Quotes from Tyler Childers

I listened to a lot of Ricky Skaggs' Country stuff.

I'm chasing a feeling more than a sound and I try to reflect that in my turns of phrases. Growing up in church, people would get up and sing, and the conviction reflected in their vocals; I try to carry that in my sound.

Sometimes you get the pinball machine and sometimes the pinball machine gets you.

I don't sit down and say, 'Today I will write a song.' I know a lot of people that do that, but if I'm not in the mood, what's the point of beating my head against the wall?

Maybe I can bring my own perspective and connect with people from my home area by giving them my two cents of a different angle.

There are different pockets of the rural U.S. and each one of those has their own colour, their own language, the things they're worried about. They're so different.

I think that's why Sturgill and I worked so well together. We came from similar backgrounds as far as a sense of place. We were surrounded by the same culture. We listened to a lot of the same music growing up.

What I consider country music doesn't make it the end all be all, but if you ask me my opinion, that's what you're going to get.

When I was younger, I had two of mine own cassette tapes that I burnt up, like constantly I was always listening to. They were two Ricky Skaggs albums.

We can stop being so taken aback by Black Lives Matter. If we didn't need to be reminded, there would be justice for Breonna Taylor, a Kentuckian like me, and countless others.

Purgatory is hell, with hope.

The first thing that comes to your head is probably the only thing you should say. If you have to sit down and spend ten minutes trying to have something genuine, it may not be all that genuine.

We've all witnessed violent acts of police brutality happen around the nation that have gone unaddressed.

I just liked the Beat poets. It was rapid fire, in the moment.

Some of that church music, it's like this pure, raw, unfiltered emotion.

We just played whatever we could get ahold of. If we were at a party and we had a banjo, a mandolin and guitar or 10 guitars, that's what we played that night.

I'm a creature of habit.

Storytelling in Appalachian culture - it runs deep. You have these communities and families that, for a long time, were isolated, and if you did have time off after working to keep everything going, you'd sit around and just yak, just talk and tell tall tales and flat-out lies and try to one-up the guy who just told a story.

I've grown up in church and Gospel music was a big thing - and Bluegrass - but I just think of that music my buddies and I listened to growing up in the hills, it was as meshed together as what people now call Americana.

I admire John Prine and his way with words.

If your hobby is playing sports, at the end of it you might get a few concussions.

A lot of commercial country does speak to people in some way. It's more of a ear worm or a melody that's really catchy. That's something that you certainly want, but it's only one piece of the criteria for a good song.

If your hobby is hunting, at the end of it you get to eat what you catch, which is awesome.

I was pretty partial to Kerouac and I also liked Flannery O'Connor and the Southern Gothic writing and local writers, like Jesse Stewart. They became an inspiration for how I wanted my writing voice to be.