By Adam Lucas

PORTLAND—Earlier this summer, one of the biggest country acts in the business did something entirely foreign to fans of Eric Church:

He announced his set list.

Imagine that. This particular artist, a successful and prolific member of the upper tier of the country world, sat down with a pen and paper and wrote out their set list for every single show on their summer tour. The same thing every night, hit after hit. It was right there on social media, a predictable and reliable guideline for what to expect when you bought a ticket to see them.

And then there is Eric Church.

I hesitate to even say this for fear that it might prompt him to reconfigure the entire thing, but throughout the entirety of the Free the Machine tour, there has been one absolute certainty: the first eight songs will be the Evangeline Vs. The Machine album, in order.

After that? It could be anything.

Chief had recently been enamored with “Never Break Heart,” a bit of a rarity from the Heart album. It was released in 2021 and he then proceeded to play it only twice on the entire 55-city Gather Again tour. It popped up four times on the Outsiders Revival tour, but it’s fair to say that if you go to an Eric Church show hoping to hear “Never Break Heart,” the odds are strong that you’re going to be disappointed.

Except for the last three shows before Friday night, when he suddenly played it for three straight shows—Boise, Spokane and Vancouver—and seemed to be falling back in love with it just a little. “We started playing this next song a few shows ago,” Church told the crowd in Vancouver last night. “I really like it. I like the message.”

And it does have a pretty incredible message. The world needs a little more “Don’t let fear steal your brave heart/Don’t let doubt take your faith heart/It’s okay to cry/But don’t never break heart” these days.

Having been endorsed by no less than Eric Church himself from the stage, it felt like “Never Break Heart” might be slowly elbowing its way into the regular Free the Machine rotation.

Until it was nowhere to be found on Friday night. It fell off the set list again in Portland, replaced by “Mr. Misunderstood,” which is—oh yeah—a really great song.