Interview: Eric Church talks chart-topping “Chief,” fatherhood and Saturday’s Oklahoma show
From Friday’s Weekend Look section of The Oklahoman.
Eric Church experiences big milestones in 2011
The up-and-coming country singer-songwriter, who plays Saturday at WinStar World Casino, scored his first No. 1 album and welcomed his first child this year.
Although he scored his first chart-topping album debut over the summer, Eric Church experienced an even bigger milestone this fall.
On Oct. 3, the country singer-songwriter and his wife Katherine welcomed their first child, a son they named Boone McCoy Church.
“It’s been great. It’s been an adjustment,” Church said with a laugh during a recent phone interview from his home in Nashville, Tenn., where he was taking a break from “diaper duty.” “Trying to adjust to daddyhood, it’s certainly been something … and I’m still trying to convince myself that I can’t break him every time I pick him up. You know, I guess being a guy, (it’s just that) they’re just so fragile when they’re newborn.
“It’s been fun just to find a rhythm. We’re finally starting to hit on one now, my wife and I. But it’s been a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
It’s been a year for once-in-a-lifetime experiences for Church, 34, who released his third album, “Chief,” back in July and surprised everyone — including himself — when it not only bowed at the top of the Billboard Top Country Albums chart but also in the No. 1 spot on the cross-genre Billboard 200 list. The debut of “Chief” far outpaced his first-week sales for 2006’s “Sinners Like Me” and 2009’s “Carolina.”
“It was shocking, honestly. I know that week everybody was talking about Adele and Kelly Rowland. I was in New York actually when the record came out and everybody was talking about those other records possibly being the No. 1 record that week. We debuted with, what, 145,000 records and really doubled up everybody they were talking about … and there’s a couple of places that we went that when people read the charts and saw the records we were selling that were going ‘Who in the hell is Eric Church?’” he said with a laugh.
“I love that, that we were able to kind of surprise a lot of people, myself included. I didn’t think we’d sell that many records, I’ll be the first person to say that.”
He chalks up the shocking success of “Chief,” which received this week a 2012 Grammy Award nomination for best country album, to old-fashioned word-of-mouth.
“We’ve always tried to keep it about the music, and it’s resonated and the people responded. You know, it wasn’t me. I don’t tweet, I don’t get on Facebook, so it wasn’t anything we did. I’m not on TV. It wasn’t anything gimmicky. It was people responded to the music and told people about it and came out in a big way,” said Church, who plays Saturday at Thackerville’s WinStar World Casino.
From the writing phase, the North Carolina native took a different approach to making “Chief.”
“I basically holed myself up in a cabin in North Carolina for a month and brought some writers in and out. Had no TV, no cell phone,” he said. And it wasn’t just to write,” Church said. “We had went 100 miles an hour since the career started. We never paused; I kept the pedal down for five years I guess. We got to a point where I needed to kind of pause and reflect and see where the next record was gonna go. What I learned up there was that really we’re here because of the fans, ‘cause of the live show.
“I decided there that we were gonna make this next record like it was live show,” he added. “There’s four songs on the record that are one take, and we didn’t go back and fix ‘em ‘cause you can’t fix ‘em live. So I really tried to find that energy and that creativity and let it just lead me through the recording process.”
Although he gained chart traction with his ballads “Love Your Love This Most” and “Hell on the Heart,” Church deliberately gave the songs on “Chief” a harder edge. After rebelling against Nashville’s unwritten rule that lyrics about alcohol are acceptable but lyrics about marijuana are not with his 2010 hit “Smoke a Little Smoke,” Church released the soulful word-playing country-rocker “Homeboy” as the first single from “Chief.”
“One thing that frustrates me the most about Nashville and about the industry, is a lot of times we rest on our laurels. You know, we run songs up and down the chart that don’t mean anything. They’re not pushing any envelopes, they’re not really taking the music in a direction that it hasn’t been,” he said.
“I have a huge reverence for country music. Huge. And I think it’s up to us to kind of take that flag and move it somewhere. Now, people don’t have to follow us there. That’s fair. But I think it’s up to us to make music that at least tries to move that flag a little bit.”
Naturally, following “Chief” has become much easier with the album’s chart and sales success. Church will embark on his first headlining trek, “The Blood, Sweat & Beers Tour,” in January, with a stop planned for March 8 at the Chesapeake Energy Center.
Although he is spending most of the end of 2011 at home with his wife and Baby Boone, the up-and-coming star is planning a few shows to “keep the knife sharpened,” including Saturday’s WinStar date.
“There’s a little bit of a sense when you’ve been off of a little bit more energy, a little bit more of the unknown from a creative standpoint. I don’t know really how this show’s going to go ‘cause we’re not doing it every night. It’s not routine. I like that. That’s the reason I got into music,” he said with a laugh.
In concert
Eric Church
With: Josh Abbott Band.
When: 8 p.m. Saturday.
Where: WinStar World Casino, Interstate 35, Exit 1.
Information: (800) 622-6317 or www.winstarworldcasino.com.
-BAM
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[...] fair. But I think it’s up to us to make music that at least tries to move that flag a little bit. ● – – Eric Church returns to his old trusty ‘move the flag’ [...]