Both Billy Strings, Tyler Childers Announce New 2026 Tour Dates

Just like Sturgill Simpson, Tyler Childers has mostly squandered the solemn opportunity of using opening slots to seed appeal in important up-and-coming artists. Luke Combs and Eric Church do a better job with this than Tyler and Sturgill. Evan Honer is a decent artist, but Tyler’s openers for this tour are mostly set up to bolster his ticket sales as opposed to being a stepladder for worthy talent.

I wouldn’t lump Sturgill in with Tyler on this. Sturgill plays 3+ hour
‘’Evenings with” shows that require no openers at all. He essentially opens for himself. It’s not like he’s having the wrong acts open for him. He’s just having nobody open for him. I happen to love that.

Look, I published this article to profile the new dates from Billy Strings and Tyler Childers, not to start criticizing Tyler and Sturgill for their openers, or lack thereof. It’s not such an offense that I would write a dedicated article about it. But even before Sturgill’s “An Evening With…” that I totally respect, he was booking comedians to open for him, DJs to open for him. He told me personally at one point he didn’t want to have another musician open for him, though he did allow Fantastic Negrito to open some shows, because he though he was cool.

This circles back to my article about Austin City Limits. Someone has to provide those stepping stone opportunities for artists to find their fans. Whether it’s opening for Sturgill or Tyler, or appearing on Austin City Limits as an Austin-based musician, if those opportunities don’t exist, or they’re all taken by the Jon Batiste’s of the world, we’re never going to launch any new artists, which by the way, is not happening virtually at all at the moment music industry wide.

One of the first times I saw Sturgill Simpson perform it was opening for Charlie Robison. Charley Crockett got his start opening for the Turnpike Troubadours. Cody Jinks got his start opening for Whitey Morgan. This is how music is supposed to work.

And what the F#$& is Wednesday? Someone told me that’s the girl from the Netflix Adam’s Family show. I can’t google “Wednesday” + “musical artists” to confirm or not. That’s how far out and unrecognizable this has gotten. Tyler was my favorite artists from Bottles and Bibles – 2025, but I can’t see me spending a dime on any of this right now.

Ive sat through some pretty awful openers in the name of up and comers before… im sorry but I find S.G. Goodmans music to be nails on a chalkboard but she keeps getting opening slots, but I think you fail to separate Jon Batiste the media personality from the really good new orleans artist he is… and just like with bringing on new artists theres some value in bringing in big names for a headliner show (like when Zach Bryan brought Jason Isbell in Foxboro, or American Aquarium touring with Turnpike to support Evan Felker).

What on earth are you talking about? Wednesday isn’t going to bolster Tyler’s ticket sales. They’re much much less popular than him and are exactly the kind of country-ish rock band that could benefit from the support of his audience.

Genuinely puzzled by such an inaccurate comment. Do you jut not like them because of their close relationship with Drive By Truckers? Whom you obviously have some kind of strange, unexplained vendetta against.

Wednesday has been very important these last few years in regard to re-legitimizing Country music’s influence and importance in the Alt-Rock and Indie scenes, I see no reason to second guess them as openers for Tyler.

I have absolutely positively no idea who Wednesday is, and had a similar experience to Hoptowntiger when trying to figure that out. Blame me for that if you want. Wasn’t meaning to slag them or anyone else. And I have a vendetta against the Drive-By Truckers all of a sudden? News to me. I will check Wednesday out.

If you don’t know who they are, why comment that Tyler isn’t helping out up and coming acts? I believe I’d look into these things before I just gave an uninformed opinion. Wednesday is one of the biggest current Alt-Country adjacent indie acts. That you aren’t aware of their recent surge in popularity is frankly surprising.

I think it’s a little weird that there is so much frustration for including Jon Batiste for the 2 stadium shows where Childers might need another recognizable name to fill seats, but he isn’t getting credit for including artists that appear to have very little following, like Wednesday and Scott T Smith.

I don’t know their music, or how well they fit with the Childers crowd, but I think saying, “Tyler Childers has mostly squandered the solemn opportunity of using opening slots to seed appeal in important up-and-coming artists” seems unfair based on this list of openers.

Just book other Kentucky songwriters who could use the attention and would fit well in the frame of Tyler’s music like John R. Miller, Kelsey Waldon, or Ian Noe. That’s my only point. This isn’t a hill I’m looking to die on. Don’t really know the other folks except for Jon Batiste that seems to constantly be in my feed, and who seems like a nice dude and a fine artist, but not exactly sure why he’s constantly in my universe, and seems to always been there when opportunities are NOT going to others.

Wednesday has been dominating a lot of “best rock albums of 2025” lists from major rock publishers this month and have been selling out club venues across the country all year. Though maybe unknown within the country music scene, they’re known in rock scene and they’ll definitely draw a crowd and help bolster Childers’ “street cred” with the hipster/NPR crowd – which, believe it or not, is a large market. But we’ve known Childers was heading in that direction for a while now.

Tyler Childers was featured on an Anthony Bourdain episode 8 years ago… whether or not you like that, hes been in with this crowd for his entire career

Question is, which of them is going to play Jersey Giant?
I do see your point but Wednesday fucking rocks, and Jon Batiste is legitimately a musical genius so personally I would love to see either of them open for him.

Claiborne my comment (which was tagged with the universal & tag for sarcasm) was in response to Triggers ACL post from yesterday lamenting that “Jon Batiste a musician from New York” was invited to play ACL

I saw Tyler Childers for the first time perform in London last month and his openers were not country and in my opinion not nearly good enough. I thought he missed a real opportunity to give some country acts a real opportunity. However, Tyler more than exceeded my expectations and put on a superb 2 hour show. Very entertaining. His openers might not be up to much but he is well worth seeing and definitely country.

Baffling comments Trigger is making by claiming Childers isn’t giving “up and coming” acts a chance as openers when he has Wednesday (an indie band) opening for him at baseball fields. Even more baffling that Trigger goes on to insist he’s never heard of the band. They’re easily the biggest alt country adjacent act to emerge in the last 5 years or so, a blend of Drive By Truckers, shoegaze, and grunge essentially (though to be clear, not even remotely an actual country act). Sure, the most traditional country sites likely are ignoring them but pretty much every other major publication has been spamming them to death.

Their last two albums appeared on basically every year end list. Album of the Year’s list aggregate (an aggregation of nearly 100 year end lists). currently has them as the 6th most acclaimed album of 2025.

The band and its members (MJ Lenderman is a band member on top of his solo career) have performed on most major late night shows and regularly tour 2000+ capacity venues.

Again, I’m not here to slag anybody. I spoke out of turn about Wednesday, and without and real knowledge of them, and I acknowledge and apologize for that. Who I primarily was speaking about was Jon Batiste who’s name regularly comes up when it comes to artists taking important opportunities away from roots artists. A few year ago, the Americana community was up in arms when he won a couple of Americana Grammy Awards. He’s been nominated for two more this year, and very well might win them. This is not even any offense to Jon Batiste, it’s about slotting people in the right places so that opportunities are leveraged optimally. And I’m far and away not the only one complaining about this in the industry. “Indie rock” bands are taking slots away from roots artists at festival, on tours, they’re encroaching in the Americana radio format in ways that make it difficult for roots artists to break.

When you describe a band as, ” a blend of Drive By Truckers, shoegaze, and grunge essentially” that’s just not something that’s going to automatically fall into the purview of a country music website, or country fans. I’ll put my breadth of knowledge on roots music up against anyone’s. But nobody is omniscient. I’m going to focus on the country and roots bands who put country and roots first, and let the Pitchfork crowd field everything else. I do promise to get boned up on Wednesday though, if only to be more informed moving forward.

I never heard of Wednesday before Tyler’s tour was announced. The crack about the Netflix series Wednesday I took from the comments on Tyler’s social media accounts (apparently that actress is in a band). About 50% of the commenters on Tyler’s social media platforms never heard of Wednesday either. And when you google something as generic as “Wednesday” and music the search brings back countless options.

Trig has sacrificed 15 years of sweat, blood, and words to promote country music. I don’t think it’s out of line for him to suggest one of the biggest names in country music does the same.

Source: savingcountrymusic.com