What a great day, just an absolutely great day.
Earlier this morning, we broke the news that Eric Church would be releasing a triple album this spring, titled Heart & Soul. Yes, a TRIPLE album.
“Heart” and “Soul” being the titles of the two albums, with “&” being the title of the third, a vinyl that’s exclusive to the members of the Church Choir. Naturally, the entire Eric Church-loving community went absolutely bonkers.
However now, Eric is here to deliver the details himself:
“It’s been a long 10 months. With the power of music and love for each other, we will get through this, we will gather again soon. I cannot wait to play this music for you live.”
Holed up in the mountains of North Carolina at the beginning of the year, Eric and company spent nearly a month writing and recording a ton of new music for this project. Writing in the morning, recording at night… there was no plan, there was no specific goal, the let creativity drive the entire process.
“I’ve always been intrigued when a song is born in a writer room – there is a magic that happens there. I wanted to put that in the studio form. So, every day, we would write a song in the morning and we would record the song that night.
Doing it that way allowed for the songwriters to get involved in the studio process and the musicians to be involved in the creative process. You felt a little bit like you were secretly doing something that was special, and you knew it… You started going, ‘hmm, wait ’til the world finds out about this.’”
And once they were finished, they were left with a massive collection of new songs. However, how it would all come together remained to be seen.
“The interesting thing about this process is that Jay kept asking me the last three or four days, ‘Are we done?’ and at that time I didn’t know what the project was. I kept saying ‘God, this is going to be really hard. There’s a lot here. Is this a double album? And if it’s a double album, how do we leave out these five or six songs?’
I am the hardest critic on making sure every song deserves to be on the record, and I beat this thing to death going ‘this can’t be that good.’ But, it was just a special, special time and a special, special project that I think will be among our best.”
The end result? A 24-song, triple album that Eric calls “the very best we’ve ever made.”
Heart will be available everywhere on Friday, April 16th and Soul will hit shelves on Friday, April 23rd. & will only be available in vinyl, and exclusively to Church Choir members, on Tuesday, April 20th. Pre-orders for all three albums begin next Friday, January 29th.
‘Heart’ tracklist:
“Heart On Fire” (Eric Church)
“Heart Of The Night” (Eric Church, Jeremy Spillman, Jeff Hyde, Ryan Tyndell, Travis Hill)
“Russian Roulette” (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Monty Criswell)
“People Break” (Eric Church, Luke Laird)
“Stick That In Your Country Song” (Davis Naish, Jeffrey Steele)
“Never Break Heart” (Eric Church, Luke Dick)
“Crazyland” (Eric Church, Luke Laird, Michael Heeney)
“Bunch Of Nothing” (Eric Church, Jeff Hyde)
“Love Shine Down” (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Jeffrey Steele)
‘&’ Tracklist:
“Through My Ray-Bans” (Eric Church, Luke Laird, Barry Dean)
“Doing Life With Me” (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Jeffrey Steele)
“Do Side” (Eric Church, Casey Beathard)
“Kiss Her Goodbye” (Eric Church, Casey Beathard)
“Mad Man” (Eric Church, Casey Beathard)
“Lone Wolf” (Eric Church, Jeff Hyde, Ryan Tyndell)
‘Soul’ Tracklist:
“Rock & Roll Found Me” (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Driver Williams)
“Look Good And You Know It” (Eric Church, Jonathan Singleton, Travis Meadows)
“Bright Side Girl” (Eric Church, Jeff Hyde, Scotty Emerick, Clint Daniels)
“Break It Kind Of Guy” (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Luke Dick)
“Hell Of A View” (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Monty Criswell)
“Where I Wanna Be” (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Jeremy Spillman, Ryan Tyndell)
“Jenny” (Eric Church)
“Bad Mother Trucker” (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Luke Dick, Jeremy Spillman)
“Lynyrd Skynyrd Jones” (Casey Beathard)
