Eric Church Previews New Album

Last week, Eric Church and his producer Jay Joyce invited a group of reporters to their East Nashville studio to play Eric’s next album, “The Outsiders.” Country Countdown USA’s Lon Helton was one of the guests, and Eric is the co-host this week.

First a few words about the studio.  It’s a converted 1960s church, located near LP Field, home of the Tennessee Titans.  All of the pews were removed, leaving a large open room.  The mixing console and all the gear is located where the altar used to be.  The cross is still located above the altar.  Eric told Lon, “My producer bought a church, and in order to buy the church, he had to become an ordained minister.  If you know him, that’s it’s own joke.  That is the punch line.  But it was a great vibe.  These buildings were designed for their sound.  From the outside, it still looks like a church.  One day, a homeless guy walked in, still thinking it was a church.  We were working on a song, and he just stood off to the side.  We noticed him standing there and asked, ‘Can you sing?’  So I think we have a homeless guy doing background vocals.”

“The Outsiders” will be the follow-up to Eric’s award-winning album “Chief.”  We asked what effect the success of that album had on the new record: “The success of Chief made me want to do things differently.  I didn’t want to make the same record again.  I did a lot of things to make this record different from the last one.  First of all, this album leads more to my live sound.  We recorded with my band all in the same room at the same time.  Once we had the work tape, we realized we were done.  We aren’t fans of traditional studios.  We’re very spontaneous.  The second song on the album was actually a mic check.  We hadn’t intended to record it.  But were glad we did!”

There are songs that sound rootsy and organic, like “Give Me Back My Hometown” and “Broke Record.” Then there are rockier songs like the title track, “Dark Side,” and “Devil Devil.”  Eric introduced “Dark Side” by saying it’s the first song that references his son.  We expected it might be a cute song about fatherhood.  Instead, there’s a line that goes, “If you touch my boy, you’ll see my dark side.”

There are 11 new songs, totaling about 55 minutes of music.  Like Eric’s previous albums, there is a lot of jamming among the musicians.  Eric said he wrote 121 songs for the album.   “There’s probably 8 or 10 songs that might have been big songs for me, but we felt we’d been there.  We felt like it was something we’d done.  We wanted to go some places we hadn’t been.  So it’s an artistic album.  I don’t judge an album’s success on sales.  I want it to clear a creative bar that the record before it didn’t.  With this album, it’s a better album creatively.  It’s a better album.  Once the people get it, they’ll tell me if it’s better.  But for me, it is.”

How indicative are the clips on your web site? “I would never judge an album based on one song.  It’s hard for me to talk about the songs.  I can talk about the album as a whole, because as a whole, you’ll hear an incredible evolution from my first album to this one.  There are still things that sound like my first album.  It’s just bigger, badder, and better.  We had some constraints then that aren’t there now.  We’ve had enough success where we can do it and not worry.  It’s creative, it’s artistic, and you can’t dictate what the music will be.  Any record we do is about giving an environment, that we don’t fences around, don’t put in a  box, and see where it goes.”

“The Outsiders” by Eric Church is expected to be released on February 11, 2014.

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