Eric Church Recalls Surprising Favorite Halloween Costume

Eric Church has celebrated plenty of memorable Halloweens over the years, especially now that he’s the father of two sons. But his favorite Halloween memory is one that happened while he was in college, mostly because of his hysterical, and unexpected, costume.

“I remember when I got a little older, my first year of college, there’s this thing they do every year in Chapel Hill, North Carolina – Halloween on Franklin Street,” Church recalled. “We drove down from Boone, North Carolina. I had a bunch of friends that went to University of North Carolina, and we didn’t have costumes and didn’t realize until we were on the way that we had to have costumes. So, we stopped at a costume place in Greensboro, North Carolina. It’s Halloween, so there’s a run on everything and couldn’t find anything.”

Undeterred, Church and his friends kept driving, eventually finding a place he described as a “hole in the wall,” where he unexpectedly struck costume gold.

“They had the full costume, Sesame Street outfits,” Church recounted. “The real deal. The real ones [with] feathers and fur. We were Elmo, Cookie Monster and I was Big Bird, and the Big Bird was the actual Big Bird. It’s about 7 ft. 4 [inches], and you looked out of the body and then you had these straps that went on since the head was a lot higher. There’s a lot of beer involved in Franklin Street, so we get down there and as the night went on, my straps broke, so the head would pivot. And so, I would be walking one way and the head would be facing the other, and it just became this funny [thing].”

“I didn’t know the head was on backwards,” he continued. “I had no idea. I see out of the body, so I’m just kind of walking around, and people were talking to my [rear] end. The whole time people would come up and start talking and go, ‘Hey, turn around.’ And I’d turn around, and they’d go, ‘No turn around.’ It was a mess. That year, there was no other Big Bird on Franklin Street.”

Church will be home for Halloween this year. The singer will launch his ambitious Double Down Tour on Jan. 18, performing back-to-back shows in 18 cities, with one show scheduled at Nashville’s Nissan Stadium.

More information, including tour dates, can be found at his official website. Download his latest album, Desperate Man, on iTunes.

Photo Credit: Getty images/Tim Mosenfelder