This is going to be a can’t-miss show for Chief fans.
Last week, Eric Church announced the opening date for his Nashville bar, Chief’s, along with a 19-show residency in the venue’s two-story, 350-seat theater, the Neon Steeple.
The To Beat the Devil residency kicks off on April 5, and will run through June. But ahead of the show, Church is giving fans an idea of what they can expect if they’re lucky enough to get tickets.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Church discussed what he hopes from the unique shows, which he says was inspired by Bruce Springsteen’s Broadway show, Springsteen on Broadway.
“I remember thinking, ‘Man, it would be awesome to be in a setting with people that had helped you build this thing and actually have a level of honesty with them that I can’t have onstage in my normal thing.'”
Church has said that he hopes to use the shows to discuss personal subjects like the Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting, which happened two days after he headlined the Las Vegas festival, as well as the death of his brother Brandon in 2019:
“I want to talk about things I’ve purposely never talked about in interviews. But I can do that in this place, because it’s a safe space.”
And while he said that there will be some similarities with his two-night residency at the Country Music Hall of Fame last year, which took fans on a chronological journey through Church’s career, he hopes to make these shows more personal.
“The chronological part of the Hall of Fame show will be some aspect of what this is. But the difference is I’m going to be able to talk about what was happening in my life at the time that I wrote the song.”
Church is known for doing things his own way – and doing things specifically for his biggest fans. A couple of weeks ago, he sent each of the 40,000 members of his Church Choir fan club a deed to a brick in the new bar. And he’s giving fan club members the first opportunity to buy tickets to the residency, where he says he’ll be playing music that’s never been heard before:
“It’ll be a unique show where I’m going to engage. There’s some funny stuff. There’s some stuff in there I’ve never told. Fans can leave there going, ‘I’m getting to hear something that nobody else outside of this room is ever going to get to hear…’
There’s going to be songs played for this show that have never been released.”
At a time when more and more artists continue to open up their own bars on Broadway, but most don’t really visit them all that often, it sounds like Eric wants his bar to be different, somewhere that he can go to perform for his own fans in a way that he’s never done before:
“I want to talk about things I’ve purposely never talked about in interviews. But I can do that in this place, because it’s a safe space.”
Man, really hoping I can get tickets for this one.
Tickets for fan club members go on sale this week, and will go on sale a couple of days later if there are any left after the presale.
