Sixty-one tour dates, an average of 37 songs per night, totaling over 200 hours of live music. That’s what Eric Church ultimately played in a five-month period spanning January 13 through May 27, 2017. In an issue takeover, Church hinted something big was to come post-tour telling Billboard, “We recorded all of it. We had some [songs] that I was adamant that I wouldn’t rehearse with the band. I would tell the band a couple hours before the show, ‘This is the song we’re going to do,’ and then I wouldn’t see them until we did it, when we played live…’” says the man Stereogum calls “our greatest working rock star.” Now, those recordings are being released across 61 Days in Church. Beginning today fans will have access to 30 initial live recordings from various stops across North America. Then, subsequent releases through the end of the year – including some catalogue and cover songs as well as songs inspired by events that happened while he was on the road – released chronologically to complete the list. The tracks will initially be released only on the Apple Music platform for a two-week period before being made available on all streaming services.
“I had so much fun learning songs that were unique to whatever city we found ourselves in,” Church reflects. “I learned a lot about each place, and it was special to see the crowd react to the songs that were only for them. I’m glad we recorded it and can relive it forever.”
With the unique, individual tour posters from each tour stop serving as the artwork for each week’s release, 61 Days in Church drops just as fans can see a different show from Church as he takes the stage in Tahoe this Labor Day weekend for two sold-out nights at Harvey’s Lake Tahoe Outdoor Arena.
Church’s Holdin’ My Own Tour sold 930,000 tickets at the end of its run notching his as the top music tour in the first quarter of 2017 (Pollstar), but as Dave Brooks (Billboard Magazine) noted, “Fans will remember that tour by another metric: the marathon three-and- a-half hours Church played nightly as he crisscrossed the United States and Canada.”
Information on 61 Days in Church can be found here: ericchurch.com/sixtyonedaysinchurch and see remaining 2017 shows at ericchurch.com/events.
Audio / Eric Church said the shows on his Holdin' My Own Tour were more than he could've dreamed.
DownloadEric Church (playing 3 and a half hours) OC: …that kind of show. 1:12
“People say, ‘Why…why are you playing three and a half hours?’ And I say, ‘Because we shouldn’t be able to, if you look at our career, if you look at our success.’ There was some article, and currently right now Paul McCartney is playing about 37 songs, we’re playing 37, 39, I think [Bruce] Springsteen’s playing 32 and Garth’s playing around 30. Okay, so let’s take those people – Sp0ringsteen, McCartney and Garth, [laughs] and then we’re in that. We’re way, way the outlier there, if you look at the success and you look at who they are and the records and one’s a Beatle, for chrissakes and you take all those together. But the fact that people have bought so much into the albums and I can play ‘Carolina’ and it’s as big as another song, or I can play ‘These Boots’ or I can play ‘Pledge Allegiance to the Hag’ or I can play ‘A Lot of Boot Left to Fill’ and I can play these songs, and they’re just as big – or ‘Sinners Like Me’ – as the stuff that was on the radio…or bigger in some cases, right? So, that’s what shouldn’t happen, and the fact that it is, I think I owe it to the records and I owe it to the fans that have made it a part of their life to play that long and to play those songs, because again, we shouldn’t be able to [even] play 90 minutes, but the fact that we can go do that and have the kind of show is the reason, that inspires me and makes me want to play that long and play that kind of show.”
