In September of 2020, Tyler Childers released one of country music’s most powerful statements on racial injustice, his song “Long Violent History.” The track, driven by banjo and fiddle, put listeners squarely in the hills of Appalachia, where a “white boy from Hickman” may have had to sometimes deal with being derided as “belligerent” and “ignorant” — but never had to fear for his life. “Could you imagine just constantly worryin’/kickin’ and fightin’, beggin’ to breath?” he sang, drawing a line to the 2020 murder of George Floyd.

On Tuesday, the Kentucky songwriter gave the live debut of the song, nearly five years since its release, onstage at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. Seemingly, he was saving it for the right place and time. Childers found it in L.A., where the protests against the ongoing ICE raids targeting immigrants and the call-up of the National Guard by President Trump have roiled tensions in the U.S.

Childers closed his concert with “Long Violent History,” performing it solo with just his guitar — a bold statement by an artist during a time when protests, and even protest songs, can be considered “dangerous,” as Joan Baez recently told Rolling Stone.

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When Childers released “Long Violent History” in 2020, he did so with an accompanying straight-to-camera video, in which he addressed white, rural listeners and asked them to put themselves in the shoes of the persecuted and threatened.

“How would we react to that? What form of upheaval would that create?” he asked. “These are sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, and cousins, mothers and fathers. Irreplaceable threads within their family fiber torn from their loved ones too soon with no justice, and they are demanding change.”