Every sport or activity has the moments of “I made it”. Football is the Super Bowl, World Cup for soccer, and winning a Grammy award is that moment for all musicians. Proud Appalachian natives Tyler Childers and his band The Food Stamps had their own I made it moment on February 1, 2026 when they won their first Grammy for Best Country Song for “Bitin’ List”.
The song is about contracting rabies and having a list of people you don’t particularly like. The single is on their latest album Snipe Hunter. The band was up for four awards total and was thrilled to accept the award as this is their first career win. They have been nominated previously, but have fell short, this is a wonderful way of teaching all of us that it doesn’t matter where you came from, you can always achieve your goals and it is never too late. It also teaches everyone to never give up hope and to continue doing the things that we love, even if it can get hard and discouraging sometimes.
It only takes one right song or move to reach your goals and achieve everything you want. Winning this award is a prime example of this. We all have the opportunity to be the best versions of ourselves if we continue to try, learn, and give it our all. The people we surround ourselves with also can always support and help us succeed.
Tyler Childers is from Eastern Kentucky originally, but owes and acknowledges a big part of his formative years were spent playing and cutting teeth in music in West Virginia, and places such as the Loud in Huntington or 123 Pleasant Street in Morgantown to name a couple were his biggest audiences. He also acknowledges that his band members, who some have been with him from the very beginning, were a big part of his success and a big part of helping him get the well deserved Grammy win. Rodney Elkins and James Barker are two of his band members who have been with him from the beginning who helped shape the sound Childers fans have come to love over the years, both of them being from parts of West Virginia like Huntington who have stuck true to their roots and have been proud of where they came from in every step of the way.
Tyler in fact released a song thanking his band and West Virginia as a whole on his new album titled “Cutting Teeth” talking about his early days playing small shows in West Virginia before he became the famous artist we know today and how the friends and band mates he made at the time have stuck with him. On top of his proud band mates, he is also bringing the Grammy award home to his management company WhizzbangBAM which is based in Huntington and his manager Ian Thorton and the whole crew who had worked with him throughout his journey. This is hopefully the first of many Grammy wins for Tyler and his band mates as they continue to move forward on the exciting and electric journey in music and hopefully the first of many big wins for his West Virginia friends and family as it sheds a light on the talent that the Appalachian region has to offer.