Eric Church’s Most Prized Plaques

Eric Church won the Best New Male Artist trophy at last year’s Academy of Country Music Awards. Country Countdown USA’s Lon Helton asked Eric where he keeps his awards: “I’ve got a man cave, and it’s in my man cave.  I’ve got a cool picture, there was a point in time when my son Boone was the same size as the ACM Award.  So we laid the award beside him, it was the identical height, so it was funny to give perspective of his size compared to an ACM Award.”

What else is in that man cave?  “Three Gold Records are there and a bunch of stuff.  The coolest thing I have is there was an astronaut who took the Sinner Like Me album into space and played it in the space station.  There’s a picture of the CD floating in space with the earth behind it.  It’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever had.  They signed it, and they presented me with a plaque.  So if there’s extra-terrestrial life, they’ve heard Sinners Like Me.  The son of the astronaut brought it to me at a show in Boulder, Colorado.  When he showed it to me, it blew me away.  That’s when you know your music means a lot to people.  When they presented to me, it was out of this world!”

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Eric mentioned he has three Gold Records.  The first was a gift from Taylor Swift, who replaced Eric on the Rascal Flatts tour five years ago.  The second was for Eric’s second CD, “Carolina,” and he received it at a ceremoney in Nashville in July.  Then one month later, he was at a show in Milwaukee with Keith Urban, and during the show Keith presented him a Gold Record for “Chief.”  Lon Helton asked Eric about receiving that plaue from Keith: “Keith texted me when Chief came out and congratulated me on the album.  He invited me to play a song from it during his show.  He played a solo in the song ‘Springsteen’ that was better than what we did on the album.  And then he presented me the plaque, which again, of all people to give me that, nobody could have meant more to me than Keith Urban, because of the respect I have for him.”

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WEB EXCLUSIVE: Eric shared a little personal story about Keith Urban with us that we couldn’t fit in the radio show.  He said, “Keith & I have been texting each other where we try to turn each other on to obscure old music.  It’s a bit stressful, because it’s Keith Urban.  There was a Dr. Hook record called Bankrupt that he turned me on to.  I turned him on to a Wilson Pickett song with Duane Allman before anyone knew Duane.  It’s a verson of Hey Jude by Wilson Pickett.  I love that Keith & I are trying to one-up each other on obscure old music.”

Tags: eric, urban

Category: Audio