Tyler Childers - Country Squire

Tyler Childers' major label debut and his most cohesive and fully realized album to date. Released on August 2, 2019 through Hickman Holler Records and RCA, Country Squire finds the Lawrence County, Kentucky songwriter returning to The Butcher Shoppe in Nashville with the same production team of Sturgill Simpson and David Ferguson that helped make Purgatory a breakthrough, and delivering nine songs that confirm him as one of the most compelling voices in American roots music.

Where Purgatory pushed into darker, more experimental territory, Country Squire is lighter, more accessible, and deeply rooted in the honky-tonk and Appalachian folk traditions Childers grew up with. Simpson assembled another cast of elite session players including fiddler Stuart Duncan, pianist Mike Rojas, and guitarist Russ Pahl, and the results crackle with swing, shuffle, and mountain soul. The title track opens the album with a jumping two-step beat, its title referring not to a landed gentleman but to a brand of camper, Childers dreaming of putting himself and his wife deep in the woods in their own modest castle. That kind of specific, devilishly observed detail runs through every song.

"All Your'n" is destined to be a country wedding classic, its Motown-inflected warmth and soulful vocals making it one of Childers' signature songs. "House Fire" rides a bluesy, Steve Earle-styled guitar line with total confidence. The piano-led "Creeker" puts you inside a corner bar with aching precision, and "Matthew" finds Childers placing another struggling everyman at the center of a story told with the compassion and craft of a writer who has always been on his side.

The striking album artwork was created by Tony Moore, a fellow Kentuckian best known for his work on The Walking Dead, Deadpool, Fear Agent, and Punisher, who also provided promotional illustrations and animations for the project. All of it adds up to the work of a once-in-a-generation talent, firmly arrived.