By Adam Lucas

 

ROYAL ALBERT HALL—Four thousand miles from Granite Falls and seven years after he died in 2018, Brandon Church was in the room on Friday.

 

Not in person, of course. Eric Church’s brother died at the age of 36, part of a devastating 2018 for the singer.

                  

But it was impossible not to feel him in Royal Albert Hall on Friday night as Eric performed his To Beat the Devil residency (normally only seen at Chief’s on Broadway) for the first of two nights in the legendary London venue. For part of the night, the crowd—maybe about 75 percent Europeans—was occasionally confused. “You didn’t know I’d talk this much, did you?” Church asked them at one point. They’d come to see a country show as part of the Highways festival, and instead were getting some very raw insight into Church’s career.

                  

This was the exact residency show, just Church and six guitars on the storied stage for most of the evening. It was fair to wonder if the intimate show might translate to this 5,500-seat venue instead of the normal 390-seat room at Chief’s.

                  

But music doesn’t know about national borders. And Eric Church has truly become worldwide. So two fans in the meet and greet line came from Musselburgh, Scotland. Another made the one-hour drive from Cambridge.

                  

And then there was Paul Beirne, who was at his second Eric Church show, having also attended the 2013 date in London. He described that night as “a wall of sound,” and has been hooked ever since.

                  

But he had no idea what he’d be getting on Friday night, with a few songs he knew by heart—“Springsteen,” of course—and some no one had ever heard before outside of Chief’s.

                  

“What a storyteller he is,” Beirne said after the show. “He’s always been a rock star who is accepted by country music, but he really showed off the storytelling tonight.”

                  

People sometimes don’t realize how difficult it is to do both—the wall of sound on some nights and the storyteller the next night (or sometimes on the same night, so don’t miss the Free the Machine tour). Remember that Church pulled off this show in the middle of preparations for two very different, much louder and elaborate dates at The Pinnacle in Nashville next weekend. 

                  

It’s difficult to pick up a story about your life—while also building, or as Eric said Friday night, “curating” another much bigger show no one has ever seen before—transport it to a completely different country, and have the crowd understand everything that’s happening. 

                  

So what do you do? You remember that everyone understands being a human. And even if the accent isn’t all that familiar, they understand loss and emotion and pain.

                  

It’s not normal to be able to sit alone on a stage and talk to a crowd of complete strangers about moments like your brother’s death. But it’s also true that if anyone would have believed that Eric Church would one day sit on the stage at Royal Albert Hall, it would have been Brandon Church. Which made it a very emotional moment when Eric sang his song “Church Boys” for the first time ever outside of Chief’s. There were tears in the crowd and tears on the stage, as even Eric Church choked up a little.

                  

“I swear I’ve never missed you more than I do today,” he sang, and as he looked up to compose himself, you could tell he was thinking about all the times when Brandon might have been the only one who believed they’d make it to this exact moment, the self-described “hot shit from Granite Falls” gone worldwide.

                  

What are the odds of that happening? It’s too big to even dream. So you need people to help you dream it, and many of those were there on Friday night, from Eric’s wife, Katherine, to manager John Peets to tour manager Todd Bunch. You need the ones who have been there for the nadirs, as all have been, and also for the triumphs, like Friday night.

                  

You also need someone with the musical imagination to write a song like “Johnny,” which first lived in the residency show and now resides on the Evangeline vs The Machine album, and then know you can make it even better at Royal Albert Hall.

                  

So Church sat alone on the stage for the beginning of the song, then was joined by a 40-person choir (four regular members of the Church team and 36 from England) who filled the open rafters behind him. 

                  

It was, as you might expect, spine-tingling.

                  

“I’ve done a lot of things in my career,” Church said when the last notes faded. “But doing that song in that way in Royal Albert Hall is one of my favorites.”

                  

Remember Beirne? He makes it a point to attend the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall every year. You don’t have to know all the details of the Proms, but suffice it to say that he has seen some of the very best musicians in the world play some of the best music in the history of the world in one of the best venues in the world.

                  

And 15 minutes after he saw Eric Church, he was still struggling for the right words. “He has always been rock and country,” Beirne said. “Tonight he added a little bit of gospel. And it was…”

                  

He paused, thinking about the stories Church had told and the songs he sang and, maybe, about Brandon, too.

                  

“It was angelic,” he said. “That’s what it was.”