By Adam Lucas

 

SPOKANE—Following an elaborate preshow laser show and Pink Floyd musical accompaniment, Eric Church made his grand entrance at the Spokane Arena at 9:14 p.m. Pacific time on Saturday night.

 

With all due respect to Chief, it was the second-best entrance on that stage of the day.

 

About six hours earlier, a healthy majority of the crew had gathered in the pit for the eighth annual crew Halloween costume contest. Band members served as the judges, and 13 different costumes were entered, everything from Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble (Meesha Kosciolek and Shawn Watkins) to Marty McFly (Evan Cobb).

 

The show was hosted by stage manager Sambo Coats, who earlier this weekend wore a t-shirt proclaiming him a “Shit Show Supervisor,” which was a very appropriate title for this gathering. His narration added an extra layer of entertainment to the afternoon, as when Flintstone and Rubble made some questionable gestures with their fossil props. “Sir, you need to go to HR for that,” Coats said.

 

As MJ Sagraves very aptly said, “I think I see his muffler dragging.”

 

Four costumes drew the most praise from the ECB:

 

Anthony D’Angio as Dr. Frank-N-Furter as played by Tim Curry from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

 

Tara Russell, Alaina Hunter, Lauren Urbanowicz, Eleonore Denig, Kaitlyn Raitz, Laura Epling and Patrick Monnius as a dead-on likeness of the Eric Church Band, complete with highly identifiable props and outfits. One benefit of doing the contest on the stage: they were able to enter using the music that accompanies the ECB’s pre-show entrance, making it even more authentic.

 

John McConnell as Jeff Hyde. McConnell even replicated Hyde’s iconic gait, and walked onto the stage from the back perfectly replicating Hyde’s nightly entrance.

 

The band gave special recognition to April Rucker, who had done some very impressive arts and crafts work to turn herself into a sound board.

 

Zero ticketholders saw any of the hijinks. But they sure saw how it pays dividends.

 

Your crew has to have fun in order to endure weekends like this. Salt Lake City to Boise to Spokane is 761 miles, nearly 12 hours of travel in a bus, and two cross-country flights in less than 100 hours. It’s mornings that start before dawn and nights that end well after midnight. “We’ll work about 60 hours in these three days,” William Coats estimated.

 

If the people involved are miserable, it’s going to show on the stage. So it has to be a family and there have to be distractions. There have to be Lee Hendricks’ football sheets (so much a staple of tour that they were replicated by Urbanowicz in the costume contest). You need birthday celebrations, complete with Sagraves slamming a bottle of Jack Daniels into the cake, as he did for Megan Harris Saturday afternoon after the entire crew sang “Happy Birthday” to her. And you need a ringmaster who can keep the entire thing running with just the right combination of preparation and spontaneity and put on an epic show every single night.

 

It isn’t all fun and costume contests. It’s hard work. But that enables every night to be a living show in a way that isn’t common anymore.

 

“The only tour I have ever seen like an Eric Church tour in the way that it changes every night,” says Butch Allen, who has orchestrated the lighting for almost every show that matters in the last three decades, “was Guns N’ Roses in the early 1990’s.”

 

When Driver Williams threw down a very Slash-like solo during “Creepin’,” Church just smiled. “I hope you guys are having as much fun as we are,” he told the crowd mid-song.

 

It’s pretty simple: when fans make the investment of time and money to buy a ticket, Church feels obligated to reward them. He can do it with energy, he can do it with the hits, he can do it with a unique setlist…but most often, he does it with all three.

 

“It’s been fun on this tour to have a song that is unique to that town,” he said after “Cold One.” “There is zero chance I’m going to nail this. But I’m going to try.”

 

And then he went into “Over When It’s Over” for just the second time in the last two years. Let the record show that he came pretty darn close to nailing it.

 

Spokane got several rarities: “Over When It’s Over” for the first time on this tour, “Never Break Heart” for the second time, and “Hippie Radio” for just the third time.

 

Then, for the first time on Free the Machine, Church deviated from the set list and decided not to end with “Through My Ray-Bans.” Instead, alone on stage and oblivious to the fact this was the close of a three show in three day run when he should have been exhausted, he began an eight-song medley that started with Ray LaMontagne’s “Jolene” (it references Spokane), a song he has only ever played in Spokane. The medley also included “Two Pink Lines” for just the second time on this tour, and closed with “Sinners Like Me.”

 

Then Church thanked the crowd and quietly left the stage the same way he’d entered it over two hours earlier. That ended one of the toughest weekends of the tour, which officially comes to an end with three terrific shows, 40 different songs played, over 30,000 fans in attendance…

 

And some very entertaining costumes.