Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Eric Church Talks His Latest Album, "Evangeline Versus the Machine"

Episode Date: April 27, 2025

Willie sits down with country music superstar Eric Church to reflect on his unconventional and uncompromising route to the top of Nashville. They talk about his latest album, "Evangeline Versus the Machine", and how he got his signature sunglasses look.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks, as always, for clicking and listening along. I am very excited to bring you my conversation today with one of the biggest stars, not just in country music, but in all of music. His name is Eric Church. Big country star, of course, for many years and really transcended that in 2011 when he released the album, Chief, which debuted at number one on the country charts, but also debuted at number one. On the Billboard 200. That's all of music. It went platinum four times over.

He's been selling out arenas and stadiums ever since. Comes from North Carolina. Deep roots played music, loved music growing up. Also an athlete went to college at Appalachian State in North Carolina where he played in a college band. He graduated with a degree in marketing, considered another career, but decided it was worth a shot and went to Nashville. When he got there, he had this kind of attitude you'll hear. him talk about where he said, you will listen to my sound. It's different. It's unique. It's not like what's on the radio now. And Nashville says, oh, no, we will not. So he struggled for a while,

finally got a record deal, started to put out a couple of albums that did well, pretty well, relatively well. You know, he had some hits in the top 20, and then it was chief that changed everything, and you'll hear him talk about why he thinks that happened. Got a new album out right now called Evangeline versus the Machine. It's really good. He's one of these guys who's just, musician. So it almost in some ways sounds like, I don't know, there's a little Van Morrison in it. I hear a little Rolling Stones in some of the music. He's got a choir. He's got an orchestra. He's doing all kinds of different things with his sound, which I really respect that he's always kind of changing and pushing himself as an artist. As he says, I know how to make a number one song. I can do

that today if you want me to, but what's the fun in that? I want to challenge myself a little bit. So, you know, he's been the entertainer of the year in country music. He's been nominated for 10 Grammys, number one albums. He's done it all. Also just a great guy. From North Carolina after Hurricane Helene last year, he put on this huge concert in North Carolina with Luke Combs, his fellow country star called Concert for Carolina, raised a ton of money, gives proceeds from his album to relief for North Carolina that's still digging out from that storm. So he's done a ton. Great guy, talented guy. I think you'll enjoy hearing about his process the way he thinks about music and building an album. We got together in New York City at a venue called Terminal

5 where he played a gig about 15 years ago when still in that pre-chief era, still trying to figure out how he was going to break through just on the cusp of superstardom. So please sit back, relax, and enjoy my conversation right now with Eric Church on the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Eric, thanks for doing this, man. Thanks, Willie. Good to see you. Me too. Memories of this joint by any chance, September 2010, you and Miranda Lambert, I believe it was. I kind of remember it when we walked in here. I remember the backstage area a little bit, but yeah, I remember being here. It's a cool venue, cool place. Yeah, and like, cool to think about where you were then as an artist and in your career. It was just before chief and where you are now, that ride you've taken. Most of my career

can be defined pre-chief, post-chief. So that was right before everything kind of started to work for us. Yeah. Yeah, it seems like it. So the new out. I was just telling you is absolutely fantastic. It's beautiful. It's eight tracks, Evangeline versus the Machine. One of the tracks is Evangeline. So first of all, the title, what does that mean to you? I think in the world we live in now, when you think about the machine, it's about what music's supposed to be. When you think about labels, you think about the way we release music now. I'm an album artist, always have been. That's who I listen to. to. That's who I was a fan of. In the day we live in now with all the social media in the

TikTok, you can release a song on Tuesday, another song on Friday, another song on Tuesday, and albums to me matter because it's a snapshot in time of that artist, and you get to see their life, and you get to look back and look at their catalog and go, that's where that artist, was that's when I'm a fan of artists. That's what I like to go back to, whether Springsteen or Bob Seeger, Van Werson we were talking about but any of that, I

know what that period of time looked like. And I think we've gotten away from that now and the machine is consumption. The machine is the world we live in. And the interesting thing about Evangeline is it's kind of

creativity versus the machine. It's what it is. And Evangeline represents that creativity. And different songs that mean different things to you at different times within that track, Evangeline. We were discussing a minute ago just how unique this album is for you, which is you're telling your stories, but over an orchestra, effectively in many places, right? There's strings and horns and chorus in the background.

So how did you arrive at this sound when you were thinking about this album? So I'm always looking at, at least for me, is, I've always tried to challenge our fans. And we've done this many times in our career. And to me, as an artist, it's my job when you make an album, that you're not just making another album that could have been tied on to something else. I want some jarring moments. I want some things that make them go, whoa, I didn't think we were heading there.

But I think that's as an artist, that's your job. If you're making albums and you care about progression and you care about this is what I want, I always kind of go back to an incredible opportunity to hang an album on the wall of music, country music, rock, whatever. And I want everybody for all time to be able to look back at that. I know that when I look at those albums hanging on the wall for me, those iconic albums, I want to be able to put that on the wall and it be a thing

and it would be a moment and it'd be something where you're like, wow, you know, it's like, you know, there's many times like, you know, with Bruce, you know, all of a sudden you get this, you know, different feel, different thing. And that's, those are the artists I'm fans of. So when it came to this album, we've been out a while. We've done a lot of things.

We've made a lot of albums. and orchestra, choir, those things intrigue me because it's the oldest form of music, right? Strings and horns, you can go back to Mozart, you can go back. So I was intrigued by in a world that's going more and more technological, or going more into the tracks and the things, how we make music, going back, you know, hundreds of years. And seeing if it would work.

Now, it was a little jarring, Willie, when I walked in the first day when we were doing this, and we normally cut with the band, and it's, you know, six, eight people. And there were 50 people. You know, you had string section, horn section, choir. I was like, wow, a lot of things to figure out here. But it was what I, the biggest thing for me is I enjoyed being in that moment. I enjoyed hearing that come to life. And it was different. And for us, at least for me in my career, creativity. has been, you know, the thing that I've always leaned into. And anytime that I'm not sure where my good is, I always go to the creative side. And on this one, it's creative.

I heard all the names you just mentioned. I heard them all over the course of this album. I even heard at the beginning of Angelene. I don't want your head to get too big, but I heard a little rolling stones. You can't always get what you want when the horns come in and then the guitar, the acoustic as well. I'm a big fan of the band, too. Yeah. And there's a lot of band in that, you know, last waltz type stuff.

And, you know, when you get the horns and stuff, it's just, think about listening to the radio today and all of a sudden you hear a horn. Like, it's just not, that's not what we hear. And that's what intrigue me the most about this project is, it's just not something that you hear when you're listening to music. Yeah, it's beautiful. I mean, you talk about a snapshot in time. The opening track is Hands of Time, which resonates with people for different

reasons. I'm about to turn 50. I just told you. I'm feeling the hands of time. My daughter's about to go to college. I'm feeling the hands of time. What do the hands of time mean to you right now? I think the hands of time, at least for me, and I said this about what intrigued me about the song is as I get older, I look for things that try to make me not feel as old. And music does that. Music, I can hear a song just randomly. And all of a sudden, I'm on a lawn in Raleigh, North Carolina, you know, in college or before college. And that song takes me back to 18, 21, 25 years old. And music, that's the great thing about music, is it can transport you. And it freezes that moment. So when I hear that song, I think about that moment. And that's really the

genesis of what that song is. It's that you're trying to, this one thing that's great about music. And the reason I love it so much is that you can, it freezes times in your life. And then you hear it 10 years later, and the most vivid memory is of that. Absolutely, 100%. The song, Johnny, stops you in your tracks. Yeah.

As a listener, and I'm sure for you, every time you're going to play it, it was born of a moment when you were dropping your boys off at school, I think, at a time in Nashville, just up the road when there'd been a terrible shooting that people will remember. What did you feel that day

that inspired you to write that song? As a parent, I think the scariest thing I've ever done is the day after the Covenant shooting in Nashville, which is about a mile away from where my kids go to school, was dropping my kids off

and watching them walk inside. Because, I mean, as parents and in life, and I also went through the Vegas, I played the Vegas show of shooting there. But there's certain things that you just think are safe and secure and guaranteed. And I remember when both my kids got out of the car that day when at school. I sat in the parking lot for a while. I just pulled over there. And it was like one of the more emotional

things, right, that I've ever been through and had all these things going on as fate would have have it. Charlie Daniels came on a radio. His song, Dev went down to Georgia. And just in the background, it was low. And as I was finally drove out of the parking lot, I was fully going to sit there all day just to make sure it was okay. I mean, you know, and as I was pulling out of the parking lot, that song started to play. And all of a sudden, those words in that song, for whatever reason, I started to listen to him. And there's, the hero in that song is Johnny, plays the fiddle. and there's Johnny Rawzen up your bone, play your fiddle hard because the hell is broke loose in Georgia and the devil deals the cards. And if you win, you get this shiny fiddle made a goal.

If you lose, the devil gets your soul. And I remember thinking the devil's not in Georgia. He's everywhere. He's wreaking havoc everywhere. And I went home and wrote Johnny as soon as I got out of the house. And it's about that. It's about the world that we live in now. and it's about the challenges that our kids have.

And the machine is in that song, too, because you talk about how the robots and the machines are controlling the kids and not the other way around it, as I know very well. Correct. Me too. Me too. Me too.

That's a lot of where that came from, with the album title. But that's a big part. It's the world we live in. It came from an emotional moment, but that's what I love about music. You just never know. when something like that's going to fall out.

It's in the parking lot. Yeah. I could go through all the tracks, and I won't make you do that today. But Darkest Hour is another incredibly meaningful song. Yeah. Because of what it's about, which is your home state, and when the hurricane that came through there and the havoc that it reaped, what did you see in your communities and the kind of places you grew up

that made you want to sit and write that song? Well, interesting thing about that song is I didn't write that song about North Carolina. I had had that song. I'd already recorded it. And then the Hurricane Helene happened. And the mountains of North Carolina to me have been so important creatively. When you do this for a living, you're always traveling, you're always moving, you're always in chaotic environments. And that's kind of where my soul's at rest.

every album, I think, but one of my career, I've either wrote or recorded there. And so that's where I go. That's home to me. And when that happened, and it happened even to, we lived there part of the year in half the year, and even our community was just devastated.

So as I had this record, and I'm working on this album, we weren't going to put out Darkest Hour. But there's that line in the song of I'll Come Running. And I said, I called my manager and I said, I want to regret not doing this, you know, and not putting this out and making this a moment. Because the biggest thing in this country is because things happen fast, we move on fast. And you have a disaster on a Monday.

And then a week later, there's another disaster. And it's the biggest thing in the world for a week. And then there's another biggest thing. And that's just part of where we live. That's the world we live in. And the biggest thing for me with that song was I want to keep the focus on people in North Carolina, people in the mountains there. It's going to be years, years and years and years. And we've done a lot with that, with housing and some stuff that we're doing in the community there to try to.

I understood the long game of that. You know, in this country, we're really, really good at the 911 part, the water and diapers. But we're not very good at them what? How do we keep the people there? because the people in Western North Carolina are what makes up that community. That's the identity. That's the backbone. And a lot of them get displaced because they don't have housing.

So we put them somewhere else, right? You're taking the identity of that community, the heartbeat of that community, and you're moving them. And the biggest thing for me was keeping the focus on that. And let's try to keep people that are the identity of this community. Let's keep them in the community. Got friends who live down there, a lot of them, and they say what you're saying exactly, you couldn't believe your eyes. This is you knew, you thought you knew, just looked like a different place. Biblical.

All together. Yeah. And you're right. It's going to take time. You had that incredible concert for Carolina with you and Luke Combs, raised a ton of money. I think you said it was the most moving, extraordinary gig you've ever played. Ever. I've never seen the artists that came together, the emotion of that night in a stadium.

I played acoustic, you know, and it was the record crowd for the stadium. But it was, it was, that only matters because we raise money. But the sentiment of while we were all there is the most like cohesive concert that I've ever played. You know, where all the artists knew that they were all volunteering, and we knew what we were doing it for. And musically, it was just an incredible night and an incredible concert. And I knew it, I knew it early on. but about halfway through, I was like, this is, I've done a lot of shows.

This is a special show. This is different. Yeah. Yeah. Well, good on you for staying on it because you're right. I work in the news media too. We rush in there for a week and then the next thing comes and everybody disperced. Because you have to.

I understand. Yeah, but somebody's got to stay on it. So good on you for doing it. Hey, guys, thanks for listening to the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Stick around to hear more from Eric Church right after the break. Welcome back now more of my conversation with Eric Church. So let's go back if we can a little bit to Granite Falls, North Carolina. You're a kid growing up there.

When does music come into your life? Are you very young? Is it when you're a teenager and you get that first guitar? When did you start thinking, oh, I enjoy this at least. I don't know if it's a career, but I enjoy it. Right. I was always around music. I mean, that's a pretty musical area.

I mean, the foothills and mountains of North Carolina, home of Doc Watson and Bluegrass Music. And so there's a lot of musicians there. I mean, I've heard some guys playing on their porch that are better than anybody I've ever heard. And the only reason they don't leave their porch is they're not as good as their grandfather is, right? I'm not as good as him, so I'm going to stay right here. But they're incredible. So I was around music.

I grew up in an area that was very musical. But for me, it kind of started probably early teens. You know, I got my first guitar. I was 13 years old. And started figuring out how to play. And I had been writing songs before that. I started writing songs before I could play guitar. This would write stuff down.

It would be like poetry, I guess now, but I was singing it. I heard melodies. And I started doing that. And then I got to college, and right before college, I started playing a band. Start a band. And that's really, once that started, and I was playing these bars and these clubs before I went to, you know, I played a 2 a.m. and have a 9 a.m.

class. But that was to me when I was like, okay, I can do this, you know, and crowds grew. We played all over North and South Carolina. Was this with the Mountain Boys at upstate? Yeah. Original name. Yeah. Yeah. We show up for our first gig.

It was a place called Woodlands Barbecue, Bowen Rock, North Carolina. It never occurred to me we needed a name of the band. I just, we had to coveted Monday Night gig. It's six. I mean, the real one. like six o'clock on a Monday night. That's the one you want, you know. You didn't even know they're open on Monday.

Me either. So it's kind of a funny story. So I go there and we had worked up like 10 songs, 12 songs. Because they had said we were going to play a set, take a break to play a set. So in my mind, brand new, I'll play the set and everybody will leave. It's like a changeover. But it's a bar. So nobody left.

So we get there that first night. And they all stayed. So I played my 12 songs, and nobody left. And I thought, I've got the same 12 songs. And I finally had to come clean, you know. And I was like, listen, I'm new here. And I said, if you guys will write down on a napkin songs that you want to hear that aren't in my 12-song repertoire, I promise if I get to come back next Monday, that I'll learn them.

And it was a great learning experience to me. But anyways, I let there. who are y'all right and i looked out it was in the mountain you know vista of where we were there's this this good this vista the mountains and i don't know we'll be the mountain boys like that and that was it i got us looked out real original for as a songwriter who you know he's done a lot of original stuff that was the least original i've ever been so did you take those requests and come back the next week i've spent all week learning those songs wow yeah i did like a virgin by madonna did you really yeah first and last time wow i would hundred bucks i'll do anything for i'd pay good money

to what you cover that again right now yeah hundred bucks That's the going cost. $100. $100.00. All right. It's a deal. What is it about Appalach's take? Because Luke talks so much about you being one of his heroes.

And there is a real music scene there, huh? There's a real music scene. I mean, that's in the bluegrass part of the world. I mean, jam band, bluegrass. So there's a lot of just the musical identity of there is a lot of great players just walking into class with you. And just a lot of people there that are very creative and very free-spirited. And it was a really great place for me to be in a band.

And, you know, my grades weren't that good. But our crowds were pretty good. Which has turned out that's what mattered in the end. Good enough to graduate, though. Yeah, I graduate. Six and a half years, you know, it's fine. You know, I got, yeah, that's fine. I'm not a doctor.

Right. Yeah, but six and a half years. Whatever it takes. That's right. So at what point do you decide I'm going to Nashville? and how did that go over with your family? Oh, not great. I started playing some original music

as our crowds grew, and we became pretty big in the area. We could play and make money in the area. And I started putting in some original stuff, stuff that I had written. And I noticed that it kind of worked a little bit with some people. And then the same people would come back

to the show the next week, and they would request the, they would request the original song. So that got my head moving in that way. And I just, I just felt lead. I felt like I needed to be in Nashville. So I remember I had a marketing degree. I could have had a lot of degrees probably.

I was in the middle of a lot of things. And I chose marketing and I graduated. And I got a job. I had a job offer. A furniture sales rep out of South Carolina. I was on sale furniture. We're in the furniture part of the world. Had a fiance.

had my whole life laid out right there in front of me. And I said, I want to go to Nashville. So I talked to my dad. He did not love it. Mom was better than dad was. And but I did it, you know, and maybe the harder conversation was a fiancé. Yeah, I was going to ask you. It didn't go great.

But I, you know, I packed up. I had a two-tone 86 Chevy Blazer. Nice one. Blue and gray. Yep. The one everybody wanted. So I went to Nashville. And I went to where, you know, it was interesting about Nashville,

is you just don't know what you don't know. I was the guy in North Carolina. I mean, I owned that. I ran that. And then I get to Nashville. And I go to Broadway, or all my heroes, Tootsies is there, Ernest Tub record shop, and tried to get a gig. And at that time, and even now, it's a lot of covers.

It's a lot of other people's music. And I was a songwriter. And they didn't work. They didn't like my songs. They didn't like my voice. They didn't like my writing. They didn't like, even the bartending didn't work. So I found, I realized Broadway's not going to work.

I need to pivot. And I went to a place, a little seedy place in Nashville called Fiddling Steel Guitar Bar. It's on Printer's Alley. And it was all the people that got kicked off Broadway, that's where they ended up. And I kind of found my tribe, and I found a bunch of songwriters, and I found originality.

And what I really got from that is I got in with these guys who were these old school riders who had written for George Jones and Wayland Jennings and Willie Nelson, Conway Twitty, and they took me under their wing because I was also a reject

when I got the town. And I learned her right there. That became my classroom. I would go sit with them all day, and they've got the soundtrack of our lives on their wall of the songs they've written. And they taught me. And I think that's one of the benefits. I've talked to Luke about this.

It's one of the benefits. I think I'm probably the last generation, songwriter-wise, that got to interact with that. It's changed so much now with technology that I got to learn from the guys that built the format. Yeah. I got to write with them. I got to see how they crafted a song, see how they thought about a song. And that was just an education for me.

I mean, I thought I knew what I was doing, but when I got to Nashville, I realized that I didn't know anything. And I had to learn that pretty quick. Yeah, I mean, it shows up in your music still, which is that authenticity and originality, and you could write songs for the radio, but you're writing songs to do, to me to do something bigger

in terms of connecting with your audience. I think it's important for people watching to understand that you didn't arrive, as you said in Nashville, as Eric Church, and you're not alone in this. Every big artist anybody can think of had some kind of a struggle for years sometimes for a decade. I guess they called a 10-year town. What were those early years like for you?

Because you expected to pull in the Nashville and say, where do you want me? Show me a stage, which you really had to work to get there. I mean, I expected to pull in Nashville and go, you're welcome. I'm here to save you guys. No, I didn't work that way. You get no a lot. I mean, you get close a lot. And I can remember, like there's one, I've told this story a few times, but I was going to meet all these publishers trying to be a writer.

And I'm going around. And all the old writers that I'm with are like, hey, we got to get you a gig, right? We've got to get you a songwriting deal where you get paid to write songs. And they start making calls for me. And I start working my way through this, right? And I'm going to meetings. And, you know, I've joked before, but meetings in Nashville are kind of like these buildings are 12 stories. and your first meetings in the basement of the building with a tape girl.

And if you impress her, you go across the hall, still in the basement, to her boss, and you work your way up floor by floor. So after time, I've been in these buildings a lot. And I got the closest I thought I was going to be. There was this guy, they were like, hey, we like what you're doing. We're going to have a guy come down from New York. And we want to sign you, and he flies in. And I think this is it.

you know, this is going to be my moment. And I walk in and I had four songs that are on my debut album, centers like me. And I'm feeling pretty good about it. And I honestly was arrogant enough that I didn't know which one I wanted to play first because I didn't think I was going to have to play two. And I played the first one. I got my verse in and he kind of puts his hand up.

And I was thinking, this is it. This is the moment. is what you've been playing on. And he goes, yeah, I don't like that. You know, and he said, you got anything else. So we worked through this for like four songs. And he said, I don't know where you're from. And I don't really know what you did there, but I recommend going back and doing whatever that was. Wow. And that was as close as I got to going home. I went at the parking lot. And actually we talk about muses and people that creatively have influenced me. But I put on, I happen to have Chris Christophersons to beat the devil from the Austin sessions.

I just got, this is when we had CDs, these mythical creatures. And I put it in. And that's what that song's about. And I sat there thinking about going home, thinking about this is not for me. and I listened to Chris, sing about that very thing, and I stayed one more day. And the next day, I got signed to a publishing deal. That's fate would have it. Wow.

The next morning, I went into a different meeting and played one song and got signed. Something happens to you when you sit in a car alone and a song comes on the radio. They tend to change your life. It does. It can. It can change your life. I mean, that guy didn't have to insult you the way he did. It could have just said pass.

and say you need to go home wherever you came from and never come back. That's good for you, though. It is, isn't it? It's good for you. It is. So your centers comes out, right? Does pretty well. And at that point, you feel like, okay, I'm here. I got room to grow. You talked about chief five years later, really, in the big leap. But did you at least have some, I have arrived finally? I've got an album out there. People are responding to it. I think so. I mean, we, how about you was our first single. And we were kind of the new kid. We were different. We were This isn't an area in country music that's going to be hard to recognize now, but it was very soccer mom-driven, and we were very testosterone forward.

So it was different. But the crowds are good, and we made a mistake maybe looking back on it. Our second song, and this is where creativity sometimes can get you in trouble, but I don't regret it. Our second song was called Two Pink Lines. It was about teen pregnancy. And we decided that would be our second single, and that went the way you think it would go.

And so it's this weird thing where it takes an incredible amount just to get a songwriting deal. An incredible amount just to get a record deal. Even more of an incredible amount to get a song on the radio. And you get a song on the radio and then you kind of go backwards with that. And then the challenge, you know, it's so funny people think when they get signed to a record deal, they go, I've made it. I got a record deal. I mean, the work just starts then. So for us, it was, we were in the wilderness a while with our first two albums until Chief happened.

a lot of bars, a lot of clubs, a lot of things. Radio still didn't know how to treat us. I don't think people knew how to really treat us. We were playing rock clubs late at night because of our musical brand. We weren't playing the typical country music place. You know, we weren't very palatable to a lot of the country music industry. They didn't know what to do with you. They didn't know what to do.

Yeah, didn't know what to do. Were they saying, like, I can't sell this? I don't know who you are. Yeah, I can't. I can't. I can't figure out what this, what's going on over this guy. But it was really chief as the one that, but here's the thing. Here's the thing with that.

It's the most important thing. Our crowds were growing. And we were beating the road up, you know, every day of the week, Monday through Sunday, playing Amarillo on a Monday, you know, Tuesday, wherever. We're just running the road. And our crowds were growing. And sometimes it was minimal. You know, it was six to ten people.

But, you know, we were growing. It's almost 100% increase, Willie, okay? So we were growing people. I think that by doing that and continuing to hit these markets and you're really laying a foundation, you're earning your stripes. And we don't do that as much now as we used to. And we were earning it. And then Chief happened, and it all lined up. And when that happened, you know, it became the biggest record in the world.

And then it was kind of, then you already had the crowd. You already had the foundation. You had already laid what you needed to lay. And then you just built on top of that. Did you change anything you were doing there, for Chief in response to what you had heard about your earlier stuff, which is we don't quite know who you are, you need an identity, it's this country, we don't know if it's country. In other words, why do you think Chief blew up the way it did? Chief probably blew up the last single off the Carolina album, which was before Chief. So at that time, things aren't going great.

And I remember having a conversation with the label. when the Carolina record came out, we had put out a couple songs that the label wanted to put out. And it just wasn't representative of really what I thought we were live. At that time, the shades had showed up. And I was doing, now they didn't know that. The label didn't know. But what I was seeing it and representing live

was not what was being represented on the radio and to the public marketing wise. Yeah. And the last single off of Carolina, the song called Smoke a Little Smoke. and this is a pro-marijuana song at a time. Now, now it's not a big deal, but at that time it was a big deal. And I remember meeting with the label president, and my manager and I, we sat across from him at a little lunch place in Nashville.

I'd flown off the road to meet with him, and we knew it wasn't going good. And he said, so what do you want to do? And I said, I want to put out smoke a little smoke. And he was incredulous that that was a bad idea. And I said, listen, I see it every single. night. I said the people are climbing the walls. I'm looking at it. And I said, if you don't put that out, I'm never going to make another album. I'm done. And I had these little reader glasses on there, forget me. He took them off and he kind of threw them at me. And he kind of slid across

the table. And he goes, it's your funeral. But he did it. But he did it. And he put out smoke a little smoke. So with the chief album, to answer your question the long way, When that happened with Smoke Little Smoke, it led us into the sentiment of what the chief album was, which was, we're going to go for this. We're going to quit listening to this is what country music industry is. This is what the box that we want you to fit in. We're going to go and we're going to make the music that we see the crowd reacting to every night on the road. And that's what that entire record is.

And how gratifying that you trusted that. And it works. You said, we're going to do this. and becomes the number one album. It would have been not as great if it didn't, right? But at that time, it felt, I didn't really have another option, Will it, to be honest. I mean, at that point in time, when you get down to that thing where the label and I, if smoke list, if that hadn't worked, I was not going to have a label home anymore.

So after all this work and after all the shows and after all the sacrifice, you get to this place where this is pushing the chips in. This is it, right? We're going for it here. Win or lose. and it's pretty gratifying when that works out. But you know what? I think in life that usually works out.

I agree. When you're convicted on something like that and you push them in, it usually works. Especially when you know. It's informed by all those shows you were playing and say, I know this is going to work. I know my audience. And that's a big thing now when I talk to a young artist, and I talk to a lot of them,

but when we talk about my career and the path and where they are now, there's not as much of that. Because with the social media and with the way they get, discovered whether there's TikTok or whatever, right? They do it more with views at home versus being in front. So it's different. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm just saying that I had to pack up on a van or a bus and go city to city and see it and feel it. They're getting that more from what they post or what the reaction is. And I don't know it's good or bad, but I don't, I wouldn't trade is what I would tell you. Yeah. I like the.

path that we took. It's different for guys like us. I'm the same way. I'm the same way. I don't do likes and whatever else. Retweets and all that stuff. Stick around for more of my conversation with Eric Church right after a quick break. Welcome back now to the rest of my conversation with Eric Church. I jump ahead just a little bit if I can to you mentioned Vegas, the shooting that happened there. You were playing two days before the shooting. That terrible, terrible day in Las Vegas. And then you had sort of a string. You had a health scare. that year. You lost your brother. What was that time like for you and how did it inform the music you made afterward?

I mean, we all have bad years, but 2018 was a really bad year for me. And it started, it started, you know, with Vegas. And, you know, there's certain indelible things that you just don't get over. and I think that was one for me. I think it was the, as an artist, that's such a protected and sacred thing. The relationship between the artist and the fans in that moment in time is sacred.

And those bullets shattered that. And I had a lot of fans die. and I played the opera right after that and didn't want to be there and played. But I remember there were a number of fans that went to the Vegas show that were then going to fly across the country to come to the opera show to see me play the opera.

That was a part of their travel. And some of them got shot, they died. And I remember being at the opera that night and just, it was such a, it's still overall in a lot of ways, but just not something that affects you. And it broke me in a way. And after that, right after that, I had a health scare out of blood clot and I thought I was going to die. It was serious the way you describe it.

Yeah. Very serious. Yeah. Like get in the operating room now. Yeah. Yeah. So it was, you know, not something you expect to encounter, you know, at 41 or whatever I was, but, and then my brother died.

You know, so all this happened within a matter of months. And I think up until that point, you can listen to the music, maybe, and you can see that I was brash, arrogant in a lot of ways, but it changes when you have those things happen to you. And I think it made the music more humble.

and maybe more observant. I mean, you can listen to the records after that. To me, as an artist, who likes to listen to a lot of albums, there's a change. There's a change after that. From Desperate Man on, there was a change. And I think that year in those events,

which I still carry with me now, changed a lot of the musical direction the path that I was on at the time. Don't you feel like hopefully it doesn't take tragedy like that, but as we age, you do get more humble in a way, which is to say, oh, I realize I don't know everything, and I'm not going to know everything. Yeah, and that brashness, I mean, I say that, again, back to new artists,

I've talked to it, and I've met a few that are incredibly brash. You need that. Yeah. When you're young, you need that, right? Because if you don't believe you're the greatest thing that's ever lived when you walk on a stage and you come to Nashville, Tennessee, you're dead. It's done. You need that.

But over time, once you do a lot of things, I think the best music will come from maybe the humble side of learning and the things that happened to you, being a parent, being a husband, you just learn. And I think that makes the music better. The people that don't learn continue to make the same thing, it's not great music, right? They get pigeonholed and they never grow. And I think that growth, 2018 was a big year for me

because I think I, I know I grow as a person, but I also grew as an artist and songwriter. And that brings us all the way back around to Evangeline versus the machine, which is you are at a point in your career where you're, you don't have to have that swagger. You still have it, but you don't have to have that 22-year-old swagger anymore.

48-year-olds. Yeah, 48-year-old. But you can take those chances with an audience that you've worked for decades now to earn their trust and they say, all right, I'll go along for the right on this. And I think the biggest thing for them is it is about trust. And it is about, it's got to be good music. And you've got to be able to tell a story and at least have a direction.

If I don't know where we're heading, I can't trust them to know where we're heading. And I think that we've always had a direction, allah, what we were talking about. Me, after 2018, the music changed some. It wasn't as brash. It wasn't the same if you listened prior to that. And the fans, I think, went there with me. They're aging too. I mean, a lot of our fans have been with me the whole time.

They're very loyal. So you're just showing them a different way to go. It keeps me up at night. I refuse to make an album and have people go, oh, that's like this. It drives me nuts. So with this record, it was pretty clear bringing in orchestra and strings and horns and choir that it was going to be pretty different. And we tease this a little bit.

I did a stagecoach show in California and your headliner. And everybody thinks we're going to show up and play our hits. And I had the idea. We're going to do a one-of-a-kind show. We're going to bring just my self-acoustic with a choir. And we're going to do covers and we're going to do kind of old-school religious stuff with a cathedral background. How'd that go? It went.

But, I mean, I loved it. I mean, looking back on it, it's still one of my favorite shows. Because here it comes down to quality. Like when I watched it back, I was like, that's good. But it was, you know, people didn't, it was divisive. But that's okay because I kind of wanted it to be divisive. The way it turned out was, for me, perfect, because that's what I wanted. I wanted people not really knowing what is next.

I want them to be surprised. I want them to be good or bad. I want them going, wow, that's different. It's going on a different route. And I think creatively, if you make creativity or compass, that's what we should all chase. I mean, I can do the same song. I can do this. I can do it.

I can give you the same number one, number one. I can do it. But it's about creativity and how do we push the envelope? And you look back at the career and go, wow, that was the, you know, that's exile on Main Street, you know, kind of spring. It's like, that's different, you know. So I think for me that was what we did with Evangeline versus Machine. And I love, anyway, I don't try to judge records in the moment because it takes time. But I love listening to it.

And I'm intrigued by it because there's so many people involved. There's so many other people that are lending themselves to the songs, whether it's the horns or the strings or the choir. Every person in there, you have more souls that are given everything they have. and you hear these little things that it interests me. It's interesting. It's beautiful. You've got a great sounding board at home, your wife, Catherine, who's in the music business.

What does she think about the new record? It loves a new record. Actually, I didn't know if it was good or bad, but I played her. She loved Darkest Hour, and I brought it home. I remember when I wrote that, I wrote it by myself, and she walked in. I played it for her, and she loved it. So I went in and cut it, and I was playing the track back to her. And we were in the kitchen.

I never forget it. She starts crying. And I was thinking, this could go one of two ways, you know. Maybe take the horns off. But no, she loved it. And it's always been, you know, I think having someone that worked in the industry

and was, you know, the top of the industry in the songwriting world and is a hard, hard judge of songs has been critical to me. because I'm not going to get a pass because I'm married to her, right? The opposite maybe. The opposite maybe.

So it better be a good song and it better be written the right way. And she's also, man, I play some great songs and she'll say, yeah, that's great, but that's not what you're doing. And so it's just having that direction and being able to have that in the house that I can go, hey, what do you think about this?

Not a lot of people have that. Nobody has that. So I've been, it's been, it's been very, very fortunate. You guys make a good team. Yeah. And the boys understand what dad does and gets it and like it, they don't care. They don't care. I'm the same, by the way, with my two.

They don't care. Like, you know, it's, it's funny. We had a thing recently, we were going to, something was going on. And one of my oldest son's friends, they were going to some other concert. Right. And it was so funny, they're like, hey, we're all going to get together. And we're going to, my son, you know, they're going to a concert. My son was like, oh, God, a concert.

I'm like, oh, this is, we have to go to this, you know, anything but a concert. But he just, he grew up around it. And I kind of like that in a way. They're just, they don't care. It's better that way. Yeah, they don't care. No, you don't want kids who give you a standing ovation. No, no, they're not.

That's not at me. That's not at it. Not in my house. Before I let you go, you mentioned the shades. Yeah. For people who don't know the story behind the shades, how did it start? It's pretty innocuous. It's not a big thing.

So, many years ago, I told you about, playing every night of week in bars and clubs. I wear contacts. And I'm 6'3. So on these little stages, they had these park-hand lights, you know, the little, and I've always had a condition of my eyes where they don't lubricate real well. I just use drops. But it's not a big deal until you put a contact in and you stand in front of those park-in lights. So every night I was losing a contact, I was losing both contact, I was blind half the show.

And this went on for a while. And finally one of my band members said, hey, have you thought about just wearing shades tonight? Nobody cared. There were 15 people there. Nobody was at these shows. You know, it's like, put the shades on. So I did it, and I kind of, it worked.

I didn't lose my contacts. It shielded the heat. And I thought, well, that was, so it started happening. And then I did it again, and I would take nights off. You know, like this wasn't a thing. I didn't go, hey, I'm going to wear shades. Right. I'd wear them a couple nights.

So that worked. Take them off. Contacts popped out again. So I just started wearing them. And over time, it became a little bit of a, I want to say like a cape, but it became a little bit of a cape. Because I was able to put the shades on after you play enough shows. It's showtime.

Yeah. Right? And it gave me a different mentality. It gave me a different mindset. And then it stuck. Once Chief happened, then it was like, you know, now, you know, I'm the only guy that goes to the beach and takes my shades off. You become a nodding.

That's right. What's going on as soon as I pull them off. You know, it's like the opposite. The Clark Kent opposite thing. Once you wrote a song about him, you're in trouble forever, right? Yeah. Well, it works for you. Hey, man, congratulations on this album.

It is, people are going to absolutely love it. It's beautiful. It's layered. It's different. It's so cool. So congratulations. Thank you, really. Great to talk to you.

Yes, sir. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you. After we sat down, Eric and I hopped up and took a brief stroll outside on a chilly, windy day just off the Hudson River in New York City. So Eric, what do you think about playing New York City? Are the crowds different here?

Do you notice a different vibe when you come here? Yeah. We've done the garden a few times. Dun Barclays. I love both. Yeah, I mean, the thing with New York is they kind of give you that, how good are you? I don't mind that, right? I don't mind that.

I think that's part of what makes New York in New York. you got to kind of go do it. They're not going to walk out and just get it. You have to go take it. I think that's good for ball artists, and especially young artists. You know, the first time I played the garden, it was like, at that time we did a big album.

It's kind of like that thing, like, okay, here comes the guy. They've got the big album, you know. But it turned out great, right? I think that's what makes New York City a special place. Isn't it cool, too, guys like you and others can easily sell out these places these days where, I don't know, maybe when we were grown up as kids, it would have been like,

what's the country guy doing at the garden? Right, that's right. That's right. I think that's the growth of country music. If you think back now musically, what we listen to 70s, 80s in rock and roll would be the center of country music right now. When you were talking about, some of the guys we were talking about, whether there's Bob Singer or Jackson Brown or Van Morrison,

that would be the center of country music. even the stones in a lot of ways would be the center hockey talk world center of country music right so it's like it's just the evolved evolution of music

is interesting to look back to see isn't it fun to watch too coming from the mountains of North Carolina to like you can sell out the garden and just see how far not only you but this genre has come over the years yeah it's amazing

it's amazing yeah do you ever you think about those struggles of Nashville we talked about early on when Broadway didn't quite get you and now you've got your own place on Broadway. Yeah. What's the irony in that?

You've got amazing? That's ironic is what it is. It's sort of like just dig in, trust yourself, and keep going, right? Yeah. Yeah, I joke sometimes. I've played a residency there and I joke, you know, nobody would, the only way I could, they wouldn't let me be on Broadway,

and the only way I could be on Broadway is to buy my own place, you know? So it's crazy how stuff like that works out. And it's, you know, Broadway's its own, it's, it's its own, ecosystem in the world now. Anybody's ever been there. It is its own thing. It reminds me a lot of like Vegas and what, like you, it's just different. Like when you go to Broadway, you are in

for the long haul. Right. It could be 10 a.m. It could be 3 a.m. It is the same. It's daylight, dark, it's the same. It's daylight, dark's the same. Nothing changes on Broadway. As we were saying earlier, time does not exist. No. When you get to Broadway in Nashville, Tennessee, everything else goes away.

Yeah, I've been like, I'm older now, so I get up for a decent hour. And my wife and I don't have breakfast. I have breakfast. it's at 9 a.m. And I'm like, it is 9 o'clock in the morning. I probably go to bed at the decent hour you get up, but I go to bed at a decent hour. I'm going to bed by 5 a.m.

So there you go. I'd rather do it your way. Yeah, that's right. My big thanks again to Eric for a great conversation. You can stream his latest album, Evangeline versus the Machine, beginning on May 2nd. And my thanks to all of you for listening again this week. If you want to hear more of our conversations with my guests every week,

be sure to click follow. so you never miss an episode. And don't forget to tune in to Sunday today every weekend on NBC to see these interviews with your own two hours. I'm Willie Geist. We'll see you right back here next week on Sunday Sit Down Pite.