Tyler Childers is one of those artists who so gracefully toes the line between being a bluegrass singer and leading a country band. It’s really a match made in heaven, but the glimpses of Childers indulging one of these two facets are made ever the sweeter by his balancing act. In this recent video release from Pickathon, Childers leads his song “Matthew” from behind an acoustic flat-top guitar, flanked by fiddle and banjo. The album version of the song stands to lose nothing, but this stripped-down performance on video is a testament to the songwriting prowess that Childers has built his career on. As Bob Dylan once said, “A song is anything that can walk by itself,” and Tyler knows that better than most. Like the Kentuckian has likely done countless times in his upbringing, Childers delivers it straight, not working too hard to bring extra frill or pomp to the song about a working man.
