Do you get excited to share the new things you learn with your friends and family? Maybe it’s a magic trick or something interesting from a documentary or your newly found love of downhill skiing.
This record is exactly like those things; Tyler Childers learned how to play the fiddle and he made a record to share his new talent with all of us.
Long Violent History is artwork meant to be experienced as a whole. This is mood music with a purpose. The entire record is designed to set your mind right to hear his protest message in the title track at the end of the record.
This album is a period piece. It sounds like the soundtrack to a PBS special about life in the hollers of West Virginia. This is not the type of music you will be jamming along to. This is coffee-sipping-while-in-a-rocking-chair-on-the-porch-in-the-cool-morning-air type music. This is the music John Denver would have listened to while relaxing and smoking marijuana.
Long Violent History is not the pickin’ and grinnin’ style of bluegrass. This record has an air of sophistication. The slow songs are relaxing, calming, and easy. The upbeat songs make me picture groups of people, with their heads held high, doing some sort of step dancing.
The feeling this album carries leads up to a protest song. It is a country protest song worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie. Thinking lyrically, the title track is as in your face as Rage Against The Machine or Run The Jewels.
Long Violent History is an incredible work of art. I hope that its message cuts through and reaches the people who need to hear it.
