Tyler Childers - Long Violent History

One of the most quietly radical and genuinely courageous albums in recent American music. Released as a surprise on September 18, 2020, in the immediate aftermath of widespread protests following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Long Violent History is Tyler Childers' most unexpected and most important record, a nine-song mostly instrumental album that builds an entire sonic landscape before delivering one of the most powerful protest songs of its era.

The album's structure is deliberate and brilliant. Eight traditional Appalachian fiddle tunes, recorded in the mountains of eastern Kentucky with a remarkable ensemble including Dom Flemons, Mandolin Orange's Andrew Marlin and Josh Oliver, fiddler Jesse Wells, and cellist Cecelia Wright, create what Childers himself described as "a sonic soundscape for the listener to set the tone to reflect on the last track." The tunes move from the mournful waltz of "Midnight on the Water" to the celebratory stomp of "Sludge River Stomp" and a quietly unsettling instrumental take on "Send In the Clowns," drawing deep from the old-time traditions of the region while building an atmosphere of reflection and reckoning.

Then comes the title track. The album's sole original song and its only track with lyrics, "Long Violent History" is addressed directly to rural white Southerners like Childers himself, asking them to imagine what their response would be if it were people who looked like them being killed without reason in the streets. "Could you imagine just constantly worrying, kicking and fighting, begging to breathe?" he asks, his voice quiet and devastatingly direct. Childers makes specific mention of Breonna Taylor, "a Kentuckian like me," and draws parallels between modern racial injustice and the long, violent history of Appalachia itself, including the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain.

Released with no publicity other than a six-minute video statement and dedicated entirely to benefiting the Hickman Holler Appalachian Relief Fund, the organization Childers and his wife Senora May founded to assist communities in Appalachia, the album is a masterwork of protest music from an artist who understood exactly what needed to be said and exactly how to say it.