And it's not just the Waylons and Willies.
ERIC CHURCH THE OUTSIDERS HOW TO
When you don't really know how to identify something, you reach for that. But I feel like the outlaw word is the low-hanging fruit that everybody goes for. "And that spirit was there, that spirit of 'I'm gonna do my music how I want to do it and damn the consequences.' I mean, I feel that. But Church thinks people use that term too freely. It's the sort of attitude that's liable to get a country singer labeled an outlaw, a term first applied to such outsiders as Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings in the early '70s. Whatever you were expecting, that's not what you're gonna get on this album.' " And I wanted to make sure people understood, 'This is gonna be different. I knew that wasn't exactly the most radio-friendly song, maybe the least radio-friendly song on the album.
And that's why 'The Outsiders' was the first single. "I wanted this album to be a bit of a headscratcher in a way," Church says, "just like 'Wow, this is totally different than what I expected.' That's what I was really going for. And the eight-minute "Devil, Devil (Prelude: Prince of Darkness)" begins with a 3 1/ 2-minute poem recited over atmospheric, feedback-laden music, Church sneering, "I'll tell you a well-known secret of a place known far and wide / The devil walks among us folks and Nashville is his bride." It not only opens the record but served as the first single. You can hear him going somewhere different on the latest album's title track, a headbanging rocker in which he boasts, "We let our colors show where the numbers ain't / We're the paint where there ain't supposed to be paint." In that setting, I kind of always want to make sure that we're going somewhere else." And I feel like after 'Chief,' where we were left of center, the center moved and came our way. I don't like to have to be the flag-bearer guy of the format. And that's where I feel I'm most comfortable making music. We've always tried to be off the planned path.
"And that's where the 'outsider' theme comes from. "I feel like we've always tried to aim for the outer rings instead of the bull's-eye," Church explains. If you came on board with Eric Church when "Chief" was on its way to going platinum, fueled by the chart-topping country hits "Springsteen" and "Drink in My Hand," you may not see the award-winning singer as much of a Nashville outsider.īut there's a reason Church, who picked up album of the year for "Chief" at the Academy of Country Music Awards in 2013, would call his latest album "The Outsiders."
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