Eric Church: I Want Platinum!

Just a few weeks ago in Nashville, Eric Church was presented a Gold Record for his second album, “Carolina.”  The plaque commemorated sales of a half million copies.  In accepting the honor, Eric told the crowd, “I want my next album to go Platinum.”  That would mean twice as many copies sold.  The next morning, Eric spoke with Westwood One about his goals for new CD, “Chief.”  “I want a Platinum record, and I want Chief to go there, I think it’s the best record we’ve made, I’m excited for the fans to get it, and I hope we sell a million of them.  This record is my favorite we’ve done.  We somehow were able to hold the magic for the entire record.  It’s a very live record.  It’s unharnessed, it’s not choked out at all.”

What we noticed as we listened to the music was it seemed to be very rootsy and rhythmic.  Eric says that’s by design. “The drums on this record drive it.  There’s more drums being the leading factor, and that’s unique to country music.  It doesn’t happen much in country, and we didn’t plan that, we just let it happen, and it sounded right.  We did some back beat stuff that’s different.  I played a lot of acoustic guitar on this record, and that’s the first time, and that gave it a different feel.  In the lead single ‘Homeboy,’ that’s me playing the acoustic, I’m not a professional studio player, and I love we left that in there.”

It’s one thing to put out a raw acoustic driven album.  But then there’s the contrast of strings and even a harp on the first chorus of “Homeboy,” currently in our Top 15.  Eric spoke about the unusual instrumentation: “You hear harp.  I think they called it glissando harp, which is a big harp!  You can rent ’em!  It was really quick, it was just one stroke, so we brought a professional harp player in to do that.  I can’t play it.  What’s funny about the first chorus is it comes out of nowhere.  It’s like three different songs.  The outro is my favorite part of the record, where we’re playing over the bridge.  You haven’t heard that in country since the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd in 1978.  It’s a song that’s gonna get a reaction.  That’s the kind of music I like to make.”

“Homeboy” is the first single from Eric’s new album, available everywhere today.  There actually is no song on the album called “Chief.”  The album title itself is drawn from Eric’s nickname.  It was originally his grandfather’s nickname, but his band has now given it to him.   The picture you see on the album cover is “chief.”  That’s the guy his fans see at his shows.  The baseball cap and sunglasses is the character he inhabits during his shows.  “When it’s show time, I put on the sunglasses and the hat, and that’s how people know it’s game time.  In fact one night, it was real dark, so I didn’t wear the sunglasses, and the fans were disappointed.  They felt I wasn’t in the zone.”

This summer, Eric is taking his music to a whole new audience, on Toby Keith’s Locked & Loaded Tour. “No shortage of testosterone on stage.  It’s chest-thumpin’ every night.  I respect the way he’s conducted his career.  It’s what we aspire to.  We built an army in a real way, and an authentic way, and I haven’t sold out to do it any quicker.  We built our career on the backs of our fans.  They pulled us to where we are now, and Toby did the same thing.  His tour fits our fan base.  That’s the kind of crowd we have, they come to party, and so do ours.  So it’s a lot of fun.”

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