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December 10, 2019

Outsiders Radio: Episode #58

AIR DATE: December 2019

SHOW THEME: Year In Review

 

Hey everybody, it’s Eric Church back for the fifty-eighth episode of “Outsiders Radio.”  As we wind down 2019, it’s a good time to reflect on a very busy and eventful year.  The main thing I think about when looking back at this year is the tour.  We wrapped it up in Sacramento last month, starting with this song.

 

We kicked off the Double Down tour in Omaha on January 18th. But one week earlier, on January 12th, we did a “warm-up with Willie” in Nashville.  There was a tribute show celebrating the 85th birthday of Willie Nelson.  They called it “Willie: The Life & Songs of An American Outlaw.”  It was a spectacular night, a great way to start off the year.  There were a lot of great legends there to honor Willie, including Kris Kristofferson and George Strait.  One of my favorite memories from that night was standing on stage with Kris during the finale.  The show will air on A&E at some point.  

Here’s Willie’s original of the song I sang that night. Anybody who’s lived the road life can identify with every word in this song.

 

 

 

That could have been our theme song this past year.  As we said, we kicked off our Double Down tour in Omaha on January 18th.  If you were listening to Outsiders Radio that month, you got the inside story about the Double Down Tour from the guy who put it together: our tour manager Todd Bunch.

Todd: By far this is the biggest and in my opinion the best production we’ve ever taken on. This one’s been a challenge and maybe took a few years off our lives. But I think it’s gonna pay off. 

 

This is the first song we played that opening night in Omaha.

I wrote that song with one of my good friends: Jeremy Spillman.  If you’re a fan, you know he’s had at least one song on every one of my albums.  In 2019, Jeremy wrote his first book, a novel called “The DeVine Devils.” If you were listening to Outsiders Radio in September, you heard Jeremy talk about his book, about a couple of brothers who started a band in the 1800’s.

 

 

 

You’re listening to Outsiders Radio on The Highway.  That’s my buddy Jeremy Spillman with a song from his first novel The DeVine Devils.  Jeremy writes songs with me, but he ALSO works with a new country band called LANCO.  The guys in that band came to our show last May at Nissan Stadium.

LANCO: It was big for me because I saw Eric Church in 2011 at the Tivoli in Chattanooga, so I’ve seen Eric Church from a theater, which ended up being that live record. So I’ve seen Eric go from a theater to a stadium. And Yeah, Jeremy has been with Eric through all those songs, so we like Eric but we also get along with Jeremy because he writes about real things. Then also Eric’s band started just like we did, playing bars.  Eric’s hope for a lot of artists that you can be yourself and be with a group of guys for years, and if you’re yourself, the people will be loyal to you. So I was proud of Eric that day, and I was proud of Jeremy, it was a cool moment.

 

The LANCO guys have a song out now that they wrote with Jeremy Spillman called What I See.

 


 

We’re spending some time with the new band LANCO here on Outsiders Radio.  The guys will begin the new year on the road with one of our longtime friends: Miranda Lambert.

 

LANCO: First of all we’re all super excited to go on that tour because, you get to this point where you open for these people realizing that people you bought tickets to their shows. How did you get here? She’s someone we respect as writers, we’ve hung out with her at festivals, and for me I love her band, it’s one of those tours where Ill be excited to do our show. Then I’ll be excited to come out with a beer and watch her show.

Miranda: Lanco I saw at a festival in Canada last summer, and I watched their show, it was in the afternoon, it was so energetic, the crowd was so excited, their cool & young, have these hip vibes, and I love that, I wanna be inspired, I watch all of my openers, and I want to go out there and bring my “A game.”

 

 

 

Before we leave Miranda Lambert, she & I got some great news earlier this year when we were told that a song we wrote many years ago, called “Don’t Blame It On The Whiskey,” was recorded by Jon Pardi.

 

Miranda: It’s a great song, I don’t know why we didn’t cut it. It sat around for a long time. We wrote it when we were on tour together, it was when Eric was opening for us, which was a long time ago, because he’s selling out stadiums now.  But it’s perfect for Jon Pardi, and it kinda gives me hope that I need to keep up with my catalog, because sometimes you forget what you’ve got hidden around, you know?

 

 

As we wind down the year, there’s a song in the Top 5 right now that I had a hand in writing…we’re very grateful to Keith Urban for recording this song.

 

 

 Looking back on 2019, we have so many great memories: The Double Down Tour, setting the attendance record at Nissan Stadium, a #1 song with “Some Of It,” and then ending the year with a couple of Grammy nominations.  We’re so thankful to the fans for all you’ve done for us this year.

 

 

 

We’ll close this episode, and this YEAR of Outsiders Radio the way we ended most of our shows on the Double Down tour…with a classic song from Jackson Brown about life of the road.  We’ll see you next time on Outsiders radio.