Tyler Childers closed the spring leg of his On The Road tour at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, CA on Tuesday evening the only way he knows how: raw, rowdy, and unapologetically real. Case in point: for most of the night, Childers turned L.A.’s toniest venue into the loudest hunting lodge this side of the Mississippi, a down-home revival with 17,000 whiskey-soaked cousins. For the final song, however, he made a powerful comment on this point in space with the first-ever live performance of his 2020 anti-racism protest song, “Long Violent History”, as U.S. military troops faced down U.S. civilians in the streets of L.A. amid widespread protests against the recent spate of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) raids and the xenophobia that fueled them.

The night kicked off in beautifully weird fashion with an opening set from SOMA, an ensemble from New Jersey that has collaborated with Tyler and, on this night, dished out devotional chants with enough groove to get a few boots tapping. Think George Harrison meets the Bonnaroo parking lot. It was unexpected, oddly perfect, and a spiritual palate cleanser before Texas songwriting legend Robert Earl Keen reminded everyone how to tell a story with six strings and a sly grin. “The Road Goes on Forever” never gets old, and neither does Keen, who brought his trademark twang and wisdom to a crowd that soaked up every verse like good bourbon.

Then came the star of the show. After an intro video of Tyler at a barber shop waxing poetic on hunting and heartbreak, an older gentleman stepped up to read a tender essay about discovering Childers’ music. This moment framed the night not as a show, but as a love letter to the journey that brought all there.

When the stage lights hit and the nine-piece ensemble known as The Food Stamps came rumbling to life with a blistering cover of “Trudy” by The Charlie Daniels Band, it was clear this wouldn’t be a quiet country evening.

It was off to the races from there. “Rustin’ in the Rain” rolled like a hayride through heartache, and “Country Squire” turned into a fiddle-fueled barn-burner, with Tyler and his band swapping instruments like moonshine at a family reunion. Every player had a moment to shine, from pedal steel glimmers and keys that bordered on gospel to guitar solos that straight-up howled.

Tyler’s signature mix of poetic sincerity and barroom stomp found its perfect groove with “I Swear (To God)”, a bluegrass rave-up that hit full hoedown mode with a surprise tease of “In the Summertime” by Mungo Jerry. “All Your’n” followed, a slow dance under the stars that had couples swaying, and “Purgatory” dropped in some funky low-end work from the bass and keys—an Appalachian jam band moment, if ever there was one.

Halfway through the show, Tyler pulled a literal walkabout, trekking up to the middle of the Bowl for an acoustic interlude among the people. “I was worried about y’all up here,” he joked, “so I figured I’d come check on ya.” He summoned tears of emotion with “Lady May”, his love letter to his wife, then soothed them with the steadfast wisdom of “Shake the Frost”.

Tyler’s guitarist and fiddler band came up into the stands to join him for “Nose on the Grindstone”, the gritty live Childers staple that recently got the studio treatment as the first single on his new LP, Snipe Hunter, due out July 25th. The track was (and is) infused with Bob Dylan protest-song DNA and modern urgency, a haunting melody wrapped in fury and fire. They stuck around among the crowd for “Follow You to Virgie”, making the show feel like a living-room singalong writ large.

“I’m amazed there’s this many people in California who want to come watch a bunch of hillbillies,” he deadpanned, causing the crowd to roar.

Related: All Of The Clues About Tyler Childers’ New Album [Videos]

Back on stage, Childers tore through Hank Williams’ “Old Country Church” and his own raucous “Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven?” complete with funky keyboard runs, thundering percussion, and band intros that could’ve doubled as a comedy routine. By the time “Whitehouse Road” hit with a trippy, psychedelic jam tacked on, the Bowl had turned into a roadhouse fever dream.

With “Way of the Triune God” and “Universal Sound” he leaned into the spiritual side, disco ball spinning overhead like an Appalachian church dance. Then came “House Fire”, made literal with a projection of a home burning behind the band, and the aching beauty of “Heart You’ve Been Tendin’”. For the encore, Tyler pulled out “Two Coats”, then brought SOMA back out for a meditative Hare Krishna chant in the same spot where he’d done his acoustic set.

But he had one important song left to play. With the words to German pastor Martin Niemöller’s post-WWII confessional “First They Came” projected behind the band—a powerful parable warning against remaining silent on injustice until it’s too late to act—Tyler Childers grounded the surreal evening in the here and now with his first-ever live performance of “Long Violent History”, the closing salvo from his mostly-instrumental 2020 “fiddle album” of the same name.

Released amid the protests surrounding the killings of George Floyd and other unarmed Black men and women by law enforcement, “Long Violent History” was intended as an appeal to people not directly facing injustice to stand with those who are. As Childers questioned of his “white, rural listeners” in a lengthy video statement at the time, “What if we were to constantly open up our daily paper and see a headline like ‘East Kentucky Man Shot Seven Times on a Fishing Trip?’ 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. 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?”

The anti-racism song’s somber lyrics, crafted in presciently open-ended fashion in 2020, seemed to speak directly to the I.C.E. protests going on that night in Los Angeles, where U.S. Marine and National Guard troops had been deployed against people protesting institutional persecution on racial and ethnic grounds.

A smoldering Childers took no joy in the inevitability of the words he wrote five years ago as he sang: “It’s the worst that it’s been since the last time it happened / It’s happening again right in front of our eyes.”

Below, watch Tyler Childers debut “Long Violent History” at Hollywood Bowl and scroll through a gallery of photos from the night via Randall Michelson/Live Nation-Hewitt Silva. Following a brief break from the road and the release of the new album, Snipe Hunter, Childers and company will head out on a lengthy summer tour. Find tickets to upcoming Tyler Childers tour dates here.

Tyler Childers – “Long Violent History” (Debut) – 6/10/25