Eric Church joined George Strait at the last stop of the country icon’s farewell tour in 2014, but it was another show of Strait’s where the two musicians got to get to know each other during some downtime on the bus with a little help from James Brown. During a conversation with Zane Lowe for At Home With on Apple Music, Church looked back on the moment, sharing that it was “one of the coolest damned things” he’d ever seen.
“I’ve got a chance to know George a little bit and be around George a little bit,” he said. “I played his final tour, his farewell tour with him. It was unbelievable. We played Texas Stadium. That was his last show. But my favorite thing is we came up on his bus … The first show I played, it was an acoustic show I did in front of his show in Omaha, Nebraska. We go up on his bus after the show, I took my wife and we’re up there. George has just played. He’s the king. He just played in the round for all these people. He’s up there and we’re talking about music and I mentioned James Brown. He goes, ‘I love James Brown.’ And I said, ‘Oh good.’”
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“So George has got his boots off and he’s in gold-toe black socks, like the dress socks and said, ‘Well, let’s play some James Brown, come on,’” Church continued. “So he puts on some James Brown. Next thing I know George Strait is tearing down in the middle of the bus. My wife’s tearing down and they’re all dancing. I’m watching George Strait dance in gold-toe socks to James Brown. It’s one of the coolest damned things I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve never seen anything like that. It is cool as s—. So I’m watching this guy do this, going, ‘It doesn’t get better than this. This is the best I’ve seen.’ So he can tear it up, man.”
Church will soon be back on the road on his own Gather Again Tour, which begins on Sept. 17 in Lexington, Kentucky and will run through May 2022 in an in-the-round setup with a final stop at Madison Square Garden in New York City. In April, he released his latest album, the triple album Heart & Soul.
