Eric Church Isn’t Planning to Record a Collection Like ‘Heart & Soul’ Ever Again
Eric Church isn't looking to repeat the experience he had making Heart & Soul, the singer's upcoming triple album that gives two complementary views of the musician — the crux (exhibited in the pointed "Stick That in Your Country Song") and the essence (last month's nostalgic "Heart on Fire").
That's because Church gave all he had during the mammoth recording session that bore both Heart (out April 16) and Soul (to be released April 23) — both nine songs each — as well as the interstitial & (April 20), the six-song segue that will only be available to Church Choir fan club members.
All 24 of those songs were written and recorded in a mere month last winter — 28 days, to be exact — by Church, his longtime producer Jay Joyce and a cast of contributing musicians. The singer and his small crew hunkered down in the Blue Ridge Mountain town of Banner Elk, N.C., to complete the task with no distractions. It led to a prolific amount of material, if not a bit of cabin fever by the end of it.
So, as the Tennessean asks, would he do it again?
"Probably not," Church says with a laugh. "I got as far out as I can get, from a mental health standpoint. I was writing all day, not sleeping at night … I couldn't shut it down at all."
"It was creatively like nothing I'd ever been through," he adds. "It was a boot camp. And, as a fan, you get to look at this and go, 'Hey, here's 28 days. Here's what those 28 days look like.'"
To that end, if one's a particularly rabid Eric Church fan, they might have even participated in hacking the entertainer's website to drum up info on the album before word officially got out. But the singer isn't sweating it — the whole reason he made Heart & Soul in such a bounded manner was to cut to the core of what he does best, performing authentic music for his legions of listeners.
"The best way [reevaluation has] ever worked for me … is to get as uncomfortable as you can get," Church explains. "I think the entire thing was everything I had to give. There's nothing else, internally, by the time we got to the end of this thing. I was spent. I was like a wrung-out dishrag.
"That's where Heart & Soul came from," he remarks. "That was everything we had."
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