No one who went to see Bruce Springsteen’s Broadway residency a few years back came away disappointed because they knew what they were getting: a tightly scripted show, in which there was more speech than music. The country star Eric Church – who made his name with a single called ‘Springsteen’ – appeared to have been taking notes, for that was the model for his ‘residency’ at the Albert Hall. All that he lacked was the tight script – and Springsteen’s charm and charisma.
It was, the MC told us, Church’s first time in the UK in eight years, but the place was horribly undersold, the top tier almost empty and spaces all around the stalls. That didn’t help matters, because this was no rambunctious full-band country show of the kind that has become big business recently. Instead it was just Church and a selection of acoustic guitars, and stories that went on and on, and nowhere in particular, like the musical equivalent of the golfer at the bar talking you through his back nine, stroke by laborious stroke.
He’s been doing this show in his bar in Nashville for a while. He calls it ‘To Beat the Devil’. It’s presented as his life story told through songs. But in this telling, Church’s life appears to have consisted solely of him believing he was brilliant, being told he wasn’t, then finally becoming brilliant anyway. If you were interested in the inner workings of the Nashville music industry, this was very much the show for you. If you were interested in hearing Church’s best songs, it was not: he threw away four of his finest – ‘How ‘Bout You’, ‘Two Pink Lines’, ‘Pledge Allegiance to the Hag’ and ‘Sinners Like Me’ – in snippets early on to illustrate the stupidity of the executives who turned them down.
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