By Adam Lucas

SECOND AND BROADWAY—Something important to remember: Eric Church doesn’t really enjoy playing covers.

So he doesn’t.

He plays influences. 

Covers are when you play a song by someone else and they might do it a little different and maybe a little better than you, but the crowd really loves the song. 

As you can understand from someone with such a deep songwriting background, that’s not how Church prefers to entertain an audience.

But he doesn’t mind letting the crowd see a little bit of how he became who he is. That’s what he did at Chief’s on Tuesday night, taking the opportunity at a one-time-only SiriusXM full band show at the Neon Steeple to play his way through the stained glass windows that make up one wall of Chief’s.

The show was aired on Outsiders Radio the same evening, and will be featured prominently during this weekend’s Outsiders takeover of Y2Kountry (the show will air again Nov. 22 at 5 pm ET, November 23 at 7 pm ET, and November 24 at 1 pm ET. Subscribers who utilize the SiriusXM app can also stream it on demand).

Fans who listen will hear a different side of Church. There was only one point on the setlist when he played back-to-back originals, a rocking Lotta Boot Left to Fill/That’s Damn Rock & Roll combo early in the show.

Otherwise, he frequently paired originals with some of the artists who influenced those originals, which is how the very first song of the night, How Bout You, turned into Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way by Waylon Jennings. Before he had a full catalog of hits, that was how he filled out a full set. They weren’t really covers as much as they were homages.

And almost everyone on stage on this night was with him for those club shows, and they’ve all been on the ride together. There’s something magical about seeing a group on stage that regularly sells 20,000 tickets instead play in front of just 435 people. They can do it bigger, sure. But they don’t have to, and it was fun to watch them figure out how to navigate the smaller stage with the same deft touch they use in arenas. 

We might not have seen them play a show like this in a decade. But there were years they did sets just like this on an almost nightly basis on any stage that would have them. As Church described it during his To Beat the Devil residency on this same stage, “When we started playing, the crowd would be sitting over at the bar not really paying attention. And eventually, they’d kind of look up, and then maybe a couple would come over and watch a little closer. And the next time, we’d hope that four would come over and watch a little closer. And that’s how we grew it.”

This audience, which hung with the show even after a Hurricane Helene-forced postponement, was different. The crowd was made up partially of Church Choir members and partially of SiriusXM subscribers. And it also had another component—100 ticketholders were part of a “Give to Get” program that allowed them to volunteer at Nashville food banks and charities in return for access to the show. It worked, as over 1,000 square feet of gardens were built and over 400 pounds of local farm produce were prepped and delivered to local community kitchens. Chief Cares supplemented the work with a financial contribution.

But the main contribution was musical. It’s not every day—or any other day, for that matter—that you can walk off Broadway and hear a recent Entertainer of the Year say, “This is how we would open our bar and club shows around 2008,” and then break into Lotta Boot Left to Fill. That’s when the show really took off. That’s Damn Rock & Roll came after the club days, but it would have been at home there. 

As the crowd learned, he wasn’t just up there playing Wagon Wheel. These were songs that meant something to him. “People always ask, ‘What artist would you take with you to a desert island?’” Church said. “I’d take Bob Seger. So we’re going to do a little Bob.”

They didn’t do easy Bob. In addition to Ramblin Gamblin Man, they also did Get Out of Denver. “This might be the undoing of the CMAs tomorrow night,” he said of the vocal calisthenics required by the song, referencing his upcoming performance on Wednesday night’s CMA Awards. “I might have to summon the ghost of Andy Gibb.”

Then he winked at the crowd. “Inside joke,” he said.

If you know—and some of these diehards surely did—you know.

As usual, the only way he knew how to do it was to have fun with it. He eventually teased Jeff Hyde into following the powerhouse vocals of Joanna Cotten on The Weight (“You can hear The Band’s influence in everything we do,” Church said), and he added an extra Chief’s-centric verse to “Atlantic City,” which was a Bruce Springsteen original but might have been done even better by The Band. 

The very lucky attendees from across the Church fan universe of Church Choir members and SiriusXM subscribers left with two things: a free gig poster courtesy of poster wizard Chief Merchandise’s Matt Wheeler, and a better understanding of not just who Eric Church is, but how he got that way.

“These windows,” he said, gesturing at the stained glass, “are the influences of my life.”

And Tuesday night, he didn’t just show it. He played it.