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Los Angeles Times
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Eric Church on his New Orleans-inspired new album and that polarizing Stagecoach set
Nearly 25 years after he moved to Nashville to make it as a country musician, Eric Church can count among his achievements 11 No. 1 country radio hits, five platinum-or-better albums, four CMA Awards and one six-story bar on Nashville's crowded Broadway called Chief's. (You'll remember the bar's opening weekend last year, when Church's pal Morgan Wallen was arrested for hurling a chair off the roof.) Chief's is just one of several business pursuits Church has undertaken lately, along with a line of whiskeys, co-ownership with Wallen of the Field & Stream brand and a minority stake in the NBA's Charlotte Hornets. Yet this week the singer and songwriter, who will turn 48 on Saturday, returns to music with 'Evangeline vs. the Machine,' his first album since 2021. Produced by his longtime collaborator Jay Joyce, 'Evangeline' moves away from the hard-rocking sound of earlier tunes like 'Springsteen,' 'Give Me Back My Hometown' and the weed enthusiast's 'Smoke a Little Smoke' toward a lusher, more orchestral vibe complete with strings, horns and a choir. 'Johnny' is a kind of response song to the Charlie Daniels Band's 1979 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia,' while 'Darkest Hour' offers help to someone in need — an idea Church actualized last year when he said he'd donate royalties from the song to victims of Hurricane Helene in his native North Carolina. The LP, which closes with a spooky rendition of Tom Waits' 'Clap Hands,' follows Church's controversial headlining performance at 2024's Stagecoach festival in Indio, where he and more than a dozen gospel singers blended the singer's originals with spirituals like 'Amazing Grace' and 'I'll Fly Away' and far-flung covers including Al Green's 'Take Me to the River' and Snoop Dog's 'Gin and Juice.' ('This is Friday night, not Sunday morning!' I recall one guy near me shouting in frustration after half an hour or so.) Church, who's married with two sons — and who will take 'Evangeline' on tour this fall, including a Nov. 15 stop at Inglewood's Intuit Dome — called from Nashville to talk about the Stagecoach set, the new album and his hobnobbing with billionaires. You opened Chief's a little over a year ago. What are the headaches you've run into as a business owner?S—, there's been a bunch of those. I think just managing the messaging of why we're different than other places. Listen, it's been a roaring success — maybe the best bar down there. But we're leaning into songwriter shows and shows by upcoming artists versus being somewhere to hear 'Friends in Low Places' and get blackout drunk. The biggest challenge is just trying to make sure that people know what it is when they walk in the room. Take me back to the Morgan Wallen of it called me from the street after it happened. I was watching college basketball, and he said, 'Hey, this just happened.' I said, 'Uh-oh.' I knew it was gonna be noisy, and it was — it was damn noisy. The next day on Fox News, the No. 1 story was Morgan throwing a chair, and No. 2 was Israel and Gaza. But you just kind of roll with it. It was actually a good thing for Mo. I think that was a line for him, and he's done really well since then — it was a thing he's reacted positively to as a person. I used the old Billy Joe Shaver line on him: 'I'm just an old chunk of coal, but I'll be a diamond one day.' He went down [to Chief's] and apologized to the staff, shook everybody's hand. I was proud of him. What motivated you to get involved with these extramusical endeavors?For me, it was COVID. All of a sudden, you can't play shows, and I just remember thinking, I need to do a better job of widening out what I do. Any entrepreneurial models in your mind?Jay-Z's done a great job. When I did the national anthem at the Super Bowl with Jazmine Sullivan [in 2021], I remember I was like, 'How does all this work?' And they said, 'Jay-Z runs it.' I went, 'What do you mean?' They said, 'Jay-Z runs the entertainment at the Super Bowl.' OK, well, that's f— cool. I'm in the Hornets with J. Cole — he's another guy that's done a really good job. Artists who get to a high level, they have these opportunities because they have the Rolodex. They meet people at shows, they meet people backstage. For me, I play golf with 'em. You've got Fortune 500 guys and billionaires and CEOs, so what do you actually do with that opportunity? Ten years ago, would you have seen yourself hanging out with rappers and billionaires?Negative [laughs]. Couple of questions about Stagecoach last year before we get into the new album. I was there that night —So you were the one. It was a polarizing gig.F— that — it was great. PBS did a documentary, and there's a moment midway through the show where you can actually see me start to grin. I'm like, this is going interesting. But as soon as it was over, I went back and listened to 'Springsteen' a cappella in 30-mile-an-hour winds that night, and I knew it was good. If it wasn't good, I would've had a problem. I kind of knew going in: This is probably not the place for this show. I'd played Stagecoach five or six times — you know there's gonna be 30,000 TikTokers out there on people's shoulders trying to take pictures of themselves. But I did it because it was the biggest megaphone and it would get the biggest reaction. Maybe it's because it happened right after Beyoncé's 'Cowboy Carter' came out, but I got the impression that one of your goals with the performance was to draw attention to the Black roots of country I was trying to show an arc musically — that this goes way back. I was trying to show where it all began. And I mean, maybe it was a little bit of a 'f— you.' I know we ran people off. But it wasn't for the people that left — it was for the ones that stayed. I got a text from Lukas Nelson the following day. He was there with his surf buddies. He said, 'We came in from Maui, and I just want to tell you that reminded me so much of my dad.' He said, 'I put my arms around my buddies, and we all sang along.' I thought, well, he probably had plenty of room. What would you say not to a hater but to an Eric Church fan — someone who did stay for the show but just didn't get it?What I hope fans understand is that it would have been easy for me to do what a lot of artists do and take too much money to come play the hits, then get back on the plane and go home. But I actually thought, I respect this festival enough that I'm gonna work my ass off for a month. I didn't just the day before go, 'Let's do this.' I know the effort that went into it. And what we gave you, good or bad, was a show you're never gonna see again. People talk about Dylan going electric at Newport, but in the moment that didn't go well for Dylan. He was booed — people threw s—. But now that's a paradigm shift, right? You and I are going, 'F—, I wish I was there.' Ten years from now, people are gonna go, 'I was at that Stagecoach show, and I stayed till the end.' Would you do it again?Oh, hell yeah. Tomorrow. I hear 'Evangeline vs. the Machine' as being on a continuum with but I'll tell you where it started. Trombone Shorty came and played a show with me in New Orleans on the Gather Again tour [in 2022], and we ended up in the dressing room after and got in this incredible conversation about brass instruments and string instruments and the history of music. Later he invited me to come play this show he does during Jazz Fest. There were probably two white people onstage that night: me and Steve Miller. So we do my song 'Cold One' and [the Beatles'] 'Come Together.' I've done 'Cold One' a thousand times, but I had never done 'Cold One' like that. It was a Black New Orleans band with horns and background singers and a violin player — not Juilliard violin but like a janky New Orleans violin. The dude had the damn thing on his shoulder, not under his chin. Everything was wrong for what that song is. I'm not convinced anyone even knew the song [laughs]. But we found our spot in the middle of it, and it was killer. I flew home thinking: I want to do a record this way. Your falsetto in 'Darkest Hour' — it's almost uncomfortably song actually started three or four keys lower. But I was listening to Jim Ford and Sly & the Family Stone — honestly, I was thinking about Andy Gibb — and I just kept moving it up. I was incredibly insecure the first time in the studio, but I think that insecurity is what led to the authenticity of the emotion. You've said you wrote 'Johnny' after the Covenant School shooting in Nashville in 2023. Do you envision the song reassuring a listener or making them angry?Maybe both? The hardest thing I've ever done in my life is dropping my boys off at school the day after the shooting. I sat in the parking lot for I don't even know how long because I didn't know what to do. Do I stay here just in case? Not like I could do anything. But just to be close. And for whatever reason, Charlie Daniels came on. What hit me was that the devil was not in Georgia — he was here in Nashville. Why finish the record with a Tom Waits cover?I had four years off [between albums], and I wrote a ton of songs. And a bunch of them are hit songs. I don't mean that arrogantly — I just know after this amount of time that they're hit songs. But some of them didn't work with the room and with the instrumentation. We were going in [the studio] at 10 o'clock the next morning, and I was watching some show on Netflix, and 'Clap Hands' came on. All of a sudden, I was like, 'Oh, s—…' I paused it, grabbed my guitar, laid down just me with the riff and sent it to Jay. I said, 'What about this?' He goes, 'See you at 10,' and we cut it the next morning. What's your relationship with weed these days?Mainly edibles. I don't really smoke anymore. And edibles are interesting — you have to learn that environment because you never know how it's gonna work out. Gimme a circumstance where you'd be like, 'All right — I'll do this again.'When a certain person passes you a joint, I'm gonna smoke it. I was on Willie [Nelson]'s bus one night. Toby Keith came up — this was when he was alive. Robert Earl Keen was up there. Lance Armstrong was up there. It was a whole vibe. I think I was high for a month. You played tribute concerts in L.A. last year honoring Jimmy Buffett and Robbie Robertson.I've done a bunch of those tribute shows — too many of them — but those guys meant the world to me. Jimmy and I were campmates at a club out there in California, so I spent a lot of time with him. At some of these tributes you'll be like the one country guy on the funny is that backstage everybody's the same. I'll tell you this story: At the Jimmy show, I was standing side-stage watching the Eagles with my wife. Paul McCartney was about to come out, and a guy comes up and says, 'Hey, when Paul comes out, just kind of hug the wall, because Paul likes to have a clear lane.' No big deal — it's Paul McCartney. So I hug the wall and Paul comes out. He's watching the Eagles, and I look back and we kind of lock eyes. I'm uncomfortable [laughs]. Then he walks up to me and he goes, 'Eric.' I said, 'Yeah?' He goes, 'Jimmy and I played tennis together, and he thought the world of you. You wanna come sing 'Hey Jude' with me?' I'd thought he was gonna say, 'Could you please move further to the left and get the f— out of my way?' And instead he's asking if I want to sing with him. I was like, 'Yes, Sir Paul, I would love to come sing 'Hey Jude' with you.' So me and Brandi Carlile and a few others, we went out and sang with Paul McCartney. That's one of those moments where you go, 'What the f— am I doing here?'
USA Today
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Eric Church gets candid about music, politics and how Vegas festival shooting changed him
Eric Church gets candid about music, politics and how Vegas festival shooting changed him Show Caption Hide Caption Country singer Eric Church talks about his love for Western North Carolina Country singer Eric Church talks about his love for Western North Carolina, hard hit by Tropical Storm Helene, during a trip to Banner Elk Oct. 31, 2024. If you're talking to Eric Church, you've found a steadfast spirit devoted to the resonance of music. He isn't interested in churning out quick hits or viral bait for social media. He wants to make music that matters. His just-released album, 'Evangeline vs. the Machine,' his first since 2021, is flooded with meaning despite only being 36 minutes across eight songs In the opening 'Hands of Time,' Church, who turns 48 on May 3, acknowledges the realities of aging with a wink by namechecking songs from AC/DC, Bob Marley, Meat Loaf and other artists who spoke to him in his youth. The album's title spotlights the battle between technology's soullessness and a creative muse, which he explains in the song 'Evangeline' ('Take me down to the water/dunk my head into the river/raise your hands, all hail rock 'n' roll'). 'The way people consume music, it puts chains on creativity,' Church says from his home in Nashville. 'The more machines involved in our lives, whether tech or phones or AI, the less life we're able to experience.' Church will bring his omnipresent dark glasses and his new round of rock-rooted country songs along with favorites such as 'Smoke a Little Smoke," 'Springsteen,' and 'Drink in My Hand' to arenas around the country starting Sept. 12 in Pittsburgh. Tickets for the Free the Machine tour, with guests Elle King, Marcus King Band and Wesley Godwin, are on sale at 10 a.m. local time on May 9 via The concerts, Church says, will 'start out in a big way and move to me and a guitar … go from big to small.' In a thoughtful conversation, Church elaborated why he writes albums for his '10-year-old self,' is 'bored' by the chaos of politics and why he has no regrets after last year's polarizing Stagecoach performance. More: AC/DC storms back on Power Up tour, the band's first US trek in nearly a decade Question: Both 'Evangeline' and 'Hands of Time' have some great classic song references. Are those songs also about the importance of music in your life? Answer: One thousand percent. Music is the way I've dealt with anything good or bad in my life. I'm a fan first. Music was this siren for me at an early age and has always been the thing I've leaned on when I've had struggles, devastation, triumphs. A lot of those inspirational artists show up on this album. You think about the way they committed themselves to their art and I see that lacking today, that care and thoughtfulness. Do you think it's because the process of putting out music has changed? I do. A lot of artists nowadays, you write a song on Tuesday and put it out Friday. There's this flooding the zone. I'm an album kid and I still know it's the right way. We're going through a period that a lot of people aren't listening to an album front to back. I see this with my kids that music becomes something happening in the background versus something that really affects them emotionally and artistically. And it definitely wasn't just a background for you growing up. For me, it was something you committed yourself to and spent 45 minutes listening to that artist. You didn't have the TV on or weren't sitting there on your phone. When I make an album, I do it for my 10-year-old self who would have listened front to back. I don't have a desire to make a song or two, here or there. I have to have something to say. That's what inspires me. That's what gives me my why. Even if I'm the guy yelling at clouds, I don't care. I still believe if you're going to be a longtime artist in the business and have a loyal fan base who you can play to in your 20s and your 50s, you have to build your career around albums. The French horn that segues into 'Evangeline' sounds like an homage to the Rolling Stones' 'You Can't Always Get What You Want.' Is it? (Laughs) Two things I didn't see coming on this album were the French horn and the flute! Yeah, there's a lot of Stones and a lot of The Band, who I also love. A lot of the music on this record comes from the Stagecoach show last year, when instead of a regular show, it was just me and a choir. It might not have been the exact spot for it, but also the perfect spot because it got the biggest megaphone and was a one-of-a-kind show. At a festival where a lot was about 30,000 TikTokers and the whole 'look at me' stuff, we wanted to do something that would last for fans, and that's when I started thinking about the orchestral parts for the album. The enjoyment I got from that show was really doubling down on creativity. The more success you have, the more rope you have and I believe in using every strand of that rope. You wrote 'Johnny' after the Covenant School shooting in Nashville in 2023. Do you ever worry what some in your fan base will think about songs that take a stand against anything to do with guns? No. I've been very upfront about this. I'm an artist who played the deadliest mass shooting in history in Vegas (2017's Route 91 Harvest Festival, where 60 people were killed and more than 400 injured), and we lost a lot of fans at that. I own guns and am a Second Amendment guy, but I never really had a viewpoint one way or another until Vegas. When you leave something like that, it changes your viewpoints. I'm still a Second Amendment guy, but when it came to 'Johnny' and school shootings, I've always said about the Vegas shootings, those wounds don't heal, they scab over. When something else happens – and it is inevitable ‒ it rips the scabs off and they bleed again. And 'Johnny' came to you after dropping your sons (Boone, now 13, and Tennessee "Hawk", now 10) off at school? The school they go to is a mile from Covenant and the hardest thing I've ever done is drop them off the day after the shooting. I remember pulling off in the parking lot after they got out and I sat there and didn't want to leave. I looked to my left and to my right and there were four or five other parents doing the same thing. There was a helplessness and fear to that. As fate would have it, 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia' was on the radio and the lyric that jumped out at me was, 'Johnny rosin up your bow and play your fiddle hard because hell has broke loose in Georgia and the devil deals the cards. If you win, you get this shiny fiddle made of gold. If you lose, the devil gets your soul.' I remember thinking, if it were only true that the devil was just in Georgia, but he's everywhere, wreaking havoc. Johnny kept rolling through my head, how we need that hero to fight the devil, and I went home and the song just fell out of me. More: Bryan Adams on new tour with Pat Benatar, 'the power' of Tina Turner and his rescue dog I'm sure it will resonate with a lot of people. I think it's my job. I'm not an overly political person. Politics, in general, bore me. It's nonsense and chaos and makes my eyes and ears bleed, no matter what side you're on. My viewpoints, a lot of times, are derived from things I've experienced and I did play Vegas and had fans killed and then played the Grand Ole Opry three days later and left seats open in memory of them. I've had those personal moments of loss and hurt, and when something else happens, like Covenant, the emotion was a little deeper and I was back in that same spot. You wrote 'Darkest Hour' before Hurricane Helene devastated part of your home state of North Carolina last year, but immediately released it and directed all royalties from the song to those affected. What was it like for you to play the benefit Concert for Carolina in October? We still spend half our year in North Carolina and the community we were in was destroyed. We had just recorded the song and I felt that this needs to be out now. So we gave it to the people in perpetuity and that led to the concert, which is the most important musical thing I've done as far as concerts. The emotion of that night, the artists who came together, the quality of the music for 80,000 people … that's when music is at its best, when it's making a difference.
