Eric Church has a lot of great stories from his years in the business, but this one might the wildest one you’ve yet to hear.
The “Chief” put in a lot of time before he became the country star we all know today, and some of that time was spent at a not-so-classy BYOB bar. Can it be called a bar if you are the one supplying the drinks?
Regardless, Church was a guest on The Bobby Bones Show, and he was asked if he ever got into any fights as played gigs at bars early in his career. The “Springsteen” singer explained that he never really got into a face off, but his late brother Brandon did back when they were playing together.
And it started out like this:
“There was four of us in the band, and my brother played with me, and he was a football player in college. There was this girl… and this is a BYOB, brown bag place. This was a high class place. They were strict about that. If you pulled the bottle out of the brown bag, you’re out of there…
There’s a pool table in the back, and we were playing. We were doing an Allman Brothers song or something, and there was this girl that started flirting with my brother and talking to my brother at the end of the stage and just wouldn’t leave him alone.”
Naturally, Church’s brother was doing a little flirting back, not knowing that the woman he was interacting with was happily married. That became an issue, as Church went on to explain:
“Turns out she’s married to the pool shark that’s back in the corner. So after she’s up there a while, he just comes up in the middle of the song and threatens to fight my brother right there.
I was in the middle of a guitar solo, and my brother sang the next song. He said, ‘What do we do?’ I said, ‘He wants you to go to the parking lot, just go to the parking lot. I don’t care what happens, just be back by the time we start the next song. Cause I’m not changing the setlist.'”
As crazy as that situation sounds, Brandon ended up taking the Chief up on the offer. He got off stage and went out to the parking lot to fight the pool shark, and Church got by without him for the time being. And it apparently all worked out:
“We extended the solo a little bit. It’s The Allman Brothers, that’s what they did too. We just kept going. He made it back… he was a little disheveled.”
Eric’s brother Brandon passed away back in 2018 and Eric has revealed that he plans to honor his legacy during intimate shows at his new Nashville bar and music venue, Chief’s.
Church recently discussed his plans for performing at Chief’s once it opens next month, and he said he wants to use the space to touch on more heavy subjects, like paying tribute to the Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting in Las Vegas, and to his brother, Brandon, who passed away suddenly:
“I want to do a show that talks about Vegas. It talks about my brother. It talks about things in my life. I’m not going down there to play ‘Drink in My Hand.’
It’s going to be stuff that’s very raw, very real, and it’s just me onstage. It’ll be Church on Broadway.”
So if you make it down to Chief’s anytime soon, as Eric just announced 19 shows there, I imagine you’ll going to get to hear more great stories and memories like this one.
Watch Eric recall his brother’s legendary mid-song-fight in the clip below:
