Eric Church: Bigger Badder Better
In December, 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.
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.”
Talk about the video for Give Me Back My Hometown: I can’t give you a lot, but with this album, we know what the singles are, and we’ve already conceptualized the videos. So all of the characters you see in the video have a story line, and they relate to each other. The person we worked with on the video does Breaking Bad, and there’s an actor from that show in the video. I wanted something more compelling than just a music video. I thought it would add some intrigue and fun to continue this throughout the album. But every person in the video is connected.
What is it that makes this a cohesive project? The songs. Each songs found the other one. As we’d cut a song, it would eliminate some of the songs we wrote. There are three songs I wrote during the making of the album. I felt something was missing. “Dark Side” came in late. When you make an album, you can’t go in with a pre-conceived notion of what it’s going to be. This is an album. By themselves, the songs are OK. But it will aggravate me if people put this on shuffle. It wasn’t meant to be listened to that way.
Do you look at this album as a piece of art? We tried to do it every time. But we were at a point in our career where we could have continued to do what we did on Chief, but we made an effort to challenge ourselves.
Talk about the live moments in making this album: Music doesn’t work well when you set boundaries. That’s not music. There are no rules in music. Too many times we box things up. It chokes creativity. Jay’s studio is a free for all. For example, the girl on “Springsteen” was just someone who was hanging around the studio that day. That’s the creative vibe. So this record is the most creative we’ve done.
Talk about the idea behind Give Me Back My Hometown: It’s the loneliest song on the record. If you listen to the lyrics, here’s a guy who’s in a place he knows so well, but because the girl left, he becomes a stranger in his hometown. To me, there’s nothing lonelier than that. I think everyone’s had that emotion.
Does the cover art symbolize the threshold you’re trying to cross with your music? I think it’s a time in our career that the few are now many. I don’t know if we’re breaking out or breaking in. I wanted to make sure we didn’t forget our journey, how we got here. The people who came with us are the ones coming through that gate.
It’s almost like your studio became a part of the record: I was nervous at first. I’m superstitious. We’d made all the previous albums in my producer’s basement. Then he bought this church. What I found was a turning of the page when I walked in this room. We’d never been there, and that added to the changing, the turning of the page to this new album.
Two years ago, we met the Chief character. Is there a new character? The Chief image is like a uniform to me. That’s gametime for me. That’s become a part of what gets me ready for the show. The singular Chief image that became so synonymous with that album, I wanted to show the turning of the page. So the hat came off, the sunglasses are still there. It’s a different image. It’s showing the fans this is not Chief part 2. When I play on stage, there will be a variation, I don’t know. But that’s where I get myself in a mindset for the show I give.
Was there a point when you made the decision to release The Outsiders to radio? When we recorded the song The Outsiders. We toyed with just playing it on the awards show. But it only works if it’s the first thing you hear. I knew it would be a challenge, but felt it was important that people heard it first.
“The Outsiders” by Eric Church will be released on February 11, 2014.
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