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Tyler Childers Bridges the Gap Between Seasons on Second Night at Forest Hills Stadium

Tyler Childers – Forest Hills Stadium – September 30, 2025

The last day of September in Forest Hills proved to be an excellent setting for Tyler Childers to finish his two-night stint at the stadium in Queens. It’s the time of year that’s undoubtedly autumn as the seasons go, but still often feels like mid-summer, perfectly suiting Childers’ set, which was undoubtedly country music but often felt like a whole bunch of other things.

He was backed by a talented eight-man band that included multiple guitars and kebouards that took on many forms to match the various sounds. They went cosmic early in the show, on “Dirty Ought Trill” with its wailing pedal steel solo and psychedelic harmonies. On “Watch Out,” it was almost Skynyrd-esque Southern rock, and the mid-set highlight “Whitehouse Road” was trucker-ready outlaw with funky keyboards and a propulsive drumbeat. The visual production was equally diverse and effective with graphic animations and lights adding to the narrative of Childers’ lyrics: Digitally framed photos of loved ones on the sing-along “All Your’n,” spirals of rabid dogs for “Bitin’ List” and a video-game motif for “Snipe Hunt.”

Even with the oversize band and production, the star of the show was Childers himself. His songwriting prowess and voice rising about it all and, in a short set from a ministage in the center of the stadium, getting a chance to shine unadorned on “Lady May” and then in a stripped-down Appalachian folk trio on “Nose on the Grindstone.”

Throughout, Childers had fun expounding to the rapt crowd with extended song introductions, stories and jokes giving the large venue an intimate, personal feel. Still, the band often went large, building to a (literal) fiery finale with “House Fire,” the stage doused in digital flames as the crowd sang and dance to country, rock and funk in the summer and fall all at once. —A. Stein | @Neddyo

Photos courtesy of Katie Dadarria | instagram.com/dadarria

Tyler Childers Makes a Statement Over Two Nights at Madison Square Garden

Tyler Childers – Madison Square Garden – May 28-29, 2024

Tyler Childers has one of the great voices, not only in modern country and Americana, but in music, period: pained, howling, lived-in, oaky, scuffed-smooth when it needs to be, utterly recognizable. Over a series of sturdy albums that shows increasingly deep songwriting, his sound has become a through line from ancient twang to countrypolitan modern and many other points easily adjacent or distantly related, from gosxpel to folk, blues to Appalachian string. Especially in a live setting, they’re all usefully blended.

Childers and a massive version of his Food Stamps band — eight players in all — hit Madison Square Garden on Tuesday, the first of two statement-maker shows at the arena. Name-checking Joe’s Pub and some other much smaller NYC venues that dot a steady rise to bigger and bigger crowds over less than a decade, Childers seemed genuinely moved by the grand expanse of the room and the lordly reception from fans. Naturally, he responded in kind: a big show, a big sound, gorgeously emotional whether it was the whole band hitting at full throttle, or Childers alone onstage in guitar-storyteller mode.

The band all together revealed many layers as they fleshed out the tunes, from the country stomp of “Percheron Mules” to the gorgeous blends of pedal steel and fiddle that ramped into “I Swear (To God).” “All Your’n” was an example of a tender, piano-dappled love song — more than a few couples were asway at all levels of the arena — and snatches of accordion, mandolin and organ shot through at various points, too. “Purgatory” was a stuttering, busy boogie, and then came a see-and-raise to an even busier boogie, an instrumental reading of the traditional mountain picker “Cluck Ol’ Hen,” with Childers on a fiddle and the whole group moving into psychedelic hoedown territory. It was that kind of wild.

As deservedly much as he’s lauded for songwriting, Childers is a gifted interpreter of others’ songs too — never more than a few during a show and positioned just right. Tuesday’s show included a Kenny Rogers (“Tulsa Turnaround”), a Hank Williams (“Old Country Church”), an S.G. Goodman (!) (“Space and Time” — stunning) and … yep, a Kermit the Frog (“Movin’ Right Along”), complete with the green puppet himself, singing on both that song and, as a bittersweet duo with Childers just before it, on “Lady May.”

I mean, sure, why not, right? Kermit was just one more part of the full serving — a continuous, two-hour set with a solo-acoustic segment in the middle that unfolded panoramically and went for broke near the end with a run that included usual Childers bangers like “Whitehouse Road,” “Way of the Triune God” and the triumphant “Universal Sound.” The finale was “Heart You’ve Been Tendin’,” which built gradually on the back of the chant-like refrain “All that you’ll take” and stacked the tension, yielding to a bone-saw-sharp solo from guitarist CJ Cain that pushed the band to Crazy Horse–like levels of vicious choogle. But heavy and sonic as it all was, Childers himself remained the center of the action regardless of the mode, letting his humility be even bigger than his voice and then pushing that howl even harder, paying off the tender hearts and the rage-ready alike. A great night. —Chad Berndtson | @Cberndtson

Photos courtesy of Marc Millman | www.marcmillmanphotos.com

Tyler Childers – Radio City Music Hall – August 3, 2003

With his highly anticipated sixth studio album, Rustin’ in the Rain, dropping next month, Tyler Childers launched a brand-new American tour on Wednesday at Radio City Music Hall, and the Appalachian singer-songwriter and his supremely talented band were back again at the plush venue on Thursday night.