Eric Church is known as one of country music’s most dynamic live artists — from selling out stadiums, to boundary-pushing festival sets, and playing with a string orchestra, he’s constantly rethinking what he can bring to the stage. His new single, “On
the Road,” charts this journey: set to rolling piano, it’s a sonic document of his ever-evolving story as a performer. But Church is more introspective than he is nostalgic. The track, a solo write by Chief that evokes Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page,” also feels like a bittersweet acknowledgement that, one day, “some other cowboy will hear the call.”
“There’s something about a life on the road where the miles start to blur together, yet the people and the moments never do,” Church said in statement. “Those are the things you carry with you. You realize how much of who you are was shaped somewhere between one town and the next, and maybe that’s why you never really stop wondering what’s waiting down the road.”
On “On the Road,” he traces through the good memories (sharing a stage with Kris Kristofferson and Willie Nelson, playing Red Rocks) and the ones that never leave his mind (the tragedy of Route 91 Harvest festival, where he sings “I’ve seen the devil stop a show in Vegas, I’ve seen those angels get their forever wings.” The song ends with a flip on the chorus, where he switches from chanting “I’ll go far” to “he’ll go far,” knowing that nothing last forever.
Church has had the passage of time on his mind for a while now. On his last record, Evangeline vs. the Machine, he reflected on the music and moments that built him on “Hands of Time,” and how he plans to keep going until the wheels come off. “Until under that willow, you bury me, I’m gonna turn up some loud guitar,” he sang. What Church seems keenly aware of, though, is that while his love for the song is constant, the audience is a gift, not a guarantee.
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