Tyler Childers returned to his roots with the release of his latest album Can I Take My Hounds To Heaven, on Sept. 30. The album is made up of three different albums, each album being a different version of the same eight songs released. The three different themes being the Hallelujah version, the Jubilee version and the Joyful Noise version. One song in particular, “Purgatory,” was the title track on his 2017 album and is featured on the new album with three versions. Another song, “Old Country Church,” is a cover of the infamous Hank Williams Sr.’s song released in 1947.
The album is themed around Childers’ Baptist faith, with lyrics about his religious experiences and much of the music including sounds of a church. Childers has created music surrounding this theme before, but always including his struggles with his faith. In this album, Childers embraces his religion and reminisces on its effects on his life.
In a statement, he revealed “I grew up Baptist and I was scared to death to go to hell. And 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.”
What makes Childers so special to country music fans is not usually just the messages he sends through his lyrics, but how he modernizes and recreates the sound of country music’s roots and golden ages. His backing band, The Food Stamps, always construct a classic sound, rarely with the absence of twin fiddles, a banjo, a steel guitar and deep bass. This is refreshing in the face of the disconnect in mainstream country music now, where artists are veering further and further away from what makes country music, but Childers sticks to his Kentucky roots.
Not only is the sound of mainstream country music becoming more like pop music, but the lyrics are not representative of the genre either. Country began as the story of the smaller voices, to represent the common people of America. To talk about the struggles of the working man, racial minorities, and the injustices that rural people faced daily. Childers acknowledges and incorporates these themes in his music not just within his latest album, but in all his previous ones as well.
However, Childers has also been influenced by country music’s major foundation of love. Though very private publicly, Childers writes about his wife Senora May, how she has affected him, the importance of their relationship and how much love he has for her. Many of his fans are drawn to these songs because he writes in such a beautiful way, many have jokingly called him ‘the Hozier of country music.’
Tyler Childers is bringing back ‘real’ country music. With the release of this latest album, he continues to impress and reinvent the sounds that country music listeners were raised on, while making it music worth listening to.
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