By Adam Lucas

 

ROYAL ALBERT HALL—If you go to London, you must go to Ffiona’s.

 

And when you go to Ffiona’s, whether for weekend brunch or dinner, you’re going to make a new friend in Ffiona Reid-Owen. And when she finds out you’re going to a show at Royal Albert Hall she will positively gush about the building and the honor of playing there and the very memorable evening when she was able to stand on the stage in the empty venue.

                  

“When you stand on that stage,” she says, “you can feel it. You can feel the history and you can feel the love that Victoria had for Albert.”

                  

You cannot play here—as Eric Church did on Saturday night for the second of his two-night stand as part of the Highways Festival—without understanding the history. And it won’t take long before a Londoner starts explaining the history, because they are understandably proud of their iconic theater. On multiple occasions in the last several days, residents have offered unsolicited raves and reverence for the building. Saturday morning, they began lining up at 3 a.m. for the opportunity to buy tickets for an upcoming annual event here called The Proms.

                  

And it’s impossible not to feel the 150 years of history here.

                  

“Of all the rooms I’ve played,” Church said before the last song of Saturday night’s show, “this song is made for this room, because it is definitely a hell of a view.”

 

This is one of two buildings in the world where the Rolling Stones and the Beatles shared the same bill (in 1963). On “A Day in the Life,” the Beatles specifically reference Royal Albert Hall.

                  

The two-night series, in which Church performed his Chief’s on Broadway residency show outside Nashville for the first time ever, puts him in very exclusive company. Only two country artists in the history of the genre have played two nights here: one was Johnny Cash (1998). The other was Emmylou Harris (1978).

                  

And now Eric Church.

                  

“For a kid from North Carolina to play Royal Albert Hall is beyond my dreams,” he told Saturday’s crowd. “I didn’t dream that big.”

                  

Church understands the respect required to play here. After all, we are talking about someone who hunted down a Bob Dylan art exhibition on one of his free days in London.

                  

Everyone who matters has performed here, and it’s not always music. Muhammad Ali fought an eight-round exhibition match here in 1971. The sumo world championships were held here in 1991, the first time they were ever held outside of Japan. James Taylor—a key part of last fall’s Concert for Carolina—performed here in 2014 and was so taken with the building and the history that he stayed on stage to sign autographs during his supposed intermissions.

                  

Church called it “the most beautiful room in the world.” Standing there, listening to the songs you know so well under all the Roman amphitheater-inspired arches, it was hard to disagree.

                  

The lively crowd he drew on Saturday came prepared for a real Eric Church show. Maybe Hyde Park—located just across Kensington Gore from the venue—is a great tailgating scene on Saturdays, because this group was noticeably rowdier than Friday. They stood, they cheered, they sang along.

                  

The one thing they almost never did? Used their phones. The most obvious difference between an American crowd and a British crowd is the near total lack of phones videoing every moment of the show. Even when Church broke into “Lightning,” a treasured fan rarity back in the United States, there were perhaps a maximum of a dozen individuals taking video. 

                  

They were still plenty engaged. They hung flags over the posh two levels of boxes that ring the stage (Royal Albert Hall is one place where the “royal box” is not a marketing tactic—the actual royal box is Box 28. The royal family has tickets reserved for every show, and when the monarch is on hand, the royal hammercloth hangs at the front of the box to let everyone know who is in attendance. It should be noted that when you’ve been in London for a couple days, you start using words like “hammercloth” in regular conversation and it doesn’t sound weird, even when in the very next breath you’re pledging allegiance to the Hag).

                  

It’s important to understand the scene because it gives you a much better appreciation for the artist Eric Church continues to be. We all understand he has reached the point in his career when he has enough hits to coast. Do it the easy way. Play “Springsteen,” wear the sunglasses, smile a little. Most people would go home happy.

                  

He’s just incapable of doing it that way. It turns out that Royal Albert Hall has a fairly rigid 11 p.m. curfew. It was gently suggested that the way of enforcing that curfew might be to pull the plug on the power when the clock struck 11. The carriage turns into a pumpkin. Church goes acoustic.

                  

But he can’t help himself. He played too long on the Rascal Flatts tour, what might have been his biggest break ever, in 2006. It could have been a career-ending move.

                  

Twenty years later, he’s still playing too long. He’s got a show to do and he’s got a crowd to entertain, and he knows exactly how he’s going to do it. So he made a very small concession on Saturday, cutting one planned song, but otherwise he was damn well going to play “Johnny” with a 40-person choir no matter what time it was, and he was going to provide the redemption he promised with the “Take Me To The River/Smoke A Little Smoke” mashup with that same choir, and he was going to finish with “Hell of a View.”

                  

He did every single bit of the above, even when the clock ticked past the appointed hour. He came across the Atlantic Ocean to play a show, to deliver a performance. And he intended to fulfill every bit of that obligation.

                  

Church loves this building. “I can’t tell you what the last two nights have meant,” he told the crowd. 

                  

It was one of those weekends that will go in the Church pantheon. Red Rocks. The Garden. Setting the Nissan Stadium attendance record with a nearly four-hour show. Sharing the stage with George Strait. The Concert for Carolina.

                  

And now, Royal Albert Hall. Built out of Victoria’s love for Albert. Home of some of the greatest artists in musical history. A place where the only unmarked entrance door in the building is reserved for the king or queen, the better to preserve their security.

                  

But still an EFC show. Don’t you forget it. Because he definitely won’t.