Kickin' and Fightin' and Beggin' to Breathe

mieyeed
Jun 19
3 min read

Seventh in a series of posts about Protest Music for the Current Crisis

If you haven't seen Tyler Childers performing live then you haven't seen one of the most passionate, charismatic, talented singers and songwriters currently appearing on stage.

Protest music doesn't often come from the country music world with some notable exceptions (e.g. Will Jesus Wash the Bloodstains From Your Hands - Hazel Dickens, the Dixie Chicks - Not Ready to Make Nice and even Jeannie C. Riley's Harper Valley PTA - written by Tom T. Hall). But occasionally, the country music world coughs up a topical music prophet.

Childers is a phenom. As a young teen he began writing songs and playing in clubs near his rural Kentucky home, and is now playing stadiums. But he hasn't compromised artistically, or in the message he has delivered consistently, especially those songs focused on the struggles of Appalachian residents. Unlike JD Vance, he hasn't pretended to be a hillbilly, and hasn't exploited his neighbors and family to achieve fame.

But he has written truthfully about his own demons and addictions, and he hasn't been afraid to challenge his audiences with messages about social issues including the struggles of coal miners, and coal mining communities, faith and family. And he's long promoted the rights of the LGBTQ community. Even so, he's not afraid to sing an old-time gospel song.

While audiences can sing along lustily to his songs about living the wild life, like Swear to God, he also confronts them with the radical idea that love is love in all its manifestations, as he did recently with the song In Your Love, about a long-term gay relationship in rural America.

Recently, as a diabolical president sent National Guard troops and US Marines into Los Angeles to quell disturbances that could easily have been handled by local authorities, Childers took to the stage in that same city and performed a song he rarely does in public, Long Violent History, from the album of the same name, and album where the only sung lyric is to this song.

LONG VIOLENT HISTORY

Tyler Childers has explored Southern culture and history in several of his songs. But Long Violent History was written in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, and in particular the murder of Breona Taylor, a Kentuckian like Childers.

The lyric explores the devastation that has been wrought on the black community, and Childers asks his white neighbors what they would do if they were in the same shoes as their black neighbors.

As most good protest songs, the lyrics are vague enough to be applied to any oppressed individual facing a force of the state which aims to bring it down. So it was clear in that the song was being sung for every brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking immigrant being hunted down by the brutal and cruel members of America's Gestapo - ICE. If it wasn't clear enough in the LA performance, Childers projected the famous Martin Niemöller, First They Came, on the screens above the stage.

In Holler, Carena Liptak writes: Rather than viewing A Long Violent History simply as an unprecedented liberal standout from a historically red-voting state, perhaps it’s worth examining whether upheaval, independence and overthrowing social injustice might be a time-honored Appalachian tradition.