Country has become too homogenized and too commercial. It has lost what makes it special. It’s great that it’s popular, but then it starts to become watered down. – Eric Church
I’ve always believed that you put everything into making the best record you can make, regardless of how you release it and regardless of the press and the hype – that the music wins. – Eric Church
I was in Iowa one time, and I kept trying to fire up the crowd, and I kept saying, ‘How’s Ohio doing?’ For some reason, they just weren’t coming around! – Eric Church
I think right now, you’ve seen these artists pop up over the last decade who’ve flirted with branching together a lot of different kinds of music. Some of them have been huge, and sold millions of records. And I think over time it’s become a little bit of what the industry can be. – Eric Church
I grew up listening to The Band. I love Lowell George. I love Little Feat, and I was listening to some Springsteen, some of the deep album cuts. I just like the looseness of that kind of music. It all feels like they did it in one take. They let whatever happened happen. If it felt good, they kept it. – Eric Church
You’re not gonna write a hundred songs and have a hundred entirely different ideas. It’s a matter of finding the ones that are the freshest and most unique. – Eric Church
The stigma with country is it’s not cool. That’s wrong. Country is very cool. I look at award shows, I look at how country is represented. Country is represented with an asterisk. We have to perform collaborations. We have to perform a tribute. We can’t perform by ourselves. – Eric Church
There are some commercial artists that have number one after number one, and you go to their show, and the show’s one-note. Yeah, they’re all hit songs. But there’s no emotion, because they’re the same kind of hit songs, because they’re what works at radio. That kills live shows for me. – Eric Church
To me, the most powerful people in this country, politically, are mayors. If you took all the mayors of the 25 biggest cities and you got them together, you could do more on that level than you ever could through the bureaucracy in Washington. – Eric Church
Once your career becomes about something other than the music, then that’s what it is. I’ll never make that mistake. – Eric Church
The key to songwriting is just to be able to observe, and put yourself in situations to be around people, and let those ideas come to you. – Eric Church
There’s a roots nature to Appalachia – the origins of folk and bluegrass. I know guys there who are some of the best players I’ve ever heard but are playing on their porch tonight because they’ve never chased success. There’s simplicity to how they live and what they care about. – Eric Church
My dad was in furniture for 35 years. He got run out of furniture when everything went to China, went overseas. Manufacturing in the country broke down. Everything left. – Eric Church