You To Virgie,” adding that fellowship is at the heart of what he and his band do onstage. “You might not have anything in common except you like what’s happening just enough to be here.”

At this point, Childers’ tent can’t get much bigger (although he did get a taste last Monday in Orlando opening for the Rolling Stones). Still, it’s heartening to see an artist explicitly, and unapologetically, singing about his roots make it big.
And while his sound and crowd is clearly evolving past the backcountry of eastern Kentucky, Childers isn’t going full-Nashville anytime soon. Sure, a revamped “Purgatory” was only missing Stax Records’ Memphis Horns, but overall, the set celebrated real cowboy culture (Kris Kristofferson, John Anderson, and Hank Williams all got covered) and connected the audience to Childers’ (and probably their own) pastoral roots.

It offered up country music devoid of tired tropes, proving that you can ditch cliches and still fill arenas. And as Childers keeps his nose to the grindstone, country music will be all the better for it.

Tyler Childers setlist
Country Squire
Creeker
Percheron Mules
Shoot Low Sheriff! (John Anderson)
All Your’n
Purgatory
Help Me Make It Through The Night (Kris Kristofferson)
Rustin’ In the Rain
Lady May
Shake The Frost
Nose On the Grindstone
Follow You to Virgie
In Your Love
Old Country Church (Hank Williams)
Can I Take My Hounds To Heaven
Whitehouse Road
Two Coats (instrumental)
Honky Tonk Flame
Way Of the Triune God
House Fire
Universal Sound

Valerie June setlist
Rain Dance
Love Me Any Old Way
Where You Been So Long
Rollin’ and Tumblin
What a Wonderful World (Louis Armstrong)
Walk That Lonesome Valley (Mississippi John Hurt)
Astral Plane
The Life I Used To Live
This World Is Not My Home (J.R. Baxter)
Workin’ Woman Blues
The Unclouded Day (hymn)
Drink Up And Go Home

Willi Carlisle setlist
What the Rocks Don’t Know
Critterland
Tulsa’s Last Magician
Cheap Cocaine
The Ballad Of Penny Evans (Steve Goodman)
Your Heart’s A Big Tent