A Clear Voice About a Long Violent History

Tyler Childers is a rapidly rising 29-year old country-bluegrass star from Paintsville, Kentucky who has opened for Willie Nelson and John Prine.

In his latest album, Tyler asks his listeners to imagine what it would be like to be written off as more than ignorant hillbillies -- to actually ** FEAR ** for their lives for just being alive. It's an amazing act of empathy for a young man whose home town is 99.3 percent white, and where coal mining and poverty are a way of life.

In "Long Violent History" Tyler asks his white, rural listeners to flip it around.

"In all my born days as a white boy from Hickman
Based on the way that the world’s been to me
It’s called me belligerent,
It’s took me for ignorant
But it ain’t never once made me scared just to be
Could you imagine just constantly worrying
Kicking, and fighting, and begging to breathe
How many boys could they haul off this mountain
Shoot full of holes, cuffed and laying in the street
‘Till we’d come into town in a stark ravin’ anger
Looking for answers and armed to the teeth,
With thirty-aught-sixes,
And Papaw’s old pistol.
How many you reckon?
Would it be four or five?
Or would that be the start of a long Violent History
of tucking our tails as we try to abide?"

In an introductory video that passes for what we old folks used to call "liner notes," Tyler is blunt:

What if we were to constantly open up our daily paper and see a headline like ‘East Kentucky man shot seven times on fishing trip,’ and read on to find the man was shot while fishing with his son by a game warden who saw him rummaging through his tackle box for his license and thought he was reaching for a knife?

What if we read a story that began, "North Carolina man rushing home from work to take his elderly mother to the E.R. runs a stop sign, is pulled over by the police, and beaten by the police when they see a gun rack in the truck?

Or a headline like "Ashland Community and Technical College nursing student shot in her sleep?" How would we react to that? What form of upheaval would that create?

I venture to say if we were met with this type of daily attack on our own people, we would take action in a way that hasn’t been seen since the Battle of Blair Mountain in West Virginia.

If we wouldn’t stand for it, why would we expect another group of Americans to stand for it?

Why would we stand silent while it happened.... or worse, get in the way of it being rectified?

I've seen people from my Appalachian regions say that we wouldn't act the way we we've seen depicted on various media outlets. But I've also seen grown folks beat each other up the day after Thanksgiving for TVs and teddy bears.

And these aren't **things** this community has lost, these are sons and daughters... brothers and sisters and cousins... mothers and fathers. Irreplaceable threads within their family fiber, torn from their loved ones too soon, with no justice.

And they are demanding change, same as I expect we would. Life is hard enough without being worried about the smallest interaction with a public servant.

So what can the rest of us who feel seemingly outside of these issues do?

First, we can use our voting power to get rid of the people who have been in power and have let this go on unnoticed. Chances are that the people allowing this to happen are the same people keeping opportunity out of reach for our own communities, that have watched job opportunities be shipped out, and drugs shipped in, eating up out communities, and leaving our people desperate in what some folks would deep a food desert.

We can stop being so taken aback by "black lives matter." If we didn't need to be reminded, there would be justice for Breonna Taylor, a Kentuckian like me, and countless others.

We can look for ways to preserve our heritage outside of lazily defending a flag with history steeped in racism and treason -- things like hewing a log, carving a bowl, learning a fiddle tune, growing a garden, raising some animals, canning our own food, hunting and processing the animal, fishing, blacksmithing, trapping and tanning the hide, sewing a quilt. And if we did things like that, we'd have a lot less time to argue, back and forth, over things we don't fully know backed by news we can't fully trust.

Childers ends the video by urging folks to come together.

Love each other, no exceptions. And remember, united we stand. Divided we fall.

Watch it all, below.




100 percent of the net proceeds from Tyler Childers' new album of will support underserved communities in the Appalachian region through the Hickman Holler Appalachian Relief Fund.

Readers, please consider donating. Water the good. This is certainly that.