Eric Church loves the United States of America. The country music hitmaker celebrates the country, and those who serve in the military, not just on Memorial Day but all year long.
“It’s about especially the soldiers that I come in contact with on the road and play,” Church tells his record label. “And not only that, to be able to make the music that I’m able to make, and to say what I want to say. That freedom to be able to do those things, and be in a country where we’re allowed to do that, and be in a country where we’re allowed to play that stuff on the radio. I don’t think you’re going to have any American argue that America’s not the best place to live, and I’m certainly one of them.
“I’m very proud to be from here,” the North Carolina native continues. “And very proud that we have the soldiers. There are a lot of other countries out there in the world that don’t want to live the way we do, and that’s fine. They can just keep living the way they are. I’m very proud of it, and I think that it’s a time to celebrate being proud to be an American and celebrate those freedoms and celebrate the people that are over there fighting for this freedom.”
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Church will certainly do things the way he wants to on his upcoming tour. Church will head out on his Free the Machine Tour, beginning on September 12. Even for someone like Church, the tour will be something different, and unlike anything anyone has done before, including Church.
“We’ll have an orchestra with us on stage and they’re going to be playing not only Evangeline vs. The Machine, but they’re going to join all our other songs,” Church reveals to Country Now.
“So the show will start in a big way, orchestra-wise,” he continues. “And then we’ll move into an OG world, which is kind of the band and Joanna [Cotten], and then I’ll probably end up ending it acoustic. So we’ll do the whole thing big to small, which people have never seen us do it that way.”
The tour is in support of his Evangeline vs. the Machine album, out now.
“I’ve always let creativity be the muse. It’s been a compass for me,” Church says. “The people that I look up to in my career and the kind of musicians I gravitate to never did what I thought they were going to do next – and I love them for it. I never want our fans to get an album and go, ‘Oh, that’s like Chief or that’s like this.’ Painstakingly, I lose sleep at night to try to make sure that whatever we do creatively, they go, ‘Wow, that’s not what I thought.’ I think that’s my job as an artist.”
Church currently has a Top 25 hit at radio with “Hands of Time” from Evangeline vs. the Machine. Find all of Church’s music and upcoming shows at EricChurch.com.
Photo Credit: Anthony D’Angio