country singer Eric Church cancelled sold-out arena show to watch a basketball game tomorrow night

https://variety.com/2022/music/news/eric-church-cancels-concert-ncaa-game-unc-san-antonio-1235218562/

I can't stop laughing about this. What a dipshit move.

His Sandy Koufax moment

too bad, game’s on

my favorite part of this is that church didn’t even go to unc, he’s a walmart fan!

I remember the Dropkick Murphys catching hell for coming on late because they wanted to watch a hockey game. I wonder why he couldn't have just delayed the start rather than canceling altogether.

he's flying back to NC to watch it in person. The show's in Texas.

I guess that makes sense.

I doubt he'll lose many fans over this. I mean, it's not like he insulted the President or anything.

So about the only salvageable male country artist of the last decade finally earns a thread!

saw him a couple of yrs ago, great show

Skipping work to go to a game is always cool but putting out the press release that sounds like it was written by a damage control PR team is lame.

They were probably thinking, "We can't lie, since he might get spotted at the game." So tell the truth but also reverse it on the fans: actually, it's because of the same devotion that you fans have for Eric Church that he's going to be abandoning you to go to the game.

“springsteen” is a good song

Nashville doesn't accept them, but Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson are certainly much more than salvageable (not to mention preferable to Church).

But yeah, "Springsteen" is good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iXPlJHKB1g

I like a few of his songs. "Higher Wire" and "Creepin'" are both pretty good imo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptcWRy2wCaY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OZhw-aQTP8

i believe "springsteen" placed close to the top 10 in the ilm trax poll whichever year that was (2012 i think), and it deserved it

i also liked his song "talladega" but honestly i haven't really engaged much with his work and his tryhard rock rebel persona puts me off sometimes

i looked it up, it placed 11th that year

I have never heard his music but he looks like a douchebag version of Sturgill Simpson and he calls his fans “the Choir,” fuck this guy.

invite eric church to ilh

Eric Church is a+

Chief is one of my favorite albums of the last decade. He's a solid balladeer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MH07rieK8w

I’m down with “hell of a view”

If you spend a lot of time around someone who listens to the country music station nonstop, Eric Church is a godsend. He's not as good as he thinks he is, but he's a lot better than anything else on top 40 country.

Yes. Including Jason Isbell, who has no schlock in his bones and is therefore less fun.

Among men obv. Miranda Lambert is the best popular singer-songwriter in any genre now.

His new album's pretty wonderful? He experiments with strings and French horn and it works.

Nashville doesn't accept them, but Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson are certainly much more than salvageable (not to mention preferable to Church).

no they are not

Yeah I like those guys but I’d rather listen to Church.

rather listen to Childers than all of 'em

That pro-gay song is good.

"Isbell and Sturgill are music industry outcasts" is the "right wingers are censored in the media" of country music propaganda

Not so wonderful: "Evangeline," where he drops lines from his favorite jukebox heroes but it results in a string of cliches and banalities.

it was easier when they called this stuff alt-country and these guys were resolutely on the fringe with zero mainstream recognition. nowadays they're popping up in Oscar-winning movies both as soundtrackers and actors, so still not accepted by the Nashville radio machine but plenty accepted in even more broadly popular places, so no one's exactly shedding any tears for them.

I am failing to see why the music Eric Church makes is no longer called "alt-country" and how him and his peers are occasionally in movies is of consequence to anyone

It was easier

ime it's Jason Isbell fans who worry about this shit, not the artist. Isbell knows his place. Morgan Wallen covered one of his songs in 2020.

yeah I was referring to the idea that guys like Isbell and Simpson were outcasts, not Church. clearly the lines are blurrier than they once were. I imagine most fans of these guys dislike pop-country, sure, but I don't think they're hung up on why their preferred troubadours aren't getting radio airplay. this seems like entirely a creation of the people who cover this type of music.

I've never posted in this thread but want to +1 most of what Alfred's written, including upthread. Church has a very unique role in popular country music -- I've seen him live, and he leans into the outlaw brand while simultaneously playing to the American patriots and being an incredibly vulnerable artist who builds permission for emotion in an otherwise overly-masculine space. He is friends with Mavis Staples and Jeff Tweedy and is just as likely to reference them in his music or play one of their songs live as he is Bosephus. Last time I saw him was right after Robbie Robertson passed, and he did a fantastic rendition of "Ophelia." I rate Mr. Misunderstood as one of the best country albums of the 21st century, and that's despite the fact that probably my three favorite Church songs sit outside it.

However, I'll have to agree to disagree with Alfred's apparent distaste for Sturgill (I can leave Isbell, post-Truckers). His range and musicianship are far, far greater than Church's, and I'd be hesitant to put them in the same category. Church is much more popular.

Isbell is a lovely guitarist with a very keen eye for lyrics, not sure why he's so roundly written off here. I admit he's not fun but I'm not sure why that's always the be-all end-all for everything.

I don't know, Sturgill and Church play the same venue in my town.

This is the thing about Isbell/Sturgill fans who think they've found the last great songwriters and why can't the world hear what they can hear ... those guys are playing large amphitheaters and small arenas. Tyler Childers is playing stadiums. They're not some secret, but their fans think they are because they're not Morgan Wallen, I guess? That plus a superiority complex.

This is what I took from evol j's post above.

However, I'll have to agree to disagree with Alfred's apparent distaste for Sturgill (I can leave Isbell, post-Truckers). His range and musicianship are far, far greater than Church's, and I'd be hesitant to put them in the same category. Church is much more popular.

I like Isbell when he rocks out and I don't have to concentrate on the lyrics but let the lyrics come to me.

As for Church: great post, Indexed. I reviewed the new album today and Church's career to date.

xpost

idk, that just feels like a lot of projecting. again, I won't argue that a lot of their fans don't like radio country but if you want to stan for Morgan Wallen then by all means I guess. and Childers just played an ampitheater here a couple of weeks ago, not sure where you're getting stadiums, my man ain't Beyonce.

Childers has a beautiful ginger-gay mustache, I must say.

he played a football stadium in Lexington, Kentucky a couple weeks ago (that's cheating ... it's a home show, I get it), with stadiums on the schedule in New York and Nashville this fall.

yes, i probably went a little overboard. but he just finished a tour where he consistently played NBA-sized arenas, which is nuts.

Childers' Purgatory is a masterpiece. The rest of his catalogue is hit or miss.

I have no idea why my 17-year-old daughter is a fan of Childers or Zach Bryan, I assume the music is getting to them through social media? Because she is otherwise not a particularly big fan of country music, give or take a few other exceptions. Isn't Billy Strings another one of these seemingly popular young guns?

A lot of these (mostly) dudes, I'm not sure how different it is from someone like Willie Nelson, an "outlaw" who is a household name.

I think the key is that a lot of the acts being discussed in this revive don't get played on mainstream country radio. Or maybe they do, lol? Does Eric Church have any songs about trucks and beer and girls in tight shorts?

Streaming helps a lot. Childers is drawing 11.5 million listeners a month on Spotify, which is almost 10 million more than Simpson, who himself is pulling double the #s Isbell is currently doing.

Edit: Childers is actually at 11.2 mill, which is also 1.2 mill more than Church rn.

What's driving any of those numbers, though? Promotional algorithm? How are people discovering any of these acts? Someone like Kacey Musgraves, she's something of a fashion icon, which explains crossover appeal. A lot of these other dudes though, I think, as talented as many of them are, why them?

Someone like Zach Bryan, for example, he is massively popular and fills giant venues, but his music codes middle aged guy fixing a car in the garage while listening to Springsteen, thinking about the mistakes he's made. Yet he's got all these young fans.

trying to not be rude when i say this -- country fans discover new musical acts in the same fashion as anyone else? the artists post to social media and people start gravitating towards the ones they like? people hear word of mouth from their friends that they should check this new artist out? you play a bunch of shows on the road and grow your audience? it's not a mystery

XPs Curiosity maybe? You see them written up outside the Country market as it were, and a couple clicks later you're listening to and likely enjoying the album.

Zach Bryan dwarfs all those guys with 25.2 million , and Wallen has him beat with 38 million.

his music codes middle aged guy fixing a car in the garage while listening to Springsteen, thinking about the mistakes he's made.

this is just projection lol. zach bryan started by posting his music on youtube

Yeah, covering Isbell! Bryan and Isbell are pretty similar, the former even cites the latter as one of his biggest inspirations. But clearly not nearly as many Bryan fans are also listening to Jason Isbell.

I don't think I'm merely projecting re Bryan, though. I've heard plenty of his stuff, and it's got as much in common with "Nebraska" as anything else. Not exactly pick me up party music.

some real narrow views of how young people are finding music and what kind of music they might love above.

there is some extensive discussion of Bryan's rise and fan base in his thread, which is worth reading.

the Spotify numbers back my belief that Childers is bigger than you think, bigger than Isbell/Simpson and as big as Church. Childers at 11.2M and Isbell at 854K is hilarious, given the worship for the latter.

That's what I mean though. They are all mostly still relative birds of a feather, it's interesting to me how some of them take off and connect on a mass scale and some of them don't.

Yeah, that's fair. I saw Bryan with 30,000 twentysomethings and my mind was fuckin' blown ... not by him, but by the audience. Couldn't beleive what I was seeing. (This was two years ago.)

this revive is like a strawman royal rumble

if you get a chance to spend time with rank and file nashville music industry people you'll generally find that their tastes are more broad than people want to imagine when they think of the country music industry as a closed off cultural backwater. maybe that was true in the heyday of bro country i wasn't around then, but i'd actually point to the morgan wallen branded music festival (the one that used to be hangout) as being pretty representative of people's taste in nashville, especially when you start talking to the 20 and 30 year olds instead of the 40 and 50 year olds. yeah there's some mainstream country they like but it's as much vaguely rootsy/countrified indie rock (war on drugs), rap (bigx, moneybagg yo), random party music (diplo, wiz khalifa), rock bands (treaty oak revival), outsider-y backwoods-y folk rock stuff (ole 60) etc

Josh, kids aren't just searching for party music!

Yeah, fair enough. Maybe some of this melancholy stuff serves the same purpose as, say, the Cure or whatever.

xpost Are we no longer in the heyday of bro country?

Yeah, that's fair. I saw Bryan with 30,000 twentysomethings and my mind was fuckin' blown ... not by him, but by the audience. Couldn't beleive what I was seeing. (This was two years ago.)

― alpine static, Monday, May 5, 2025 1:57 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, it's a trip

Also: most of these guys we've mentioned are kinda hot? So, why wouldn't teens listen to them?

Dierks Bentley >> Zach Bryan as far as beards but get both of them in a room with Eric Church and you'll have to claw me away.

lol might give new meaning to the term "package tour."

That list of Wallen-adjacent music isn’t doing Nashville any favors. They like Johnny Cash AND Grandmaster Flash.

FWIW, my wife likes Zach Bryan and is not a country fan. She calls him "emo country." He also appeals to little kids in my experience.

“if you get a chance to spend time with rank and file nashville music industry people you'll generally find that their tastes are more broad than people want to imagine when they think of the country music industry as a closed off cultural backwater.”

I definitely see this when Isbell takes a tweet swipe at artists who sell 100x what he does and in their responses you can tell that Isbell has a lot more respect in Nashville than they do.

The Childers show here had attendance over 40K, per the local media who covered it. Was over 4h, with SG Goodman and Wynonna both opening.

Isbell played here at our largest indoor space back in the fall, and I would *generously* say there were about 7500 in attendance.

So that reflects the Spotify numbers, then?

jon_oh are you in Lexington? or elsewhere?

I'm in Lexington, yes. Was at the Childers show!

Purgatory's the one I like.

As for Church: great post, Indexed. I reviewed the new album today and Church's career to date.

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, May 5, 2025 12:32 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

This is excellent! In particular I think you've captured his "muddled" perspectives well. One other important point you touch on is his primary muse: music. The guy has maybe more songs about music and musicians than any other artist I know.

My only nit would be the argument that none of his records are essential. I'd advocate for Mr. Misunderstood and probably Chief, too. FWIW a quick google search shows the former as #2 on Stephen Thomas Erlewine's best of the 2010s -- the rest of his top 5 looks like it could be yours.

I misstated it too. Chief would also number among the decade's best in any genre.

I never, ever feel satisfied when "Over When It's Over" ends. What a tune. One of those rare albums I immediately replay most of the time.

After 2011 he has no bad albums, really. Even The Outsiders, which I knocked around seriously in 2014 because of crap like "Dark Side," sounded fresh to me last weekend.