By Adam Lucas

BOISE—Sometimes you go to a concert to understand more about an artist.

Sometimes you can go to a movie theater.

Or, as on Friday, you can do both. The day marked the debut of the new Bruce Springsteen movie, “Deliver Me from Nowhere.” Over two dozen members of the tour crew went to see the film in a Spokane theater; longtime Eric Church fans know that in terms of impact on Church’s career, the Boss is more than just the title character in Church’s generational song.

The movie makes their creative similarities very apparent. Early in the film, Springsteen’s manager, Jon Landau, advises the young singer, “You have to feed the machine” with a steady stream of albums and singles.

Springsteen replies, “For us, it’s never been about the singles, but the album.”

Then Church walked out on stage in Boise and proceeded to show everyone exactly what that means. From the start, Evangeline vs. The Machine has been about sticking it to the machine. There are horns. There are strings. There is a cover of a Tom Waits song, an artist who famously said at his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, “They say that I have no hits.” And “Clap Hands” is deep into the Waits catalog, not even on the short list of most well-known Waits songs.

It’s about the album? Remember that Church said this when the most recent album was released almost six months ago:

“I believe in that time-tested tradition of making records that live and breathe as one piece of art. An album is the ultimate creative expression, and the way we consume art now just takes the edges off that creativity.”

At a tour stop two weeks ago, Church related the story of a recent conversation with a well-known country artist. The other singer expressed an interest in recording something different than the standard radio-friendly batch of streaming singles.

“Do it,” Church said.

“I can’t,” came the reply. “I’m not you.”  

But it’s never been easy to identify exactly who Church is, which is exactly the way he would want it. Again on Friday, he played the entire Evangeline vs. The Machine album straight through, never pausing to talk to the audience until all eight songs were finished. Remember—it’s about the album, not the singles. And no less an authority than Springsteen himself has praised Evangeline vs. The Machine; the duo had a long conversation in England when Church was playing Royal Albert Hall and Springsteen was on tour abroad.

“We have to let this album breathe on its own,” Springsteen says in the movie about his album Nebraska. Which is very much what Church has done with Evangeline, and as was evidenced again on Friday, it’s evolved into an even better product on the stage than it was in the studio.

Even in a world driven by clicks and views, it’s still not always solely about how an album is viewed at the instant it is released. Evangeline is going in the Church catalog as a snapshot of who he is in 2025, what interests him, what is pushing him to create something new.

That’s been the beauty of this tour. Even if you’re a very new Eric Church fan, you’re seeing multiple different iterations of his performances in one night. There’s the big sound with two dozen people on stage that started the night. There’s a more streamlined model that includes just the ECB; as Church is fond of telling the crowd, “We’ve stripped it down to the OG band.” On Friday, that section included big songs like “Cold One” and “That’s Damn Rock & Roll.”

There’s an even more basic arrangement, which on Friday included a Church collaboration with Jeff Hyde, Driver Williams and Joanna Cotten on “Some Of It,” and then just Church and Cotten on “Round Here Buzz.”

Twice already this tour, that section has included “Atlantic City,” a cover of the song that closes the Springsteen movie and that was also covered by The Band, another heavy Church influence.

On February 13, we’ll get our own big-screen Church experience with the IMAX release of Evangeline vs. The Machine Comes Alive, another reminder along with every show on this tour that you have to feed the machine—unless you are one of the very few who simply choose not to.