By Adam Lucas

 

RED ROCKS—He has been here before.

 

Standing on a stage, every eye on him, only a faint idea of what he might play next. 

 

Eric Church has done this his entire life. It just so happened that Wednesday night was at Red Rocks, one of the most venerable venues in music. It just so happened that we got to be there with him.

 

This time, it was for everybody. There have been plenty of times it was just for friends or family or a couple people who stumbled into an empty club. 

 

And those nights were not that different than this one. Not really. 

 

Church turned in another iconic show on Wednesday, taking a sparse stage with only a guitar and contributions from Joanna Cotten to play 33 songs for another sellout crowd. Over these three nights at Red Rocks, he played 89 songs and 75 of them were different.

 

You can’t pull that off unless you’ve been doing it your entire life. He’s sat stool to stool with his younger brother, Brandon, and looked for the right notes until they figured out “The Weight” by The Band and “Can’t You See” by the Marshall Tucker Band and Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic.” And Seger, of course. There had to be Bob Seger.

 

There were not 9,500 people in attendance on those nights. But Brandon knew there would be one day. He was the younger brother, but he was also the confidence. He might have visualized Eric Church headlining Red Rocks before Eric Church did. 

 

And now, here we are. Church has sold out six Red Rocks shows in the past 51 weeks, the only solo artist in any genre of music to pull off that feat. He’s made all six different, but in both 2025 and 2026 the final show of each triumvirate was an acoustic showcase.

 

“This is a tradition now,” he noted after he came on stage after a brand new arrangement—perhaps you’ll be hearing that again in the future—of “On the Road” blasted on the venue speakers.

 

That tradition has become the best reminder of who he is and how he got here. He sang songs about his parents and songs about his kids and songs about his wife. He sang songs about his struggles and songs about his victories. What keeps all of these people filling these venues all over the country is that he explains it in a way the rest of us understand. All of these songs happened to him, but he tells it in a way that makes us feel like it could have been us.

 

“Three Year Old” was written from a real experience he had when his oldest son, Boone, was three. But it’s universal enough that when Church finished playing it on Wednesday night—perhaps the best it’s ever been—it was so universal that even roadie Geno Bishop, who has spent a lifetime in music and been around the world with a variety of bands, had to stand up on the side of the stage and give it an ovation. It was so good that even those people who see these shows every day knew it was a moment.

 

Another secret to Church’s success is that he’s never been afraid to let us see him have flaws. He did it again Wednesday. He started a song in the wrong key and he stumbled on a couple of words. He told a random Neil Diamond story when the moment called for it. That came shortly after he’d included “Sweet Caroline” in his “Mistress Named Music” medley, ramped all the way up to the “tou-ching me…tou-ching you” part, just as everyone was ready to burst into song with him, and then…

 

“Hang on,” he said, “Lost my guitar pick.” Then he picked it back up and kept going.

 

Brandon, who died in 2018, would have laughed his ass off at that moment. But he also would have loved watching his brother on the stage, looking up at those red rocks and that packed crowd roaring to songs he wrote. It has to simultaneously be one of the loneliest and most communal possible moments to stand there alone with a guitar and feel ten thousand people hanging on everything you do.

 

Most people don’t get to see the view—sorry, the hell of a view—from the stage looking up. When the song is exactly right, as it was during “Springsteen,” the people have their arms around each other and they’re belting every word and they’re swaying back and forth so much that it looks like the two giant rocks are wobbling.

 

“There’s a spiritual energy there that you don’t find anywhere else,” Cotten said about playing at Red Rocks. “To be able to look out at all the fans and see the beautiful view of those rocks lit up just brings a gratefulness over me that I get to experience a stage like that.”

 

This year, Church made sure it was a family experience. His wife and sons were there, of course. But so were his parents and his sister and his brother in law and his niece and his nephew. Tuesday night, his nephew, Tate, spent the evening becoming a Church Choir celebrity by assisting with a widely praised set list. As soon as the show ended, there was Tate, climbing over the giant rock formations (they’re everywhere here) in the dressing room with Church’s younger son, Hawk.

 

The family delighted in Tate’s newfound celebrity. When all the cousins pulled up to Wednesday night’s show, they hopped out of a van wearing sunglasses, security guard-style, and surrounded Tate like a group of bodyguards. “No pictures!” Hawk announced.

 

That’s why Eric Church is doing this. It’s lucrative, absolutely. He sells a ton of tickets. It’s cool to see your face on t-shirts. Access to excellent golf courses is a really terrific perk. 

 

But ultimately, he’s doing it for the people in those dressing room and for one who isn’t. Church has been very open, especially recently, about the grief associated with his brother’s death. He talked about it in his residency show at Chief’s on Broadway. He discussed it with Anderson Cooper on a podcast. He eventually figured out that life would never be exactly the same.

 

But also that he had to keep going in that new reality. The songs he’d learned with Brandon and the creativity they’d fostered together could still light up Red Rocks. This is what this family does—they laugh and they cry and they sing a little, too. Which is why, just before Tate left late on Wednesday night, Church picked him up and held him cheek to cheek. “We’re going to do this again,” the singer—no, the uncle—promised. “But next year I’m going to get you some new songs to consider.”

 

Earlier in the night, as Church had finished an expansive “Mistress Named Music” medley that started at Billy Joel, passed through Def Leppard, and ended at Neil Diamond, he took a deep breath. “Wow,” he said, “this has been a journey.”

 

It sure has.