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 Dogg’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 all.
Morgan 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 music.
Sure. 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 Stagecoach.
Yeah, 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 vulnerable.
The 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 bill.
What’s 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?”