Eric Church
The country superstar on his new triple LP, getting back on the road, and why you can’t go half Meat Loaf
The country superstar on his new triple LP and getting back on the road.
Ever since he got booted off a Rascal Flatts tour in 2006 for playing too long, Eric Church has been country music’s middle finger, upending the way things are done in Nashville. Take his new record, Heart & Soul. It’s an urgent, wildly ambitious triple album he wrote and recorded in the mountains of North Carolina. Instead of a studio, Church commandeered a restaurant with producer Jay Joyce and an army of trusted songwriters, and challenged himself to write and record a song a day. Church is determined to be one of the first artists back on the road in a post-Covid world. How soon? This fall. “That’s aggressive, but I’ve got to make it happen,” he says. “I think it’s that crucial to the overall sentiment of what society is going through. We need this. I need this.”
How’s quarantine going for you?
I miss playing, man. I had a hard few years anyway, coming into this quarantine part, and being onstage was therapy in a lot of ways. I mean, I’ve played music onstage — somewhat professionally, getting paid — since I was 19 or 20 years old. It’s been hard not to have those moments with the crowd.
You’ve said that making your last album, 2018’s
was too “comfortable.” Is that what prompted you to change things up in North Carolina?
The best way I would say it is “fat and happy.” I felt like we came off of an arena tour, sold-out shows, and we show up in the studio and everybody’s kind of “Well, I guess we’re going to make a record.” There was no sense of urgency, no danger. I love the Desperate Man album . . . [but] the whole thing was a grind.
The way most artists deal with that is you start changing everything. My idea, instead of doing that, was this North Carolina deal, where I take Jay out of his element. I take the band, and I put them in a competitive situation with other people. And then for myself, I went there with four or five song ideas and I exhausted them quickly. So when we got to, like, Day Seven, I didn’t know what the next day was going to be. It got kind of manic, where I would go, “Fuck, what are we going to write tomorrow?”
There’s a heartland vibe in songs like “Heart on Fire,” but there is also a heavy dose of rock opera. “Heart of the Night” and “Russian Roulette” could have been on Bat Out of Hell.
“Heart of the Night” is rock opera. There’s a part where it goes, “The still beating heart of the night!” and the [drum] hits. And Jay goes, “We can’t do all those hits.” I said, “Dude, it’s Meat Loaf, let’s do it.” It’s overdramatic. It’s overpassionate. There’s some Neil Diamond going on too, but you’re dead right. It was over the top, but it never felt wrong. I don’t know what people think of that, and I don’t really give a shit. I said we’re going to do it, and we’ve got to commit to it. It’s Meat Loaf — there’s no half Loaf.
Social justice and racial issues have dominated country music this year. Does it feel like the genre is at an inflection point?
Yeah, maybe, and I think that’s great. Historically, diversity is always the best thing for the music. I think we, as country music, represent the United States of America in a lot of ways. We’re having a lot of the same conversations about the same stuff. The important thing is we continue to have those conversations. And I can tell you, when I walked to the mic at the Super Bowl to sing [the national anthem] with an African American R&B singer [ Jazmine Sullivan], what was going on in our format was on my mind.
Morgan Wallen cut a song of yours. Did it sting when you saw the video of him using a racial slur?
Yeah. It was a heartbreaking deal. Morgan’s got to work on Morgan now. As a format, though, we have to continue to strive to be better. Having these conversations can be a good thing for all of us.
In your 2018 Rolling Stone cover story, you said, “We don’t talk to each other enough. We dig in, we don’t listen, and we don’t talk.” Have we gotten better or worse at that?
Worse. I think Covid’s made it a lot worse just because without concerts, without sporting events, everything has been about what divides us as a society. “Which side are you on?” That’s insane to me because when I play a concert, those 20,000 people or 50,000, they don’t have a side. They got their arm around the guy beside them, singing a song. Tribalism is the most dangerous thing.
You’re turning 44 in May. What’s motivating you?
Getting back onstage and getting us back to normalcy. I believe music is going to be the thing that’s going to save us all, because it always has. You go back to Roman times, and it was about the painters, it was the writers. It was about the bohemians that had their finger on the pulse of what was going on. We’re in unprecedented times. People talk about 1918, but what I always throw back at them is, “How many touring acts were national acts in 1918? Who tried to tour?” Nobody’s ever tried to do what we’re all trying to do to get everybody back in [venues]. And it is complicated and it is hard, but I believe it’s absolutely worth the effort. We got to try. I’m just trying to get the guitar on again and start to put back together all the pieces that are broken.
Desperate Man,