Review: Small but mighty new album out from Kentucky native Tyler Childers

Working perhaps expectedly against convention, Tyler Childers is proving again that size doesn’t matter. At least as a going concern, it doesn’t.

Just under a year ago, the Lawrence County country/Americana journeyman spread three different versions of eight gospel songs over the triple-disc “Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?” album. Before that, 2020’s “Long Violent History” bolstered its title song — a modern day Appalachian protest song/murder ballad and the album’s only vocal composition — with a bedrock of often funereal fiddle-tunes.

Now we have “Rustin’ in the Rain,” a new Childers record where the country joy, soul and solemnity of seven tunes play out in a running time of less than half-an-hour. Size, it turns out, is welcomingly irrelevant in Childers’ view of humanity — a profile seen through rural eyes, but with an astoundingly worldly depth.

It’s probably best to start at the end of the album, a potent two-song summation of love and identity with a touch of redemption. One of them Childers wrote, the other is the work of another expert Kentucky songsmith. Together, they define the emotional and, to a degree, spiritual core of the record.

Collaboration with writer Silas House

The first is “In Your Love,” the by-now familiar song outlining a hard-fought love story between two men. Childers delivers it with a modestly epic sweep but minus any topical grandstanding. The song is so earnestly matter-of-fact in design and regally performed by the composer that no sensationalism is necessary.

How the country mainstream takes to it, despite the fact the song and its Silas House-composed video have been open for inspection for over a month, is still hard to say. After all, we’re living in an age where any hint of perceived country wokeness has sent some factions to filming themselves blasting their beloved Bud Light to smithereens on the rifle range. By those standards, “In Your Love” will likely trigger seizures.

(So far, the video doesn’t seem to have dampened enthusiasm: Two upcoming New Year’s shows in Rupp Arena are sold out, as have been almost all of the stops on his current tour.)

The song then blends into a finale cover of Hickman native S.G. Goodman’s “Space and Time,” which has been part of Childers’ concert repertoire for much of the past year. In fact, Goodman performed the song with Childers as an unannounced guest at last fall’s Kentucky Rising benefit at Rupp Arena. Childers delivers Goodman’s epic love proclamation with the grace, patience and authority that was part-and-parcel of classic ’50s and ’60s pop. But the reverence this performance reflects is understandably more homespun. It’s less a statement of pop grandiosity and more an honest proclamation of rural country faith.

The rest of “Rustin’ in the Rain” isn’t exactly filler. The album-opening title track (also previewed at Kentucky Rising) takes off like a race horse with a blend of giddy country abandon and vocal intensity that will likely make the tune a fan favorite. Then there is a slice of vintage country incommunicado titled “Phone Calls and Emails” that comes packed with enough lustrous honky-tonk piano to make it sound like it was cut in the early ’60s. The title, of course, reflects the intrusion of modern life.

The album travels a curious side road between bluegrass hayride and Cajun fais do-do on “Percheron Mules” with a sense of giddy farmland faith heightened by members of the Travelin’ McCourys and backing vocals worthy of the Jordanaires. The song had its Lexington debut in June during Childers’ headlining set at the sold-out Railbird festival.

Covering a Kris Kristofferson classic

Speaking of faith, “Luke 2: 8-10” takes its cue from Childers’ recital of some very familiar Bible verse before a solemn waltz erupts with Goodman and Margo Price supplying backing vocals. (A sidenote: Price and Goodman perform locally on Sept. 10 as part of the Burl County Fair.)

That leaves us with another cover, a fresh recasting of the Kris Kristofferson chestnut “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” Childers’ delivery is as endearing as any of the scores of versions that have been cut over the last 50-plus years. What results here is a work that highlights Childers as vocalist — one with a plain-speaking sense of drama, phrasing and intent — as opposed to songwriter.

“Tomorrow is dead and gone,” Childers sings in a summit that brings together the inspirations of two of the sharpest Americana songwriters of their respective generations. “Tomorrow is out of sight.”