Tyler Childers Ends Blossom’s Summer With Masterful Showmanship: Review

Blossom Music Center’s 2025 slate of summer concerts came to an end Tuesday night under one of the first rainy skies in weeks. After a string of warm-and-sunny days, it was a good reminder that the season will, eventually, change. 

Tyler Childers, whose On the Road tour stop still drew a sold-out crowd amidst the downpour, has gone through changes, too. Just ask the alt-country bros online.

The Kentucky native first garnered a significant following with his album Purgatory, which featured hits like "Feathered Indians" and "Whitehouse Road." The hard-living tunes matched his rough-around-the-edges look and intense performance style. Since then, he's expanded his sound as well as his lyrical themes, exploring spirituality, humor and reconciliation. Today's sober, skinny, short-hair Tyler is boring, internet trolls say. He’s too woke. The songs sound different, and the production is too weird. He’s abandoned his cocaine-and-chaos roots for sobriety and Jesus.

Even if he’s left some fans in the dust, Childers' star continues to rise. His most recent album, the Rick Rubin-produced Snipe Hunt is his most critically acclaimed. He last played in Northeast Ohio in 2023. Since then, he’s graduated from the 5,000-capacity Jacob’s Pavilion to Blossom Music Center, which fits more than 20,000.

In many ways, those who say he’s changed are right. Over the two-and-a-half hour show at Blossom, the red-headed songwriter almost seemed like a different performer. Those who saw him before 2020 might remember a serious long-hair who stood stationary and stared dead-eyed down the microphone into which he belted sad, angry songs. Stage banter was occasionally humorous but always nonchalant and blunt. 

Now, Childers is clean-cut and in his showman era, with elaborate production to match.

The show commenced with a video montage of his NPR Tiny Desk Concert, his Red Barn Radio performance and the many other career highlights that “old Tyler” bros watch over and over on YouTube. As the band jumped into “Eatin’ Big Time,” a swampy rocker that wrestles with Childers’ newfound fame, the lights went up to reveal a tiered, up-lit stage with old TV sets, glowing orbs and trinkets packed around the eight-piece band. The screen behind the band displayed unique graphics for each song, including stained glass chapel windows, a wooded bird hunt, a cityscape and a rabid dog. The visuals were far more ambitious than in his previous shows.

Childers’ stage presence has grown more exuberant, too, especially when he does not play guitar (still a weird sight for longtime fans). With nothing but a microphone in hand, the artist headbanged and stalked through that first song. In "All Yourn," he uses his hands to demonstrate the distance between the two lovers. Later in the set, Childers introduced “Bitin’ List,” a humorous romp about hypothetically using a rabies infection as a weapon against your worst enemy, with a silly, folksy sermon about the dangers of keeping all that hate pent up. He even laid down on the stage to relax as he delivered the soliloquy. The end of the song devolved into a barking, hollering, foaming-at-the-mouth moment of catharsis, for Childers and fans alike. The schtick can be a bit awkward, but it’s charming, nonetheless. 

The songs and subtly powerful performances that made Childers’ name had their place in the setlist, too. 

About midway through the set, Childers walked off stage and reappeared on a central B stage, where the lawn meets the pavilion. He played three songs alone, “Lady May,” “Shake the Frost" and "Nose on the Grindstone," with an acoustic guitar. A guitarist and fiddle player joined him for “Follow You to Virgie.” His voice is more powerful than ever. Performed simply, these songs, now a decade old are still moving, especially with 20,000 fans screaming along with every word. 

There were also the back-rubbing love songs, “All Yourn” and “In Your Love.” And though he no longer plays “Feathered Indians,” which he now deems insensitive to Native Americans, for whom he has played benefit shows, a sing along infected a crowd of a few hundred as we filed out of the venue and searched for our cars. 

The Food Stamps, as Childers calls his longtime band of friends and collaborators, remain the drivers of the Tyler Childers sound. Bassist and Pittsburgh native Craig Burletic steals the show with his fretless bass and waving, curly hair, but guitarists CJ Cain and Jesse Wells as well as drummer Rodney Elkins more than earn their keep. Childers first showed stage banter potential years ago when he started his hilarious band introductions, and it’s a tradition he keeps up to this day — as he should for a group that might just be the tightest band in country music. 

While the fan service moments delivered, Childers and his band seemed more energized by the newer songs. Somewhat surprisingly, his fans did, too. Two years ago, “Jersey Giant,” a decade-old throwaway song, randomly went viral, and Childers only recently added it to the setlist. It was cool to see but even that felt a little phoned-in compared to moments like “Dirty Ought Trill” and “Way of the Triune God.” “Whitehouse Road” took until the halfway jam to really kick into gear. 

So yes, a polished, comfortable and mature Childers has replaced the young, raw and reckless one. The production is bigger than ever and the musicianship is more professional. But the juxtaposition completes the narrative arc. While “I Swear (to God)” puts you in the middle of the regretful hangover, “Getting to the Bottom” is a rearview reflection of the angst that caused the behavior in the first place. It’s clearly two sides of the same character.

Setlist:

Eatin' Big Time

Getting to the Bottom

I Swear (to God)

Dirty Ought Trill

All Yourn

Oneida

Jersey Giant

Bitin' List

Poacher

Lady May

Shake the Frost

Nose on the Grindstone

Follow You to Virgie

Old Country Church

Whitehouse Road

Down Under

Honky Tonk Flame

Way of the Tribune God

Snipe Hunt

House Fire