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University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Church Knows Tar Heel Passion
August 25, 2015 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
By Adam Lucas
Eric Church is still mad about 1987.
That's all you really need to know about his level of dedication to Carolina basketball. He's toured around the world, he's won the Academy of Country Music award for album of the year, and he's had six number-one singles.
And he's still really, really ticked about 1987.
That's when Jim Boeheim and Syracuse ended the season of Dean Smith's Tar Heels in the regional final, one game short of the Final Four. That Carolina team featured Kenny Smith and J.R. Reid and had blistered through the ACC regular season at 14-0. As a nine-year-old fan in Granite Falls, N.C., Church just knew his heroes were bound for a national title.
“I had a home J.R. Reid jersey and a blue Jeff Lebo jersey for when we were playing on the road,” Church says. “I was completely eaten up with basketball at that point in my life. I had all these friends who were NC State and Duke fans, and when Carolina would get beat it was terrible to go into the elementary school classroom and have them rub it in my face. I will never, ever forget that game against Syracuse. After the games I would go out in the yard and play basketball and that particular day when I went out in the yard, it was pretty heated. I had a lot of demons to exorcise.”
He's since found other avenues to get out his demons—he wrote or co-wrote every song on his most recent album, The Outsiders. He spent most of the summer on a headlining tour that saw him set multiple attendance records and also perform in front of some of the country's biggest stadiums alongside Kenny Chesney.
Even when he's on tour, though, Church isn't far from one of his first life's passions. Earlier this year, he was slated to go on stage at a venue at the same time a crucial Carolina game was nearing its conclusion on television. Church's contract with the venue contained some stiff penalties for a late arrival on stage: missing by even a minute meant a $20,000 fine. But the game wasn't over yet. So…
“We paid the fine,” Church says. “I had to see the end of the game.”
When there's no avoiding the conflicts between basketball and shows, Church has come up with a solution. His guitar technician is a diehard Kentucky fan, which means he understands basketball fanaticism. And every time he brings the singer a new guitar during a concert that takes place at the same time as a Carolina game, he provides Church with an updated score and time.
That's how Church ended up on stage in Tallahassee at the same time his Tar Heels were playing Wisconsin in the NCAA Tournament. “We were up late in the game, and he brought me a guitar and gave me the thumbs-up,” Church says. “He brought me the next score when the game was over and I was getting ready to play 'Dark Side.' It was probably the most authentic performance of Dark Side I've ever done.”
Naturally, Church is excited about getting back in front of fans who understand his passion for North Carolina. He's headlining the American Roots Festival at Walnut Creek on Oct. 17 and 18, a festival with which he had significant input in designing the lineup and feel of the shows.
“It will end up being this multi-genre kind of day that's not about one kind of music or putting up boundaries,” Church says. “That's my favorite way to experience music.”
It will also give Church—who is married with two sons, both of whom he is already trying to indoctrinate into understanding his Tar Heel passion—the chance to spend some time close to home and see his parents. It's his father, Ken, who was one of the first to introduce him to Dean Smith's Carolina teams. The pair went to Eric's first game in March of 1984, when they saw Michael Jordan and the Tar Heels defeat Temple at the Charlotte Coliseum.
That was the first of many games they experienced together…although they weren't always, you know, actually together.
“Woody (Durham) always says, 'Go where you go and do what you do,'” Church says. “My dad and I had to separate at the end of games. We felt like that's where we were when they played their best. During timeouts, we'd meet in the kitchen and talk about it, but then when the game started we'd go back to our TV's and stand there and watch the game separately.”
It's easy to see, then, that Church understands the passion felt by the fans who fill the seats at his concerts. He's a regular at Tar Heel basketball games when he's not on tour, so he's the rare individual who knows what it's like both to be in front of 20,000 people and to be part of a crowd of 20,000 people.
He's made a habit of putting the same energy into his shows that he puts into rooting for his lifelong favorite team.
“A lot of it is being in that moment and having that experience,” he says. “There's a camaraderie and a feeling that everyone in that building is in this together. That's very much what we try to do with our shows. Being involved in a big game, you're all there together and experiencing it together, and when you leave you share that forever. To me, that's truly a magical thing—whether it's sports or music—to have that with 15 or 20 thousand strangers.”