The Bobby Bones Show - #510 - Eric Church on Getting a Call from Michael Jordan to Become an NBA Owner + Going into Business with Morgan Wallen + Almost Getting Dropped For a Hit That Almost Never Got Recorded

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

On this week's episode of the BobbyCast, Bobby sits down with country music superstar, Eric Church. Eric talks about being a part owner of the Charlotte Hornets after getting a call from Michael Jordan, why he always changes up his live shows, and how he and Morgan Wallen got into business together. Plus, Bobby asks Eric which hit he almost never recorded, and Eric tells the story of how that song almost got him dropped from his label, and much more! Follow on Instagram: @TheBobbyCast Follow on TikTok: @TheBobbyCast Watch this Episode on Youtube  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, chairman and CEO of IHeart Media, and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing. Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing.

Coming up this seasonal Math and Magic, CEO of Liquid Death Mike Sessario. People think that creative ideas are like these light bulb moments that happen when you're in the shower. It's really like a stone sculpture. You're constantly just chipping away and refining. Take to Interactive CEO, Strauss Selney, and our own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey.

Listen to Math and Magic on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast, Eating While Broke, is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future. This month, hear from top streamer, Zoe Spencer, and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum Pierre, as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up.

There's an economic component to communities thriving. If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they failed. Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Saturday, May 2nd, country's biggest stars will be in Austin, Texas. At our 2026 IHeart Country Festival presented by Capital One, tickets are on sale now. Get yours before they sell out at Ticketmaster.com. That's Ticketmaster.com. First of all, the label told me if I released that, they were going to drop me.

Because of what the song was? Yeah. There was no song like that in the year that it came out. Like it was, first of all, we're off on our own path anyway. And the label was like, listen, if you do this, just might as well go do it somewhere else. Welcome to episode 510 with Eric Church on Instagram at Eric Church Music. his single now is called Hands of Time. We talk about the album.

We talk about the tour. We talk about the time he got fired for working for basically home shopping network, which does a pretty funny story. This is awesome. Yeah, and it was a good, pretty much hour with Eric. I think what's cool, and I've been lucky enough to spend a little time with Eric

outside of work, outside of anything professional. This was just a really nice guy. He's definitely still the chief. And he had his sunglasses on the whole interview. See, I should have done that way early so people couldn't see my eyes. I couldn't see my eyes. He could have been checking out my shoes, looking inside the house.

I'd have had no idea. That's all I was wondering coming into it. Was he going to wear him? Yeah. Is he going to be the chief or is it just going to be Eric Church? He was kind of like Chief Eric, I feel like. And he's like so smart. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You're right because the image of Eric Church is like this tough dude. And he gets up and he does this thing and writes songs people love and he has that. But he's also, yeah, very smart, which is why he's such a great songwriter and he's so cerebral. but if they called him cerebral and not the chief, if that was his nickname, cerebral. Probably wouldn't have the same impact.

So super cool to sit with Eric. He came over to the house and yeah, we did this for about an hour. He's got a new album, Evangeline versus the machine that is out now. He's playing a ton of shows and Ericchurch.com get tickets to the show. Here he is.

I got to say the Michael Jordan story is pretty cool. It's coming up. It's just so nonchalant. MJ. awesome of MJ. Here he is. Episode 510, Eric Church. Eric, good to see you.

You too, Bobby. Do you have Carolina Blue One on purpose underneath? Yeah. I mean, most every, well, I do, oh, I do too, but not on purpose. You do, yeah, you do. This wasn't in your honor.

I appreciate you. That's funny, because I was talking, because most everything I have has a hog on it or a razorback on it. Yeah. Like red or phone or a lot of my clothes. You have North Carolina stuff everywhere? And like your...

And now, which is weirder, but we're involved with the Hornets too, so I have purple and teal. So it's Carolina blue and purple and teal. What do you mean involved with the Hornet? Are you part of the ownership? Yeah. Dang, I bought a pickleball team. I can't have an NBA team, though. Ball teams are cool, too. But what's up with that? So what's Lamella going to do? We'll see. Bobby will see. There's a really important draft coming, okay? Yeah. I got to be friends with MJ a few years back, and when he sold the team,

and it was one of the weirder calls you ever get in your life, but MJ goes, hey, I want you to be involved with the Hornets ownership group. I was like, what does that mean? He said, I want North Carolina presence. I want people that are local, the group that's buying, it's out of New York, private equity. And he said, I want you to do it.

He said, I'll help you if you need help, but he said, I want you to be involved. So you don't say no to Michael Jordan, so I got involved. That's super cool in a couple of ways, one, because it is Michael Jordan, the greatest athlete or popular culture, sports figure in our lifetime.

I think, right. It's like Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods. 100%. Two, that Michael Jordan played for North Carolina. Right. And for you, that's such a personal thing. Right. And that now, yeah, that you talk to him.

On the phone? I'd have been like putting on speakerphone recording it. Yeah. So what do you do as like part owner? Well, the great thing about the Hornets is the majority owners. So you have majority and minority. But the majority guys are, you can, different groups in the NBA,

but sometimes you get a majority that, you know, owns 95% of the team and you're disinvolved. But our group's really good about keeping us involved and all the decisions we're making. So, you know, a lot of it revolves around draft picks. A lot of, we renovated the arena there in Charlotte. We did a big renovation. So you kind of have a three to five year plan.

And Charlotte needs it because the Panthers aren't awesome. and the city needs it. So we're on a three to five year plan, really through draft picks. That's the best way to build a team. And luckily, or unluckily, the past couple years, we've got some good draft picks.

So that's the game we play right now. Dan, wasn't expecting that. That's awesome. I put a bunch of money into the Nashville baseball team. So if we get a baseball team here. Nashville be a great city for that. Yeah, let's go. Then I'll call you.

I'll be like, what's up, owner and owner? 100%. Yeah. That's right. When did you get your first guitar? 13. Why did you get it? I was writing songs, poetry kind of song things, and I was having to sing the melodies of my head.

And it's got a Christmas gift. And then it took me a little bit to learn to play it. But, you know, that was just an avenue for me to get the songs out. Did you take to it immediately? Yeah. Were you good at it quickly? Yeah. Do you have a brain that allows you to not just write lyrics,

but how do you compute music? Like, were you able to do key? I mean, like, how did you learn music? That's a great question. I don't know. It was the fastest thing that I was able to kind of get. And then you learn a lot of that, too, in, you know, earning your salt where I got in a band pretty quick. I mean, I was in a band at maybe 17.

I wasn't 18 years old. And I started just playing in bands. and some shady places. I did the chicken wire thing. I've been at that show. I've had a band member leave the stage during a song and go fight a guy in the parking lot and make it back before the end of the song,

and that guy was my brother. So we've done that during, you know, when you make it back for the end of the song, that's doing quick work, you know, but it was a skinnered song, so it was a little long. But I've done all those. I've done all those things. And you learn a lot from those situations.

I always talk about in the world we live in now, and you know this, in the world we live in, it's easier to get discovered and to earn a following. But it's harder to earn that as a musician where you can, I'll give you an example, and I won't name a name, but there was an act recently that I like a lot, and we were talking about our next tour. and it's a person who has a presence, social media, whatever. And I said, hey, you know, we'd love to have you. They don't have a band yet.

They've not toured yet. That's all just on what they do on their channel. They've not played yet. And it's like, you know, you've not taken anything on the road. You don't, right. And that's a problem because you learn so much from being in those situations and what I found in my career,

you're going to get in big moments. And if you don't feel like you deserve the big moment, you might not meet the moment. And those early days allow you to know when you get to that moment you've put in the work to earn that. When I talk about being an advocate, I think even in this record,

that there's songs where you're an advocate as well. And so I don't think it's, I think a big part, of it is what you're doing for the communities and for people that maybe don't have a voice, but also for people that maybe need a voice. And I mean, I could pull up a couple songs, even like Johnny or Darkest Hour. Like those feel like advocate type songs, like you're speaking for yourself, but also for others. Well, I think a lot of that also comes a little bit with our, we're a little bit of an anomaly that we got here,

completely on the backs of our fans early on because we didn't have a ton of industry success. We were a little bit pushed to the fringes. And, you know, I remember one year I played Grand Rapids, Michigan like nine times because I could get a thousand tickets in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We just kept rolling back. How many times can we go to the well? Because we had to have gas money to be able to move that bus around, right? So a lot of that is the people that you end up seeing every night.

and then something happens or you think about their lot in life. Yeah, I think that comes out a little bit now when I think about that because I wouldn't be in the situation that I'm in. What for them? Revisionous history is Eric Church moved to town

wrote a bunch of songs was a successful songwriter but didn't hit and then he was a massive star. That's revisionist history. Yeah, that's false. What's the truth? I came to town.

was it different with what music I was writing. And early on it wasn't great. You know, you come to town and you learn what real, I mean, I say this to all young artists, is you can't imagine. And a lot of people dog now, a lot of the songwriting thing and say, well, it's Nashville songwriters.

National songwriters are the best in the world. I mean, they're the greatest craftsmen in the world. And it took me a minute to come to town. And I was fortunate. I came at a time when we still sat. across from each other and did that. You know, where now there's a lot of stuff that technology's involved, and that's fine. But I got to learn from a lot of those guys.

So I came here and my perspective when I came, it's going to be hard to believe, but there was kind of a soccer mom type format. There were a lot of females. It was very driven that way. And I had a more masculine approach, and it was not like, by most they were everybody and i just had a different lane and but eventually got a record deal and got in that lane but then that was a hard lane because um we were just we were a little different on the radio and we had a hard time getting songs played because it didn't fit the formula at the time

and touring was interesting and so it was just a long the first couple albums were a really a really challenging time and you everybody comes to town and you everybody comes to town and and a lot of these young artists and they get a record deal and they think, I made it. I've done it. But that is just the beginning

of the hardest part. And for us, it was in that first two album period before Chief that we were grinding on the road. There was one year we did over 200 actual shows in a year.

And a lot of that was just to keep the money moving in at any level to keep moving forward, you know, to keep gaining ground. And at the time, a lot of people in the industry would have said, this doesn't really fit what we do, you know. And it's just a, it's a grind, it was a grind for us earlier. Why did you move to Nashville? Was it to write songs or was it to be an artist and writing songs was going to get you to that place to be an artist? Right songs.

It was, you're a writer. Yeah. How did you know that was a job? I found that out. I was in college and I had a band and I started you know just playing some of my original songs in our cover set and you know people the next time I would go back and play there they would request those songs and that just kind of where I started thinking okay you know songwriting's I just never thought it was viable for me to be able to go and get a record deal and do that it never crossed my mind it just wasn't some I thought I could do So I really wanted to come here and write songs And I met a couple songwriters when I moved here

And kind of saw what they did and how they did it And you go get a you take a draw And you go write for a big publishing house And try to get songs cut So what'd you pack up And what'd you move into when you got here? I was in a I came to town in a two-tone

Ninetext Chevy Blazer Blue and gray That's the color back then man And I had a good time had a duffel bag and i found an apartment but i didn't know where to be you know when you moved in Nashville it's like i didn't know what was what did you have anybody here that you could ask those questions to no no so you blindly moved to town yeah i came out i went to broadway first um i tell this story my chief chief residency as i came to broadway because that's where the ramen was that's where

you know tutsies is that's where you know all these iconic things and i tried to get gigs there and i couldn't get a gig there because I came with a sack of songs in my guitar, and they wanted cover songs. And so I couldn't make it on Broadway. So I ended up over at Prenner's Alley back in the day, which is a place called the Fiddlestil guitar bar. And what I found there were all the people that got kicked off Broadway. That's where they congregated.

And I kind of found my tribe. And there were a lot of hit songwriters in that. group there are a lot of musicians in that group and just kind of found my people and started figuring it out but i took a job i had a job at the shop at home network i sold knives that was my job thanks for calling shopping home my name's eric i me i hope you oh you answer the phones oh yeah i was a i was the phone guy had the little headset good stuff what what kind of knives like what was your what was your what was your rap at that time i actually got fired because of my lack of But I would answer the phone.

I had the shift. I think my shift was 11 p.m. to like 7 a.m. I was the overnight shift. So that's the shift where the guy comes in. He's been at a bar. And he turns on shopping home. And there's the guy. We were looking at the studio.

So where the phone bank was, it was like an amphitheater type seating. And we all have our little chairs and our headsets on and we're looking at them selling the knives out there, television studio in front of us. And this guy, you know, would call in and go three o'clock in the morning, slurring, going, man, I got to have some of these knives. It's like 300 knives for $59.99, right?

And actually one night there was a guy that called in, and I could tell he had a long night. And I had a few of those two. And he was like, man, this guy has some of these knives. You know, he's slurring. I was like, yeah, yeah. You know, he said, you know, I said, hey, you know what? I'm going to do your favor. I said, why don't you go to bed?

and first of all, when somebody calls and says, I need a knife at that time of night, you think there's already a problem, right? They don't need to know. Yeah, not right now. You don't need a knife right now. You need to go to bed. So I said, why don't you go to bed

and why don't you call me in the morning? I'll still be here, you know. And he said, well, says there's three left. I said, brother, trust me. There's more than three left, okay? You're going to be okay. And there's that thing where when you call into something like that,

and they'll say, for whatever purposes, this call may be recorded. they do that. And they happen to record this call. That's how you got got? I got cut. How's it? You're advocating for that dude.

I was advocating for that dude. They didn't like that shopping on those. Dude, that's crazy. They fired me. What's up with the name of the record, Evangeline versus the Machine? Well, so I think a lot of, some of this somewhat started,

there's a line in Johnny that's a very important song in this album. because of the Covenant shooting here in Nashville. But there's a line in there says machines control the people and the people shoot at kids. And what I've found having younger kids is there's so much of our life nowadays that's just so fast and disposable with how we consume anything. And what I've seen is it really rounds the edges off anything

we try to do different or creative. That's just not what the world is set up for today. It's not set up for the patient part of that. And so I think that that line is when that title started. But the crux of this is Evangeline on the album plays almost a creative muse, that song. So it's that creative muse and following that versus the machine that makes it very hard to execute that. And that's the juxtaposition of what this is. Let's take a quick pause for a message from our sponsor.

A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me, Cliver Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football,

or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations

with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment, and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music.

The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast, it's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So, if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford Show on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, Follow at Clifford and a TikTok podcast network on TikTok. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans.

We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation. There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationships. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I feel like it was a little bit unbelievable. I really start making money. It's Financial Literacy Month, and the podcast Eating While Broke is bringing real conversations

about money, growth, and building your future. This month, hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum-Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up. If I'm outside with my parents and they're seeing all these people come up to me for pictures, it's like, what? Today now, obviously, it's like 100%. They believe everything. But at first, it was just like, you got to go get a real job.

There's an economic component to communities thriving. If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they fail. And what I mean by fell is they don't have money to pay for food. They cannot feed their kids. They do not have homes. Communities don't work unless there's money flowing through them. Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

And we're back on the BobbyCats. When you mentioned Johnny and the shooting, and that was very personal to all of us here because it was so close to us. And it's probably close to a lot of people in a lot of places because it's so close to a lot of people that's happening everywhere all the time. Johnny, Johnny versus the devil, devil went down to Georgia,

that the song was playing? Like is that part of the, you were thinking about when you wrote the song? Did you hear the song, Devil went down to Georgia? As I was, my kids go nearby here. And I was, which is a couple of, couple miles from covenant, whatever. And the hardest thing I've ever done in my life is drop my kids off the day after the shooting because they had decided that, you know, that kids needed to feel some normalcy and go back to school. And I remember I've never, I've never done anything harder

than that when I watched them walk in that school. And both boys go in together, there's a bunch of people out front, teachers are crying and everything. So everybody goes inside and I didn't know what do. I felt helpless, scared, all those things. So I just parked in the parking lot there, and I sat there. I didn't know how long I was going to sit there. I just felt like I needed to be there. And at some point in time, probably an hour, at some point in time, I looked at my right and I looked at my left, and there were parents that had done the same thing all the way down the line, moms and dads, and they were just sitting there. And I had the, radio on and it was down low. I wasn't paying attention to it, but that one down in Georgia was on.

And there was a piece of that in that moment as I'm looking to my left and looking to my right and thinking about my kids that, you know, Johnny Rawlsing up your bow and play your fiddle hard, hells broke loose and Georgia and the devil deals cards, and if you win, you get to shiny fiddle made a gold and if you lose, the devil gets your soul. And I remember thinking if only Johnny was confine, or only if the devil was confined to Georgia. He's out of Georgia. He's everywhere. And we need Johnny to come back and help.

And that was it. And I pulled it out of the parking lot finally. And I went home. And I did like, and some of this may have went to the Evangeline versus the machine because there is that Johnny versus the devil, you know, that started that thing,

good, evil kind of thing. And I went home and I said it would be interesting if a song was written from that, perspective where you bring back a character from a song we all know from 30, 40 years ago, and he gets to play a different role. And so I wrote Johnny. Yeah, I don't know that I, I'm glad to hear that version or like the actual story behind how you wrote the song because now it kind of all makes sense with the record and even within the song, because you may just see the name Johnny and not understand, but do you believe things happen for a reason? Yes. Do you believe

that you heard that song at that time? Yes. So you can have that thought? Yes. So you could write this song. Yes. A hundred percent believe that. And so whenever you write Johnny, you call Luke Laird and Brett Warren. Yeah, I couldn't get out of it. I got in it. I just couldn't figure out how to quite get out of it. So what do you tell them? Like how you... I just sent it to them. I record kind of what I'm doing. And at that time, it was so fresh with what was going on. I mean, it wouldn't. Once I, I couldn't figure out how to land it. Like, I got it in the air and got it where it was supposed to go. And I was like, I don't, And I was probably, some of that was emotional where I was so tied in. I couldn't, I had a couple things that I thought were too, they weren't the right emotion. And so I was like, hey, check me on this. And then within a day or so we had it. And then I kind of knew it was a different, you know, different perspective and different thing. And then that was before I started the residency. And so in the residency, one of the big moments is I would play that song late in the show and we would kind of do a flag.

mash mob choir that would come out behind the people and sing those choir parts. End up being a big part of the show. And also a big part of formulating what the conception for this album was, where I had voices and then all of a sudden started thinking about strings and horns. I did stagecoach, which was noisy, but I loved. And all these things before I ever went in the studio were taking us in a different musical direction. and I was starting to feel a different pull. Was this the first song that you did for the album?

Maybe not even knowing it was going to be the album? Yeah, first song. So did this song actually create the rest of the album? I think it created the template for how we were going to do the album. So, I mean, I've not, a lot of people look back in this, your last record was 2021. That's not really true. We recorded the album in December of 2019 and January of 2020,

and COVID happened, and we sat on it for over a year, like everybody else in the industry. So I've not been in the studio in five, six years, five years. And I think that I've got a lot of songs. There's a lot of different avenues we could have went down for this album. There's, and I've done this long enough, I understand this song's going to be a hit song. This, I get it. And there were different lanes we could do.

But it was really Johnny and then stagecoach that started to develop a different path that was interesting to me. I'm a big Tom Waits fan. Yeah, me too. It was passed down to me because I think as a kid you don't really move toward a Tom Wait's tone. I started listening was like 12 or 13 years old. Love the rasp, love the grittiness.

You did a Tom Wait song on this. Clap Hands. Why that song? So this is, you remember you just, you've already asked me. You've already answered this in a question you already asked me. And do you believe things happen for a reason? So I was searching for filling out the rest of this project.

and the challenge of this project is not every song fifth the room with who was in the room and not every not the people in the room fifth a song so let's say we had 50 songs for this project and what you're finding is those songs that made it are really the only ones we cut other songs it worked just they this didn't match this so I was sitting in my house and there was a and I'm Tom on the nickels one of my favorite songs all time and um I was sitting in my house, and it was the end of, and I got to go back and figure out exactly what it was, because I've been asked this already,

but it was either the end of like a Netflix series I was watching or a movie, and on the outro, on the credits, clap hands comes on. And I remembered it. I was like, oh, yeah, I remember. It's been a while since I've heard this. And I was listening to the vibe of it, and I had just left the studio that day,

and I was thinking about the room, and I paused it. It was on like a DVR thing, So I paused it, and I grabbed my guitar. I rewounded it to when it started, and I sat there and just worked up the progression. And then I laid it down with an acoustic guitar. I sent it to Jay, my producer, and I said, hey, call me crazy, but I feel like this would really work with who we got in the room,

with the weapons we have there. And he sent back almost immediately I'll see you in the morning. And we went in the next day and cut it. So within a 12-hour period, I heard it on a TV show. show. And it was cut the next day. And there's a, there's a freneticness to, you know, to that with the voices and the breaths. There's a, there's a thing there that was really interesting to me that I hadn't heard on a cover of that song. And Tom Waits is creatively just an animal. And this record's a lot about creativity. A few weeks ago, I was sitting just like this with Ringo Star who came over to

the house and we were doing this. And it's pretty legendary to have a beetle. And he talked about how they would play 13 hours a day. and they were playing clubs constantly. And that now people aren't playing anywhere. Right. That's a big, it's a huge problem. And that it's actually taking the overall product. And it's not, and he didn't say as good,

but it's not as consistent as it was back when they were going, when you go all the way up until the last seven or eight years or so, probably, whenever people are able to create without acting, actually having to go out and do it. And, you know, I think he was a little concerned for the future of music as far as live music, because these guys aren't out playing in order to get good. That feels a bit about what you're saying. I am 100% the same. And you can see it. Like, you can just see that. It's just a key part. It's a key part of everyone's journey is that you're going to learn a lot about yourself. I mean, everybody should have those shows where

the band out numbers, the audience, or those shows. shows when you've got feedback all night or the guitar player's guitar goes down, you still got to play. You still got to figure those moments out. Those disasters that you manage in those places are what allow you to get to a different place and grow. The growth is the biggest thing. It's hard to grow when you're putting out whatever it is, and all of a sudden it's massively popular, but there's no journey from when you put that out to the popularity. There is no arc there. It just goes boom to boom. When you go straight up vertical that way, it's really hard to do what you need to do to be able to do this for a long time. It's funny you talk about disasters

because I think some of the biggest growth in my career doing stand-up or doing like live television is screwing up and realizing the world isn't over. Just keep going, right? Like just keep going. Yeah, and yours directly would be related like stand-up is exactly what I'm talking about. You just have to keep you in. You're in. And you'll get out. But you're committed. Like that's the thing. And that's what, if you didn't have that, I would venture to guess you would not be as good at what you're doing now.

I would agree. So that's the bones that I'm talking about. You've got to earn those bones. And no pun intended. But it's the, you've got to have those things. For me, it's like doing it terribly, like having a disaster happening and getting through it. That gives me the confidence to do it and get through it again when it happens to go, oh, the world's not ending right now. I can keep, I got my bearings.

I've done this before and it's gone wrong. and I've been just fine. And also, you've got to chase some things. So there's, I'm a, since it's stand-up, I haven't done it, but I know what I've done on stage. Sometimes you chase things that don't work. Oh, yeah. But the chasing is what allows you to kind of,

you learn there, right? So, and I've done that, creatively. Like, we've chased some stuff like, hey, you know what? We haven't played it for. Let's play. We've done that. But there's a lot of the younger people. And the problem is there's just not a mechanism for them

that's fast. that they can go earn it on the road because it's not instant gratification. Who wants to do that? So they end up going from here to here and back to the artist I was talking about I was pretty surprised that I was like, wow, so, okay, you got a pretty good following,

but you don't have a ban yet. We've not even went to, normally that's step one where you are is step 12. You've went to step 12, but one through 11's not there at all. So that's not good. you know, I would say as someone has done it a long time. I'm a massive fan of Andy Kaufman because he was just brave.

And Andy Kaufman died. I was probably year old. Didn't know him then, but he would go and just try things, what you're talking about. And sometimes they would go terrible. Yeah. And sometimes they would be amazing. And people still talk about them today.

But I feel like you're that artist to where you will go and try things. Yeah. I've seen you try things. Yeah. And it would be mixed. Some people would be like, that's the greatest thing I've ever seen. and someone go like what even just happened. Yeah.

But where does that bravery come from? I think looking at the, I think the fearlessness of the moment is something that's really important and whether that's confidence or doing it or trying to. I try to put myself in when I go to shows. I would rather see a person try something and maybe not get it

than see the same show I've seen a thousand times. And that's just me personally. So I think a lot of times it's a safe spot with me sometimes when there's a great relationship that we've built with our crowd back to what we're talking about over a lot of shows and a lot of years. And I feel safe to sometimes I'll go for something. And I feel comfortable with that. And it might not work. There have been nights it has not work. It has been a disaster.

Do you know it's not working when it's not working? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, 100%. But I think we did, we were in Pittsburgh one night and we were playing golf the day. we did the arena there. And the guy we were playing golf with it was a Pittsburgh Steeders fan. He said, hey, have you ever thought about Renegade?

So in the fourth quarter up there, they play Renegade, and everybody waves the terrible tails or whatever. And I was like, nah, you know, that's cool. So in the van on the way back from the golf course, and this is right before meeting, we got back late, showtime. I sent the band, the Renegade thing, the song. I said, let's just try this tonight. And that's a complex song to try to come together in a hurry.

And we started it. and it starts out acapello. And I couldn't hear the Acapello thing when we started because it's, you know, hell mama, that whole thing. And I looked at the band, I was like, I need a note.

I said, what key? What did I send? You know, I didn't know what I sent them. And three different guys gave me three different notes. Like it was D.C. Minor. And I'm sitting there going, so I started, it was a disaster. And I didn't even make it at the chorus.

I was like, you know, I called. it off like I audibled. I punted. You know, but it was one of those things that it's still, you called it off mid. Oh, mid. No, we had, I had a bass player and a key and I had a guitar player, none of us were in the same key. So, I mean, jazz is cool, but it just didn't really work, you know, it didn't work in that setting. Do you ever try it again? I didn't try it ever again. No. That is such, you know what? I learned that. I've also learned to cut losses. Yeah, like, this was never going to work. Yeah, because nobody, nobody cares. Like if you cut, I've done

that tour. It's like, you know what, this joke ain't working. I want to go and move off of it. It's never going to work. Nobody goes home and, man, he was in the middle of a joke and he quit and it sucked. I'm never going back. They probably honestly went home and said they tried renegade and fell on the fate. The rest of the show could have been the greatest show of all time. But that's what they're going to go home and talk about. And that's what I think is great about live music. It's experiencing a moment that no one else will ever get to experience on the rest of the tour. Is that why your shows are so different? Because you want the moments to be different? Yes. And we try to change it. There should be something every night.

It doesn't always have to be a song, the set list difference either. It could just be something that happens at the show that that person knows I had to be here and I had to be present. I couldn't have saw this anywhere else. I think that's what makes live music and the world we live in with streaming and all the stuff we're going to. It still makes it the most special thing because you can't really simulcast that and feel that the way you can if you're there. Got about four more questions for you. I want to ask about another song, though, Darkest Hour. And based in concert in Carolina, like what happened there?

Was it a bit? It was written before. This is back to the things happened for a reason. I had written Darkest Hour, and I was listening to a guy at the time. Darkest Hour is a little bit interesting that it's a hopeful song. I wrote it by myself. And I wrote it about 10 days before Helene happened. I wrote it.

I recorded it. I went to Florida. I was in Florida for something. I was on my way back when Hurricane Huline hit. And I got back home, and I remember seeing the devastation, which I couldn't fathom with being from that area. I didn't recognize any of the areas that I knew intimately. And there's a line in that song,

in your darkest hour, I'll come running. I'll light your way. And we were way off schedule. We were nowhere near releasing a song. we were going to be, we were eight months early. And I called John Pease, my manager. And I said, hey, you're not going to like this, but I'm going to regret if we wait until next year

to put this out when the, I think this song could be an anthem mainly for the moment. Because what I realize is in this world, and we all know this, something happens. And everybody pays attention. And then it's a busy world. whose cycle on this world's in the hours, it's not in the days, and then something else happens. And I said, we need something just to keep people focused on this problem and that it's going to

take years. And I said, I really want to put this song out. And I said, I know it's not a radio song. I know it's not what we would have done. But I said, I think it's a great anthem for the people there. And we, it ended up, everybody thinks I wrote it after Haleem. That's not true. I wrote it before. That's why I thought you wrote it after Helene. Yeah. But it was sitting there ready to go.

And that's where, you know, sometimes you give a song its moment. Sometimes a song finds its moment. And that's one of those that it just did. And it didn't feel right to me to wait almost a year to then go, oh yeah, you know. It just felt like I was missing an opportunity there. Did you and Morgan buy Field and Stream as a, hey, it's open? You text them and be like, let's buy it. Because we had every field and stream in Arkansas.

My stepdad had all of them. Like that was a brand. Oh, it's still a brand. Like it was... It's an old... It's the OG. Yes. 1871, it's the OG.

As a brand, it still exists. But the magazine, I didn't see the magazine after a while. Like the actual paper magazine. It's coming back. Yeah, now, yeah, yeah. So what was that? How did you guys decide to do that? We got, I've got a partner who I did Chiefs with, who called, who actually just kind of

stumbled across a deal. Dix, Dix owned it at the time. It stumbled across a deal. The sporting goods store? Mm-hmm. And he called, and we were actually getting ready to go on a golfing trip with Morgan. It was me, Morgan, and Ben Weber's his name. And he called, and he said, hey, do we want to look at Field and Stream?

And I went, what do you mean? He said, well, they're looking to maybe sell it. I said, the brand? He said, yeah. I said, sold. It was a Bible growing up for me. And they had let it kind of fall in disarray. what really happened, it was such a big umbrella that they had let all the pieces be sold to

different entities. And so what we were able to do was take about a year and go and pull all those entities back under that umbrella and buy each one of those little pieces. So for the first time in almost 100 years, it's back under the same roof. All the things are vertical. You've unified the belt. Right. All of it. So and then Morgan's a, so we talked to Morgan and we're like, hey, we should do this. He had the same experience growing up that I did with Field and Stream. And it's been, it's been a ton of fun and doing well. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a, it's fun. For me, it's fun from a, a writer's side. Some of my favorite writers and articles were those articles by guys who wrote for Field and Stream. There was humor, there was satire. There was, I mean, that, that, we were looking at,

I have a wall in my house where I went back and took all the old iconic covers. And what's interesting is you look up there and at the bottom there's the date. And you're like, it's 1917. Like, that's insane, you know, that there's hand drawn, just an American icon. And they were telling me a story. One of the guys that's been at Field and Stream a long time. When World War II happened, they weren't sure how they were going to address that. It was such a big thing in the world.

Well, the only thing that's on the cover of Field and Stream is outdoor scenes. And they couldn't figure out how they were going to address World War II ending. And they took a flock of geese in the V formation, the victory formation, and that's the cover of Field and Stream. And just stuff like that that you think about a brand that you're involved with. And I keep saying to Stuart to Ben and Morgan that, you know, we are stewards of the brand. It's, we don't own the brand.

It's our job to get the brand to the next generation and to make sure it's taken care of because it's a piece of, it's an American treasure. You have 22 arena dates on the Free the Machine tour. All them be different, a little bit, a little something different? Yeah. Yeah. That's, for now on, your life is you're going to present a different environment.

Yeah, and I usually, I get bored, like if I do a show on, let's say Friday and Saturday, If I do a show on Friday, I'm allergic to doing that same show as Saturday. I just can't do it. So there'll be something that happens. And a lot of that I take myself where toward the end of the show, a lot of times I'll just get an acoustic and I'll just play for a while and I'll bring up stuff I hadn't played or maybe a song nobody's heard.

I mean, I do that at the end of a show. So how's your memory with songs and things you've written forever ago of people that play this? You're like, dang, I thought about that in 10 years. Can you do it? Can you pull it out? Yeah. I mean, pretty deep. Yeah, well, I'm going to try it. Back to your thing.

Oh, my Lord. I'm in dear. That's right. In three different keys, man, three different keys. You're taking out Marcus King. I love that dude. And he's so good. Yeah, he's talented. Yeah. We sat over here and talk forever like that. He's South Carolina, guy. So he's near, he's kind of Carolina. Yeah, kind of. Yeah. Not the same. He's the other Carolina. He's like a second cousin. Not quite the same. Last last thing, you playing golf at all? I played this, I just got back last night. Oh, you was in, I was in Pebble.

We, I played the Pebble Pro Am when you played it a couple years ago. Yeah. You probably played it since. I played it this past year. Yeah, I saw, because we have the same golf buddy coach. Yeah. And so I saw he caddied for you. I was like, I should have taken you because I took my buddy Eddie and he sucks.

Yeah. It was actually a good idea. And that doesn't really help when you're not playing well and he's like telling you. You can never fix it in the middle of the round, as you know. It's either there or it's not, once you start moving hands around on stuff, it's a disaster. I feel like he's like a good therapist.

He's a good therapy. Yeah, that's what it is. I got a simulator behind here that, you know, whenever I am having a bad night or anxiety or just want to get away, coming to crank out some balls, you have one of those? I don't.

I'm going to come up here. How do you hit? I'm only five houses from here. So this is really easy. Now that I know, it's no big, leave the gate code. I trust you. Gates open. Yeah.

Okay, last last thing. Only eight songs on the record. Yeah, there was six. And I was very happy with the record with six songs. The two songs that weren't on the record were Hands of Time and Rockets White Lincoln. And it had a vibe. The thing I like about this record, Bobby, is it's got a ride. And when you put it in, it's meant to ride it.

And if you start and then you go to the finish, it's only 38 minutes, right? But it's meant to be written. And the six songs were great. I loved it, but it was a little thick. It was a little heavy. And I was missing a smile. I was missing a wry moment. And I told Jay that.

He said, what do you think? He said, we're doing a sixth song album? And I said, well, I don't have a problem with that. But I said, I don't, there's something I'm missing a thing. And I'll relate this to, this is important. So when Hurricane Dalyne happened, I called radio. I called Rod. I called the captains.

And I said, I need a favor. I need you to lean in on darkest hour because I want to raise the awareness of what this is. And I'm raising money. And they did. And then what was interesting is in one of the conversations, they said, you're still really important in this format. And when the time comes, we need something that we can run with to. And I had hands of time. And that resonated with me.

because I was asking for help, and I understood the position they were in. I understand that. And when it came time to do that, that fit what could be the smile and lighter part of the album, along with Rockets White Lincoln, and it just ended up being the last two songs that filled out the puzzle.

Which leads me to this, and then we're done. What song almost didn't get recorded that ended up being a massive consumption or a massive just hit for you that you almost didn't record? Smoke low smoke. Why did you not record? Why did you almost not record it?

I didn't get it. At the time, I mean, that was my wife and another, another, my guitar player I had that kept saying, and what really changed it is we started playing it before I recorded it.

We started doing a janky version of it live and they climbed the walls. But I didn't get it in the moment. First of all, the label told me if I released that, they were going to drop me. Because of what the song was? Yeah, at that time.

No marijuana, there was no song like that in the year that it came out. Like it was, first of all, we're all on our own path anyway. And the label was like, listen, if you do this, you just might as well go do it somewhere else. And so that was a big moment. But yeah, I got close to going, I don't know if it's going to work. You know, this is not what I think. Once it did, did it give you more,

hey, to use the word credibility within the label, but did it give you? Huge. Yeah. Yeah, because the next thing we did was made the chief album. And we came out with Homeboy first. And they were, instead of fighting that, which they probably, a lot of labels would have. They just went, hey, I don't know.

That smoke song works. Just let him run a minute. They get whatever rope you gave him, let him use it all. The Bobbycast, we'll be right back. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what I'm saying. Yep, that's me.

Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment,

and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing

something bigger. So, if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeard radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes,

follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stands and then there's your body having its own program. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans.

We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods of turbulence and transformation. There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationships. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to a slight change of plans on the I-HeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I feel like it was a little bit unbelievable until I really start making money. It's Financial Literacy Month and the podcast eating while broke is bringing real conversations about money, growth, and building your future.

This month, hear from top streamer, Zoe Spencer, and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum-Pierre, as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up. If I'm outside with my parents and they're seeing all these people come up to me for pictures, it's like, what? Today now, obviously, it's like 100%. They believe everything. But at first, it was just like, you got to go get a real job. There's an economic component to community stress.

If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they fail. And what I mean by fail is they don't have money to pay for food. They cannot feed their kids. They do not have homes. Communities don't work unless there's money flowing through them. Listen to eating while broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is the Bobbycast. Home obviously super important to you.

I was talking to some friends about the new story that came out where they're like, Eric's building these houses in North Carolina, where did that version of you giving back? Because you've done it in many ways. You did the concert. Where did that like building a neighborhood come from? From the concert. So when the concert was over with, we were able to raise a substantial amount of money. And when it was, we had raised the money immediately was like, what are we going to do with it? And there were four or five charities that were lined up there that are great charities. They do great work. And they said, you know, why don't why don't you give it to us? and my next question was, okay, what are you doing? And a lot of them were doing immediate stuff,

keeping people alive, water, diapers, just temporary housing. But none of that did anything to change the trajectory of the lives that the people who had lost homes. None of that was going on. So I ask about housing. And nobody had an answer for me on housing. So as opposed to what the government does, where they come in and they provide temporary housing in a different location to have a roof over their head. So basically, and you know the area some, so it's little small communities. And there's not a lot of people in these communities. Some of these communities are three, 400 people. And you're taking a majority of those people and you're moving them, you're going to lose the community because you lost the people.

So we started trying to see, can we do this ourselves? And so I started working my Rolodex and my phone and calling people. And I got to Kevin Clayton of Clayton Holmes. And I said, hey, can we do this? And I called Buddy Mighty Run Cisco. And I said, can we do this? And they said, yeah, if you want to do it, we'll do it. So we really came up with a novel idea of building permanent housing, not temporary,

and not only allowing them to live there for a period of time, cost-free. but the key to this, the whole, we call it Blueprint for the Blue Ridge, the whole key is we want to give them a path to ownership for that home. So a lot of these people are people that maybe could have never owned a home in their life because of their financial situation. But now, with our help and with the people who gave help, you can change that entire family's generational life, not just theirs, but their kids.

And so for those 45 families, the idea would be they'll end up owning those homes. And we just closed on two other properties. We're doing two additional properties. We'll end up doing about, as of right now, about 200 homes. But the best thing is, like as I looked around the country, nobody's done this, which is shocking, by the way, that in the United States of America, this is not done.

But it wasn't done during Katrina. It wasn't done during any other disaster we've had. And affordable housing is a major problem in the U.S. And this is when a disaster happens, it just shines a spotlight on that problem. And so we're trying to solve that best we can in something that's blueprintable for other states when a disaster happens.

That was my question. Is this a template that other areas can use? Yes. That's the whole purpose. And that's all, usually, again, I do a lot of food insecurity where that's important to me back in Arkansas, right? Right.

And it's, you know, a difference that help people write the second and do it some temporary but also actually building them something that they can have. It's like give a person a fish or teach them to fish, right? It's a version of that. Correct. And the hardest thing is having something that you can easily pass along, a template, a formula that somebody else can use,

but it sounds like what you guys are doing with that group that you're working with is able to produce that, and there is so much value in that for other people to just lay it down and do the same. Right. You probably affect, from a government standpoint, like the way they would look at it, you're probably not affecting as many people in a minor way where you take a big sum of money

and you put more people in something for a year. But you're not changing those people's lives. Then you have problem number two, which is year two, year three. So what we looked at was if you can affect a smaller number and change their entire life and their family's life, it provides a pillar for the foundation of that community, which was it's a little bit different than what's what's completely different than what's been done. But it's what we're doing. And so far it's going well and we'll see where we go from here. It's interesting the seasons of your career. I feel like this is very much the advocate season.

I feel like the last five, seven to ten years. And I don't know if you ever thought you would end here or it'd be a part of your career where you're often spending a lot of your time and energy advocating for other people. Was that the plan? Was it purposeful at all? No. I think a lot of that is things happen. You know, I'm fortunate to have done what I've done in my career to be in a position that I could influence, specifically North Carolina. I could, when Hurricane Helene happened, I was able to help there. And then, you know, all of a sudden you start helping and trying to help. It did intrigue me. I remember being on a call. And I was talking to some state legislators. and a person from Washington. I'm involved with FEMA. And I remember saying, like, how is this not already been, why is this not what we do? Like, how has this not been thought of or tried? And it just hadn't.

And so the interesting thing for me was like, okay, you know, I like stuff like that. Let's try something here. You know, let's try something that hadn't been done. It may not work, but nobody else is trying it. You know, and what's happening is not working. So let's try something. here. So I think a lot of that is just, it's the position, answer your question, you're just in a position in your life that you never thought you would be in and you have a chance to use your voice

and roll a decks to call people and move the needle. I found that bureaucracy shuts down a lot of change. Yeah. And you need big, loud voices. And you talk about your rolla decks, but yeah, you need people that can be louder than the bureaucracy. Because if you have to like go through nine, and I've had to do this at times, go through nine different people to get one thing checked off, that just,

that was three months. To get a small thing, maybe changed. But if you can take a sledgehammer to it, which you usually can with louder voices and bigger tools, they'll often listen. And that's the,

that's the, with what we did the federal government, I mean, that's what we were doing. You know, I mean, just as an aside, but like, $9 billion, I went to the state of North Carolina from the federal government for Hurricane

Helene relief, right? You could give me a billion dollars right now, and I can't weaponize that billion dollars. Nobody can't. There's no downchain weaponization. There's not the contractors. There's not the land to purchase. So take your billion dollars, and what we didn't really think about that I've seen, and I've been on a thousand calls, is as you go down the line from the money to putting people under a roof, we don't have that chain developed. So some of this is trying to develop one very small arm of that chain.

That, okay, we're into mid to long-term housing forever. We want them to own them. We'll take this lane, and you guys can figure out some other stuff. So it's not trying to solve all the problems, but it is trying to solve one of them. Okay, and we talked about where you got here, but just the records out,

the evangeline versus the machine, the Free the Machine Tour, it's 22 days with El King and Marcus King and Charles Wesley at Godwin. And yeah, it's awesome. Again, what, I'm talking about it. I'm not just talking about the record of the tour, I'm just talking about what kind of you stand for now.

Like just generally, I think we talk about a brand like filled in stream. I think that part in the cliche statement, the Eric Church brand now has turned into somebody who cares. And like, I hope you like that. You didn't really pick it. It's kind of been put on you because you feel like helping. Well, there's a lot of parallels too.

I mean, the longer you do something like in music, you think more about the people that did it before you. In music, you think about those artists, but like with Field and Stream, those writers and those stories and what that meant, I think the more you do something in any lane you're in, the more you have reverence and respect for the people that did it before you, and that leads you to widen out.

in a lot of different ways. I think the Eric Church brand cares now, which is different than it was, to me, even 10 years ago, which was the Eric Church brand, don't give up, you know? Yeah. Young and arrogant is a thing. That's also, it's very powerful.

It's very powerful. I mean, I see a lot of artists now that are that way, and they should be that way. They should be. That's a little bit of a superpower. But as you get older, you know, and you start to,

there's other superpowers out there. I appreciate the time, Eric. Good luck with everything. Yeah, you're making a difference, man. That's the coolest thing that I could say about somebody making a difference. So thanks. Thanks for listening to a Bobbycast production. Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, Chairman and CEO of IHard Media,

and I'm kicking off a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Magic, stories from the frontiers of marketing. Math and Magic takes you behind the scenes of the biggest businesses and industries while sharing insights from the smartest minds in marketing. Coming up this seasonal Math and Magic, CEO of Liquid Death Mike Sessario. People think that creative ideas are like these light bulb moments, that happen when you're in the shower. It's really like a stone sculpture.

You're constantly just chipping away and refining. Take to Interactive CEO, Strauss Selney, and our own chief business officer, Lisa Coffey. Listen to Math and Magic on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Saturday, May 2nd, country's biggest stars will be in Austin, Texas. At our 2026, IHard Country Festival,

presented by Capital One, C. Kane Brown. Parker McCollum. Riley Green Shaboozy Dylan Scott Russell Dickerson Gretchen Wilson

Chase Matthew Lauren Elena tickets are on sale now Get yours before they sell out at Ticketmaster.com It's Financial Literacy Month and the podcast Eating While Broke is bringing real

conversations about money, growth, and building your future. This month hear from top streamer Zoe Spencer and venture capitalist Lakeisha Landrum Pierre as they share their journeys from starting out to leveling up. There's an economic component to communities thriving. If there's not enough money and entrepreneurship happening in communities, they failed.

Listen to Eating While Broke from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.