Eric Church on His Most Surprising and Rebellious Music

It took an old song for Eric Church to discover the sound of his new album. In 2023, the country star was invited by Trombone Shorty to perform at his annual Jazz Fest aftershow, Treme Threauxdown. Backstage, the two spoke about how uncommon it was for artists to now blend guitars and brass despite the instruments’ intertwined histories. So Church went onstage and gave it a shot with “Cold One,” his 2014 breakup drinking song. “I have done ‘Cold One’ a thousand times, and I’d never done it like that,” he says. “They treated it in a New Orleans way. They added a lot of colors to it.”

Church brought that approach back to his studio. For his new album, Evangeline vs. the Machine, he augmented his road-tested country-rock with horns, orchestral strings, and even a choir. Though walking into a session featuring 45 musicians was new territory for the 47-year-old singer, he has always approached things a little differently. In the strictly regulated world of country music, Church made his name on breaking rules. He came onto the scene as a neo-outlaw who was inspired by rock music and sang about getting high. After he finally reached No. 1 with the crowd-pleasing arena-country of his third album, Chief, he threw out the playbook with his hard-rocking follow-up, The Outsiders. Most of the challenges he undertakes are for his listeners: surprise-releasing his 2015 album, Mr. Misunderstood, by mailing it to his fan club, or playing two marathon sets a night on his 2017 Holdin’ My Own tour.

That doesn’t mean the fans always receive it well — his acoustic-gospel headlining set at last year’s Stagecoach Festival disappointed many who expected loud, fully rendered versions of his hits instead of covers. But Church has never been content to coast, either. “It works if you can use the rope that you’re given to try to hang yourself,” he says. “I mean, I’ve spent a career doing that.”

Most complicated new song

“Darkest Hour” because I had initially written it about three keys lower than I recorded it. But I was listening to a lot of Jim Ford and Sly and the Family Stone at the time, and their falsettos intrigued me. So I just kept kicking the damn thing up. I was like, When does singing this become uncomfortable?

I’ve also got to give my producer, Jay Joyce, a lot of credit. I would send him a guitar and vocal of what I was thinking, and he would go in and add the strings and the horns. So when I walk in to hear what he put on “Darkest Hour,” there was this wedding march. It’s one of those things where you sit there and you go, What the fuck is — when does the song start? I never would’ve said when I wrote the song, “Let’s put flute on this motherfucker.” You listen back like, I never saw this coming.

Song you had to be convinced to add to Evangeline

The original project was six songs. It did not have “Hands of Time,” and it did not have “Rocket’s White Lincoln” so it had this tension. I was recently having this conversation with the head of iHeartCountry, Rod Phillips, about “Darkest Hour.” I called directly to ask for their help. I said, “I’m trying to raise money to help the people in North Carolina, and I need you to play this song.” And I’ll never forget this. He said, “I’ll do it. But the format needs you, and I need you to give me something that I can run with.”

So you have this artistic thing going, No, these six songs are who we are. But also I understood what he was saying. The question I went back to Jay with was “Here are ten songs. I think these are hits. What could maybe work?” Six of them didn’t work. But that’s where “Hands of Time” came from. I was like, We can make this the tip for peeling back the layers of this album.

Most surprising hit

One was “Smoke a Little Smoke” because when that song happened, country music was a soccer-mom format. Martina McBride, Sara Evans, Faith Hill — I mean, that was what was happening then. Marijuana was frowned upon. So to put that on the radio and its kind of working was a springboard to the Chief album.

The other one was “The Outsiders.” After Chief, we were surprisingly the biggest act in country. We had won Album of the Year, we had the biggest tour. So the next album, everybody’s paying attention. I wanted to do whatever the complete opposite was. I was like, Man, I don’t want to do anything where people can go, “It’s Chief Part II.” And we did one of those things with iHeartRadio where we give them a song and they’ve got to play it every hour. So we gave them “The Outsiders,” which is kind of prog-metal. I was in Florida with the family and I went to Walgreens to get something for my wife, and I was driving back and they were playing it. And when the band kicked in, I laughed out loud because I was like, I cannot believe this is getting played on country radio. It was an assault — it was so jarring and shocking.

Album that has to be heard front to back

My favorite record is Mr. Misunderstood. What drives me crazy now is artists who make an album with 30 songs and it just doesn’t have an arc. The artists I love, my Mount Rushmore people, their records have an arc. When I hear a song, I know it’s from Pet Sounds. That’s something we’ve gotten away from. I tell young artists, “I know you don’t believe this, but listen to the old guy: The long-term fans are going to gravitate to that journey and stay with you through that.”

I don’t think Mr. Misunderstood happens if you don’t make The Outsiders first — if you don’t purge what that is creatively. You get back to the singer-songwriter aspect. I mean, it’s got “Three Year Old.” I couldn’t make Mr. Misunderstood today. You can hear that album and know exactly where I was at that moment of my life. I think what makes a great album is you make it in that moment and it’s not something you can go back to. Like, Springsteen can’t do Born to Run but one time.

Hardest song to write

It was a song called “Why Not Me” after the Vegas shooting. It wasn’t hard from a technical standpoint. It was just hard from a standpoint of having to write the song. I played that Vegas show two nights before the shooting happened. And three nights later, I was at the Opry, and that’s when I debuted this song. I’ve never recorded it.

That moment in Vegas changed me; I’m still not over it. You come out and play songs and people react to them and you have this moment of communion and then bullets shatter that. I had fans die, and some were buried in our tour shirts. Even to this day, I’ve probably performed that song only four or five times. It’s hard to revisit that emotion. You do a lot of things in your career, but to say you played the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history is different. That’s not something you see coming.

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Sinners song you can’t believe you’re still playing

One of our biggest songs every night is “Pledge Allegiance to the Hag,” and that was never a hit. There are things that we can go, This is what the fan base is waiting on, and we can lean on those pillars.

We play so many songs off that album every night. “Sinners Like Me” or “These Boots” or “Hag” — I can’t play a show unless those songs are in the set. I was talking to a younger artist who’s a big artist, and he was like, “How many weeks was ‘Sinners Like Me’ No. 1?” And I laughed and I said, “Dude, that was never even a single.” He goes, “What? No, that was a hit. I grew up on that song.” I said, “I know you did.”

Song that shouldn’t have made an album

I’d made Sinners Like Me, and we go into Carolina and things weren’t going great. I’ve got a label going, “Listen, we need to have a hit or you’re not going to be here anymore.” I’m listening to the radio and everybody’s doing list songs at that time. “I love George Strait,” going down the list. And I was like, Well, shit, I can do that better than they’re doing it. So I went in and wrote “Love Your Love the Most.” And it’s fine, right? What’s funny to me is, the older we go in our career, the more fans react to that song. I never play it. When I do, the whole place goes nuts.

At the time, I was trying to just stay alive. If you listen to Carolina, that’s a great album artistically except there’s a few moments you can tell I’m kind of skating. I feel like “Love Your Love” and “Hell on the Heart” were me getting one more, two more breaths to get me to “Smoke a Little Smoke.” Both were top-ten hits, but as far as I can tell, both meant jack shit to my career. I’m not dogging the album. As a young artist, I was just playing the hand I was dealt, and I was not dealt a great hand. But if Sinners had been a blowout success, I don’t know that those songs make that album.

Collaborator you most want to get back in the studio with

I did “Working on the Highway” with Springsteen at Madison Square Garden. I never really got a chance to meet him before we walked onstage, but we’ve become friends. Later on, I was thinking about my residency and doing some acoustic things. So I ended up texting Bruce’s road manager — I didn’t have Bruce’s number — and said, “Hey, I need to talk to Bruce.” So I was driving out to some property I have in Nashville, and there’s a place out there where there’s a dead spot. So I’m turning right to go on a road, and the phone rings. As I’m turning around, it goes, “Bruce Springsteen is calling.” And I about wrecked my car, dude. I knew I was about to hit the dead spot, so I just pulled over on the side of the road in the worst spot of all time. Two of my tires were on the road. We talked for an hour, and it was the greatest hour I’ve ever had on the phone with someone. I have such respect for him. There’s so much there that I would love to mine in the studio or with two guitars across from each other.

Collaborator who feels like a friend

Morgan Wallen. We get along great, and we’re unabashedly honest with each other and I’m incredibly proud of him. I’m going to age myself, but when he decided he wanted to do this for a living, he was at one of my shows at Thompson-Boling Arena — it was his first concert. I’m sure he was probably 12 years old or something. He sat there and said, This is what I want to do. So there’s a mutual respect there. We’ve always kind of connected on a level that’s deeper than just music. You know why I kept working with him? Because I know him. I’ve said that the whole time: I have no problem with people getting in trouble if you know the heart of the person. For anybody who has a problem with that — and there’s been some that have — I’ve just said to them, “But you don’t know him. I do.” And look what’s happened, right? He’s been very important to country music.

First of all, he’s an incredible singer. A lot of people don’t understand how good he is. And he’s got a really good compass of what needs to happen in the moment. So he said, “Hey, I really want you on this album.” He sent me the song “Number 3 and Number 7,” and it was fantastic. He hit directly in the bull’s-eye of something I would do. This song’s a big-ass hit song, so I can’t wait for everybody to hear it.

We went on a golf trip about six weeks ago, and he was playing me the album. And we actually had a good talk about where he’s at in his career, in rare air. I’ve been there, but I’ve not been there. I said, “You’re in a place now where you gotta think about not the landing spot but where does this go? Don’t lose the artist in there.”

Most rebellious moment

We’ve had a bunch. One that’s sneaky smart is choosing our first singles off an upcoming project. For example, “Outsiders” or “Mr. Misunderstood.” I knew I had hit songs other than those. But if I let radio and the label and everybody hear the album, they’re going to say “Talladega” or “Round Here Buzz.” But because I didn’t let them hear it, we just gave them “Outsiders” and “Mr. Misunderstood,” and that’s what they had to play. We went, “You’ve got to play this because I think this matters.” Songs like that may only go to like, No. 35, but for that moment of time, they get exposure. A radio guy recently told me, “The most scared I am in my life is when you send your first single off the new album. Every time, it’s like, Oh, Jesus Christ.”

Joyce has produced every one of Church’s albums. All royalties from the song go to Hurricane Helene relief in North Carolina. Route 91 Harvest, the site of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. Both songs reached No. 10 on country radio, Church’s best showings by that point in his career. Church was one of the first major country artists to collaborate with Wallen after he said a racial slur on video in 2022. Wallen’s 2023 album, One Thing at a Time, was No. 1 on the all-genre Billboard 200 for 19 weeks, breaking Garth Brooks’s record for most weeks at No. 1 for a country album. He has earned 17 No. 1 songs on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart. Wallen’s upcoming fourth album, I’m the Problem, out May 16. In fact, “The Outsiders” hit No. 25 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart and “Mr. Misunderstood” hit No. 15.