TWIN LAKES, WISC.—As the first notes of “Country Music Jesus” began on Sunday night at Country Thunder, the night was just beginning for a packed festival crowd.

And at that same exact moment, the entire Eric Church crew could finally relax for just a brief second after a frenetic 36 hours.

Church had played a Saturday night set at Rock the South in Cullman, Alabama. Back to back shows aren’t unusual at all in the touring world, even in the world of Eric Church, which requires a huge production and isn’t simply a guy showing up with a van and a guitar. But back to back shows that are a ten-hour drive apart? That’s completely different.

Church is adamant that fans at every single one of his shows receive the full experience. Making one of the two nights a more scaled-down evening was not an option.

Once the two shows were put on the calendar on back to back nights, Church had to be able to walk off stage in Alabama, the crew had to load out in Cullman, and then load in at 7 a.m. the next morning in Twin Lakes.

It’s over a ten-hour drive from Cullman to Twin Lakes. The math in that equation doesn’t work. Driving between shows wouldn’t have permitted enough time to adequately load in and set up for the Country Thunder show.

So for the better part of a year, Church production manager Meesha Kosciolek and tour manager Todd Bunch have been trying to facilitate transporting a little over 4,000 pounds of gear and five dozen people to do what often seems to be the job description in their line of work—make the impossible possible.

 

Being on a road crew is not a normal job. They make the most fun nights of our lives happen while mostly remaining in the background. Being on Eric Church’s road crew is even more challenging, because the standards are so high. They have fun, but a big part of enabling them to have fun is the unspoken acknowledgement that everyone there is performing at a high level.

But they have to be put in position to execute. So as soon as he heard the tour dates, Kosciolek had one very simple thought about how to make it happen: “Jets,” he said. So the key piece of equipment to make it possible was a chartered Boeing 757 with 71 first-class seats.

Church went off stage Saturday night at 11:28 p.m. By 12:40 a.m., 84 pieces of gear were loaded and the bus was rolling. The closest airport was a 54-minute drive away. Less than an hour later, the plane was loaded and all the crew was screened. The flight took off at 2:31 a.m.

During the 80-minute flight, the crew who wanted to sleep migrated to the front. Those who wanted to, well, not sleep were in the back. Somewhere in the middle were the card players, where stage manager Sambo Coats was still giddy the next night from his productive evening.

The plane landed in Milwaukee at 3:51 a.m. and was unloaded by 4:31 a.m. A nearly two-hour bus ride to Twin Lakes gave the crew a 6:29 a.m. arrival at the Country Thunder venue…just in time to stumble off their buses and load in at 7 a.m.

If you’re wondering where the block of time for a solid night’s rest was located, that’s exactly what made the turnaround so challenging—there wasn’t one. And the goal was to make certain that not a single fan in the crowd of 30,000 at each night could tell the challenges the crew had faced. The people in Twin Lakes who were swatting a beachball around the front of the stage didn’t know or care that the pieces of the show had journeyed nearly 700 miles overnight to make it happen. And the fans in Cullman couldn’t be allowed for a second to know that while the band was on stage, planning was already moving into action for Twin Lakes.

“The preparation has been ongoing for months,” Kosciolek said. “You can’t just decide two weeks ago that you want to do this. For months, we’ve been very meticulous about what we need. And, of course, with Eric there isn’t going to be a standard setlist. So we don’t just take the six guitars we know we’ll need, because he could want to do any song on any night. So we need to bring the gear to make that possible.”

Don’t believe him? Saturday night, Church tacked “Lynyrd Skynyrd Jones” on to the end of his Rock the South performance.

Sunday was even more unpredictable, even while the best endorsement the entire crew could receive is that Country Thunder looked, sounded and felt exactly like a regular Church show. Jackson Dean, who had played earlier in the night, stood side stage and sang every word (one of the biggest compliments an artist can receive is when another artist who has their own crew and own next tour date to make hangs around to watch the show). The crowd loudly sang along to “Talladega.” And the evening’s meet and greet was, well…

 

“Meet and greet was adventurous tonight,” Church told the crowd after he finished “Springsteen.” “We had a lady request this song. And I said, ‘I don’t play that song. That’s not my song.’

“And she said, ‘So you don’t know how to play it.’”

He grinned.

“Well, that’s true. But I’ll figure it out. So this is for her ass.”

And for the first time in this type of setting, he broke into “Man Made a Bar,” the duet with Morgan Wallen. The first verse, as he predicted, was a slight adventure. “I’ll get my verse right, I promise that,” he said.

It was the type of entirely unscripted moment that makes an Eric Church show so good—and exactly the type of moment for which no one could prepare.

Except for the preparation the best road crew anywhere had done to make it possible.