Purgatory

Since he was 20, Childers has gained a reputation for his vivid music by touring incessantly from Ohio to Tennessee and onward throughout the South and the Midwest.

He worked on his blend of bluegrass and hard country with his band, The Food Stamps, and sometimes performed with Sonora May, the lady whom he eventually wed, and whose grounding influence he celebrates throughout Purgatory.

"Well, my buckle makes impressions on the inside of her thigh / There are little feathered Indians where we tussled through the night," he sings in his slightly rough, slightly sweet low tenor on "Feathered Indians," one of several songs that celebrates physical love and the emotional connection that comes of it when it's treated right. Purgatory is supposed to be a concept album about Childers' growth from young troublemaker to centered, married man. But the frame's not really necessary. His stories may be autobiographical or not; they feel lived in, and that's what matters.

— NPR