By Adam Lucas

SACRAMENTO—Maybe Eric Church is taking these song titles a little too literally.

The Free the Machine tour is on a California swing this weekend. Virtually everyone in the crew stayed on the West Coast after last Saturday’s Seattle show. It made more sense logistically to move all the people and equipment involved from Seattle to Sacramento than to go from Seattle back to Nashville and then pack up a couple days later and go from Nashville to Sacramento.

That meant the crew got some very rare days off in Sacramento as they awaited Thursday’s show. Some went on hikes. Some visited Napa. Some took in a Sacramento Kings game.

And all should have known the down time was a little too good to be true.

Thursday turned into a messy day in Sacramento. It rained for most of the day, and as often happens when dealing with fickle electronic equipment, bad weather sometimes creates some unpredictable behavior.

So lighting director Gavin Lake wasn’t particularly surprised when his lighting board crashed during “Storm In Their Blood,” the fourth song of the night. It’s the first time that’s happened on this tour, but not the first time it’s happened in his career. It’s also a good example of why it pays to have an experienced, reliable crew and a secondary board.

Two dozen people on stage and thousands of people packed into an arena while the lighting board goes on the fritz isn’t an ideal scenario. Free the Machine is an elaborate production, and lights make a huge difference. It’s not as simple as just unplugging it and then plugging it back in, the way you might do with your TV at home.

But Lake simply slid over to the secondary light board while fellow lighting director Lane Hymel repaired the primary board. Midway through the next song, “Darkest Hour,” (the irony in the song titles during this particular incident is funny now but wasn’t quite as hilarious in the moment) both boards were back to functional. Lake and Hymel went back to their normal positions, no one in the crowd or on stage ever noticed, and the show continued. We all have issues at work. It’s just that for most of us, the enjoyment of thousands of people doesn’t depend on our ability to fix them in real time.

It was the kind of problem solving you needed on a night when fans began lining up at 11 a.m. to secure the coveted spots at the front of the Church Choir pit. A quartet of friends—Jared, Becca, Marty and Jennifer—had traveled the two and a half hours from Reno and dodged raindrops for over seven hours before they became the first fans inside the Golden 1 Center.

Their reward was a lively show that included some of Church’s most entertaining moments of the tour. It began with a funny story about his sons doing battle over their respective appreciation of the arena tenant, the Sacramento Kings—older son Boone proclaimed he hated the Kings, so younger son Hawk immediately located a retro Chris Webber Kings jersey and proudly wore it the rest of the day (“I’m pretty sure he wore that son of a bitch to bed tonight. He’ll do anything to piss his brother off,” Church grinned), the perfect summary of how brothers relate to each other—and continued through a setlist that is always a work in progress even on the day of the show.

“We try to do different stuff every night,” Church told the crowd. “We were flying in and I saw the Russian River Valley. We weren’t planning on doing this tonight, but fuck it.”

And then he broke into “Russian Roulette” for just the second time on this tour.

The very next song was “The Outsiders,” which has been a mainstay on Free the Machine. But it’s a highlight every time. Or, as Church put it: “It’s always fun playing that song. We put out The Outsiders after the Chief album, and it scared the shit out of country music. It terrified them. I still fucking love playing it.”

The evident glee in his voice as he described the past reaction to the song was a great synopsis of the delight Church takes in an occasional unexpected zig. He’s allergic to the predictable, which is why he was still smiling after doing a shot with a member of the crowd before “Pledge Allegiance to the Hag” even after proclaiming that the bottle in question was “about 93 degrees.”

And it all happened while everyone on the crew made certain the show could go on despite any unexpected potential disasters. While Lake and Hymel were shuffling boards, Church was on stage singing the perfect narration:

“Fate whispers to the warrior

‘You cannot withstand the storm’

But the warrior whispers back

‘I am the storm.’”

Sometimes life perfectly imitates art.

It’s just a good thing Chief wasn’t playing “Lightning.”