By Adam Lucas

 

GREENSBORO—You have to understand North Carolina.

                  

Eric Church’s Free the Machine tour has been to destinations where sports unites people. In Green Bay—Go Pack Go. In Kansas City they did the tomahawk chop between songs. Even last night in Knoxville, there was an overwhelming hue of orange that permeated the evening long before Church donned a Tennessee baseball jersey given to him by a fan in the pit.

                  

And then there is North Carolina. Everyone in the Tar Heel State loves sports, especially college basketball. Fans choose their team at birth or become indoctrinated by their families and it never leaves them.

                  

But here’s the problem: those allegiances are not all the same. Almost everyone in Rupp Arena was a Wildcat. In Detroit they were virtually all Lions fans. Pittsburghers waved Terrible Towels.

                  

In North Carolina, though, even families are divided, much less arenas. You could be a Tar Heel and your brother-in-law might be a Blue Devil and your uncle could be a Wolfpacker, and you all put up with each other at holidays and then you get in the car and roll your eyes and mutter that all Dookies truly are the same. There is no one singular our team. There is my team and your team and their team and that’s just the locals. Don’t even get started on the people who have moved into town and brought their team with them.

                  

In this very arena, I once saw my normally mild-mannered and friendly father fire a Carolina blue pom-pom at a fan of another school. That fan’s transgression? He said something negative about Tar Heel basketball coach Dean Smith. We take sports seriously in this state.

                  

Church’s well-known preference for University of North Carolina sports teams—where he’ll be the commencement speaker in May—doesn’t please everyone in the state. There were plenty of “Go Heels” signs in the crowd on Friday night and lots of fans in Carolina jerseys.

                  

But there were also those who grumbled when Church declared his “go-to gameday jersey is always Carolina Blue.” Remember, this is the state where Ella Langley was booed last summer for wearing the wrong team’s shirt—while trying to play the ol’ “wear a local team’s gear to curry favor with the home crowd” move—at a concert in Raleigh.

                  

You think bringing Republicans and Democrats together is difficult? Try bridging the chasm between Tar Heels and Blue Devils 24 hours before they play at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

                  

Church isn’t going to hide his allegiances. He’s going to be who he is no matter what, and the interlocking NC logo is right there on his guitar strap. But as he demonstrated for nearly three hours on Friday, there’s something even more powerful than a ball and a hoop:

                  

A really great fucking show.

                  

In perhaps the most unique evening so far of the Free the Machine tour, Church began with his standard opening of playing the eight songs on the Evangeline vs. The Machine album in order. Then he proceeded to ignore the set list for most of the rest of the night.

                  

Two hours from the former site of Woodlands BBQ, where Church got his start playing the coveted Monday night at 6 p.m. slot, he looked out into a packed Greensboro Coliseum—no one from North Carolina would ever call it anything but the Greensboro Coliseum, just like they would never dream of going anywhere for pre-show dinner other than Stamey’s—and saw his people.

                  

“You know what this means to me,” he told the crowd early in the night. “Because you know what you mean to me. This is my home. Everything I learned about everything came from North Carolina.”

                  

So he peppered the set with rarities and played largely on instinct. He and the crowd connected very early, when he played the opening notes to  “Carolina” and they instantly responded with a roar. “Oh yeah?” he said.

                  

Oh yeah. It was the first home state performance of “Carolina” since the Concert for Carolina raised $24 million for the victims of Hurricane Helene. On that night, LED bracelets lit up Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte. On this one, fans did it the semi-old fashioned way—they used the flashlights on their phones.

                  

Church began altering the set list less than half way through. “Watch me,” he said to the rest of the musicians on stage as he moved “In My Mind I’m Gone to Carolina” from a closing position to the middle of the show. By now, they know to expect the unexpected…and sometimes even find ways to tweak him. After one of the most emotional versions of “Sinners Like Me” on the tour so far, Church talked about his efforts to sway his two boys to Tar Heel fandom. An impromptu “Tar-Heels” chant broke out in the arena.

                  

Next to Church on stage, Driver Williams just laughed. When Church finished his soliloquy about his home state and his efforts to make his boys Carolina fans instead of Volunteers, Williams raised an eyebrow. “Now,” Williams said to Church off-mic, “here’s a song about Tennessee,” and broke into the opening notes of “Chattanooga Lucy.”

                  

Church laughed so hard he had to compose himself before he could sing the song. That’s the kind of night it was, just some people having fun playing music together…even as the group on stage got smaller and smaller.

                  

Eventually, it was just Church and Joanna Cotten. “The way this show ends is not going to be like any other show,” he told the crowd. “I’ve seen your signs and requests. I’m going to try to pull some of that off.” He started with “Hippie Radio” and “Mixed Drinks About Feelings,” almost as a test. It was well past 11 p.m.

                  

“It’s late,” he said, “but let’s keep going.” They sang “These Boots” and seemingly everyone was raising a boot skyward. They sang “Holdin’ My Own” and couples were dancing in the pit. When they finished “Drowning Man,” Cotten was visibly unsure about exactly what she was supposed to do next. They’d been off script together for approximately a half-hour, so there was no real plan of what to do next. 

                  

“It’s just us now,” Church said to the crowd, as Cotten walked off stage. “We’re just winging it.” He played five more songs solo, going from “Chevy Van” to “Love Your Love the Most” to “What I Almost Was” to “Pledge Allegiance to the Hag” to “Those I’ve Loved Along the Way.”

                  

At that point, he had played ten straight songs that weren’t on the original set list and it was after midnight. Which was exactly why the crowd kept cheering. This was the Church they’ve known in Dorton Arena and Coyote Joe’s and the Longbranch Saloon. The one who, as he sang in his finale, is “just a Carolina boy with a guitar.”

                  

He’d used almost three hours of music to do what Michael Jordan and Christian Laettner and David Thompson could never do—he’d brought people together. The ovation when he finished was the longest, most sincere of the tour so far. We don’t all have the same team and that other coach is a jerk and I can’t believe the neighbors are flying that hideous color flag on their house with that ugly mascot.

 

But here’s what we knew for sure: that was, quite simply, our guy up there on stage.

                  

Tomorrow we go back to arguing with each other.