By Adam Lucas

LEXINGTON—Most nights it’s easy.

When you’re recapping Eric Church concerts, the moments are very good about presenting themselves. You just stand and watch and wait for them, and they happen without fail every night.

But what happens when there are too many? Friday night’s show in Kentucky was a major problem. I’ve waffled, and I’ve written a couple drafts, and I’m still not sure how to describe this show.

Was it a CMA Awards-worthy night, with a showstopping combined raw performance with Marcus King that was instantly a tour highlight?

Or was it a softer, more personal evening that included the perfect birthday gift from a dad to his teenage son?

After hours of trying to choose, the right answer finally became apparent. It was an Eric Church show, and so it was both.

Let’s start with the musical clinic put on by Church and opener Marcus King midway through the show. Earlier in the week, Church had tipped his hand. “I’m working on something for Lexington,” he said. Then he forwarded a YouTube link to an all-star 2004 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction performance of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (originally sung by The Beatles) that featured Tom Petty and Steve Winwood, with Prince providing the guitar solo that is widely considered one of the most dynamic moments of his legendary career.

There is a very specific, highly technical reason why most artists don’t attempt to cover or in any way emulate Prince:

Because it’s fucking Prince.

You’ve got to have a certain swagger to even try it. Church and King could have, you know, just done a song together. They couldn’t do that. They had to do this.

There are 20 stained glass windows at Chief’s on Broadway in Nashville that honor Church’s influences. Eighteen of them are musicians, and perhaps the least likely is Prince. But Church has actually covered The Artist before, including singing “Kiss” (complete with falsetto) at a Minneapolis concert in 2019.

This was different.

Watch the YouTube video of the 2004 performance. It’s remarkable for two reasons: first, because it’s incredibly good. Second, because it doesn’t really seem to be that difficult for Prince. He’s very clearly having fun doing it. That’s the same energy that King brought on Friday night.

Here’s how you knew it was going to be spectacular. Roadies have seen everything before, usually on multiple occasions. These are people who barely notice parts of the show that are a lifetime highlight for thousands of fans every single night. They’ve seen it at sound check. They saw it the night before. They’ll see it again tomorrow.

But as the Church/King combination approached on Friday’s set list, they began ringing the side of the stage, several people deep. They didn’t want to just watch this on the monitors or listen from the back. They wanted to experience it.

With good reason. “You’re going to see lots of shows in Lexington this year,” Church said when it was finished. “You ain’t going to see that shit.”

“While My Guitar Gently Weeps” was so good it should have been something like a third encore. Instead, it appeared halfway through the set. That gave Church the rest of the night to play even more hits, to tease the raucous Rupp Arena crowd (“I’m going to play you a new one,” he told them right before “Springsteen”), and to create a moment with his son that was every bit as memorable as the collaboration with King.

One of the toughest things in the world to be is a 14-year-old boy. There’s so much happening. There are friends and girls and responsibility and a constant, overwhelming, all-encompassing need to be cool.

Friday was Boone Church’s 14^th birthday. The show—the first Eric Church concert on October 3 since 2012, when Boone turned one—worked out perfectly, three hours from Nashville, so he was able to bring a group of friends to the show. Which probably sounds really cool to you, but imagine being 14 and having your friends talk about how cool your dad is while he’s really just Dad.

“I’m trying to figure out how to do this the right way,” Church said from the stage before the penultimate song of the night. “I wrote this song when my oldest was three years old. He turns 14 today. I haven’t done this one in a long time and I’m not sure I can. I just want to say I love you.”

Sometimes when Church says he “hasn’t done a song in a while” he means since last month. This time he meant he’s only played “Three Year Old” live one time in the past six years, and that one occasion was part of a special show at The Gorge in 2023 when he played the entire Mr. Misunderstood album.

Dads and their teenagers don’t always talk a lot. There’s plenty that is just assumed to be understood and left unsaid. The song was a gorgeous way to say everything while saying nothing.

It could have been mortifying. When you’re 14 and your dad announces on a live microphone in front of thousands that he loves you, well, maybe that isn’t cool.

But here’s what is cool: halfway through the song, a fan who unknowingly was just a couple rows away from the former three-year-old yelled, “Happy birthday, Boone!” The warmest, most genuine smile broke across Boone’s face, and his friends threw an arm around him, and if that song is never performed again, it’s because it already reached perfection at that exact moment.

And that is an Eric Church show. It’s big and bombastic with fists pumping and “I wanna feel the rush, I wanna feel alive.” An hour later it’s intimate and tender with maybe just a small tear in your eye while you remember “Sometimes all you need is a hand to hold.” All of these emotions happen on the same night within a few minutes of each other, and it’s not always perfect but it is always exhilarating and on some nights, like Friday, it is exceptional.

Let’s give the last word to Marcus King. Even as one of the best guitar players on planet Earth, he was left just a little speechless by the entire night.

Asked to summarize the night, he had the perfect nondescriptive description. “It was,” King said, “indescribable.”