My heartstrings have been pulled…
I’ve never seen Tyler Childers live, which is something that pains me to admit. I had tickets for his tour with Sturgill Simpson back in 2020, you know the one that got interrupted by that virus thing that went around, and since then it just hasn’t timed out for me to get to one in person.
While I really don’t need any additional reason to make it work and get to a concert, videos like these just add icing to the cake and this particular one gets me holding back tears every time I see it.
Last year’s Railbird Festival in Lexington, Kentucky featured over 30 artists and there was no shortage of killer sets over spread over the 2 days and 3 stages, but a friend of mine who made the trip let me know that Tyler Childers closed his set by sending the band away, putting down the guitar, and making an emotional toast to a late friend of his by performing “Sour Mash” acapella.
Obviously, it’s a fitting song title to perform in the bourbon capital of the world but it holds a much greater significance to Childers than simply being a catchy tune.
Here’s how he introduced it at Railbird:
“This last one isn’t one of mine, it’s a Cory Branan song. It also holds a very special place in my heart because it’s one of the last songs that I got to sing to a friend of mine over at the (University of Kentucky) Markey Cancer Center before he passed.”
Heavy stuff…
He went on to lay down a beautifully rendition of the song despite clearly fighting back tears the entire time and holding out a shot despite being a somewhat recently sober man. (He dumped it out at the end).
Before one of the verses he says he doesn’t know how much Mike (the friend) would have enjoyed it because it talks about not wanting to drink moonshine, a beverage that Mike just so happened to make, and at previous shows, including one in Arkansas, he gave more details on the backstory of his late friend.
“Me and the fellas had a really good buddy. He was a moonshiner, he was a hippie, he was a travelling man, he was a brother.
After a two year fight with leukemia, he passed away. And I was thinking about all the times that we had, I remembered the first time I had met him, I remembered the first time that I really connected with him.
I was wigging out in the woods on mushrooms and I was walking down the road and he came by. Moonshine Mike, he was just this monster of a man…
And I remember looking at him being like “I know this guy, I’m pretty sure man.” He had this big Cheshire cat smile and was just like “Hey man”.
And then I went off and kept wandering around the woods and getting lost and ended up stumbling upon him and his still and him playing the mandolin. And we sat around the still and played “Red Haired Boy” and all kinds of fiddle tunes that night…
And as the world would have it I happened to be home when he was in the hospital in his last days and we were getting ready to come out with “Take My Hounds To Heaven.” And I got to show that to him.
He got to meet my boy. And me and CJ and Jesse got to play some fiddle tunes for him. That evening, they called hospice in and he went under and Sondra, his wife, said she was going to play my album until he left.
I was able to get to Lexington, I really wanted to be there with him… There were about 12 friends there and we started talking, you know Mike was always playing music…
I’d been listening to Cory Branan on the way there and thinking about this particular song and how fitting it was for Mike. But I did not play it on guitar and I also thought it sounded so cool acapella.
So we were thinking we should turn off the music, there’s plenty of musicians here, we should play some music. So, I was like “I’ll start.”
I got to play two songs for Mike, one I was playing when he passed and this is the one I started the song round out with and I sang this at his funeral.”
Truly, truly heartbreaking stuff. Everyone has been affected in some way by cancer and there’s really nothing you can say that makes it any better. It just flat out sucks.
Tyler Childers is truly one of the best musicians in the business but an even greater friend.
Here’s the performance from Railbird.
And here’s the performance from Arkansas where he told the full story of him and Moonshine Mike..
