Church brings back live music, enjoyment to Nationwide Arena
Arena shows are back, and fans are ready.
“693 days since I’ve seen Eric Church ,” read a sign held by a fan on the crowded floor surrounding the stage, which was placed smack in the middle of a packed Nationwide Arena on Saturday night, where the outlaw-country rocker was performing on the second stop of a planned 55-city tour.
Jennifer Hatfield, 42, drove with her husband from their home in Buffalo, New York, to see the show.
“It’s great to have live music again,” she said. “Usually, we go to five or six shows a year, but this is the first one we’ve been to since COVID.”
Last night was the third time Jennifer Schuster, 56, of Marysville had been to a Church concert.
“I’ve been working 12 days straight at Kroger, and I got today off, so I was just hoping they wouldn’t cancel the show,” she said. “We got the shots, and we’re just hoping things can open up again.”
Lisa Rager, 56, of Buckeye Lake, attended the concert with her daughter and one of her daughter’s friends. This was her fifth time seeing Church perform.
“We’re loving it. He’s our favorite,” she said.
Church strolled through the crowd with no fanfare, hopped onto the stage, and proceeded to play two long sets, with no opening act and seemingly no sweat.
“I’m just trying to break the record for the number of songs I sing tonight,” he said, to the approval of the audience.
The show featured bells and whistles, including strobe lights and red spotlights, four giant screens suspended over the stage, plenty of fog, and a drum set that rotated and moved around the stage. But the emphasis was solidly on the music.
Church, who is famous for never playing the same show twice, treated the arena like his own personal honkytonk, keeping the evening loose and likeable rather than bombastic or tightly controlled.
Wearing rumpled jeans and sporting a scruffy beard and his signature sunglasses, Church performed songs that combined the storytelling power of country music with the energy and anarchy of rock, working with a seasoned band that leaned in the rock direction with an occasional addition of banjo.
Church is as notable for what he doesn’t do as for what he does. Though he may share an appreciation for beer and other beverages with “bro country” singers — as exemplified in the playful, audience-pleasing “Drink in My Hand” — his songs are more complex, both musically and lyrically, and less inclined to pander to any subset of the political spectrum.
Take “Stick That in Your Country Song,” which uses the bouncy beat of country music to undercut itself and convey a very different message. Or the dynamic, rhythmically sophisticated “Chattanooga Lucy,” which leans heavily into swampy blues. Or “Like Jesus Does,” which combines secular and spiritual in a headily ambiguous mixture.
For all its length — and nobody could complain that they didn’t get their money’s worth in this generous concert — it never felt overblown or padded. The songs were appropriately lean, the chit-chat minimal and the band given room to shine, never dominated by artistic ego.
What Church as labeled the “Gather Again” tour demonstrated the power of music to knit together a crowd without creating any “us against them” mentality.
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