Tyler Childers – Country Squire
2020 · Directed by Tony Moore
44K Likes
Best comments
1.“Animated Tyler looks like young Nigel Thornberry.”
More comments
- 2.“He must have gotten that jack stand from Harbor Freight.”
- 3.“Can't help but smile, even while lying back in a motel room buzzing on Jim Beam, recently separated from my wife... you're a hell of an artist, Tyler Childers!”
The story
Country Squire is the title track of Tyler Childers' 2019 album, produced by Sturgill Simpson and David R. Ferguson. The record went to number one on Billboard's country albums chart. The song is a love letter to his wife, the singer Senora May, wrapped around a beat-up old camper he's rebuilding by hand.
Comic book artist Tony Moore (Fear Agent, Deadpool, The Walking Dead) drew the album cover, then a comic, then got to direct this, his first music video. Welsh animation house Bomper Studio built it in CGI made to look like stop motion. Think Rankin/Bass Christmas special meets Wallace and Gromit. Cartoon Tyler plays bar gigs, makes it, courts Senora, buys the camper, and the two of them travel, raise a family and grow old together. Then it ends with a Jetsons-style trip to outer space. Why not.
It took about six months, January to June 2020, and the team finished it remotely once the pandemic hit. Same pandemic that cut short his tour with Sturgill. The easter eggs are thick: his guitar case wears stickers for Kelsey Waldon, Sturgill and his hero John Prine, plus Senora's name, and he drinks Ale-8, the Kentucky soda, out of its green bottle. Most of the characters are real people, his whole band included. Sweetest thing in the playlist, maybe.
