Review: Eric Church’s heartfelt homecoming gets even more emotional thanks to young fans

The most striking thing about the first of North Carolina native Eric Church’s two Charlotte gigs at PNC Music Pavilion wasn’t the way in which he sonically reimagined some of his most beloved songs.

It wasn’t the jolt of jazz the show got from his jaunty three-piece horn section, or the suffusion of soul supplied by his new trio of backup singers; nor was it the leaner, meaner running time of “just” 2 hours and 14 minutes — much shorter than the 3-hour marathon he ran at Spectrum Center in early 2022.

And, touching as they were, it wasn’t the many professions of love he showed for his home state throughout Saturday night’s concert.

No, the most striking thing, to me, was the surprising degree to which kids ran the show.

Exhibit A: Exactly an hour after the 20-foot-tall doors at the rear of the stage opened to reveal Church, wearing a purple and teal “Charlotte NC Basketball” T-shirt and blue jeans, he suddenly announced he was veering off-script in the interest of pleasing a young fan he met at the pre-show meet-and-greet.

“She was probably, I don’t know, 7 or 8 years old,” Church explained, “and her mom goes, ‘Tell him your favorite song.’ And she said, ‘Can I say it?’ And her mom said, ‘Yeah.’ And she goes —” Church’s voice dropped to a low whisper for the title of his 2014 song “— ‘That’s Damn Rock and Roll.’ Lemme tell you something, (when) a really cute 8-year-old girl looks at her mom and says something like that ... I have to play that song.

“So, we weren’t prepared for it, we didn’t plan for it, but —” (and what the 46-year-old country superstar said next is perhaps something that girl’s mother wouldn’t have permitted her daughter to say to him) “— we’re gonna f-----’ do it.”

Exhibit B: Just two songs later, Church came to the edge of the stage to receive a sign handed to him from the front row that was made by — according to the message on that big piece of white posterboard — a 7-year-old who was attending her fourth Eric Church concert. He turned it over and read aloud what was written on the other side: “You’d ‘Look Good and You Know It’ in a Bracelet I Made for You, Please,” a cute-as-a-button reference to a song off of his 2021 “Soul” album.

In fact, a plastic baggie containing not one but four homemade beaded bracelets had been affixed to a corner of the sign, and in fact, he grinned as he pulled them all out and slid them all onto his right wrist.

With that, the amphitheater’s two big video screens displayed a shot of the girl perched on her mom’s shoulders and smiling back at him, at which point Church looked at her and said, “This is for you. Alright? This is it. Here we go. I’m gonna kill this.”

Exhibit C? Hang on. We’ll get to that one in a minute.

Generally speaking, these Charlotte shows were always going to be special shows for Church, who grew up in Granite Falls, near Hickory; who graduated from South Caldwell High School, then Appalachian State University; who lives primarily in Nashville now, for obvious reasons, but who still does some writing while summering with his family in the Blue Ridge Mountain town of Banner Elk; and who earlier this year cemented a fresh relationship with the city of Charlotte by buying a small piece of the NBA’s Hornets (hence his choice of T-shirt on Saturday).

Early on Saturday evening, Church revealed that he and his band had rehearsed the entire tour in Charlotte during a lull in PNC’s schedule back in June, saying: “We spent a couple days here” — it was actually more like eight — “and this show felt so far away then.

“But now here we are, and I have incredibly high expectations for you guys tonight.”

More than an hour and a half later, Church shouted-out the host venue again, teeing up an acoustic version of arguably his biggest and most iconic hit — the nostalgic “Springsteen” — by wistfully recognizing the place as the site of his first amphitheater concert.

“I think it was called Blockbuster Pavilion back then. Back when Blockbuster was a thing. I was 16 years old. It was the first time I didn’t go with my parents to a show. ... I was in the very back part of this lawn. ... So to be back here,” he said, chuckling, “is trippy. It’s really trippy.”

(An aside: The opening verse he tacked onto the song, by the way, was indeed an ode to his memory of what it felt like to be at that show as a teenager — though it’s both disappointing and ironic that the acoustics at this venue that has meant so much to Church are such that I had trouble making out the lyrics. As saving graces, saxophonist Evan Cobb had a sparkling solo in the middle of “Springsteen,” and Church gamely shot a mini-bottle of Jack Daniels given to him by a fan toward the end of it, leading him to shout “LET RALEIGH HEAR YOU!” before the crowd feverishly belted out the last round of “Whoa-oh-oh-oh, Whoa-oh-oh-ohs.”)

In other cities on his “The Outsiders Revival Tour,” much has been made about the experimentation Church has injected into his current set. Not everyone has taken to his attempts to do almost a jam-band type of thing, or to the funkier, more soulful energy that the brass instruments and the new backing vocalists add to his regular six-piece band.

But while I heard a couple of complaints about a couple of arrangements (said one, for example: “Doing the John Tesh version of ‘Drink in My Hand’ was hurtful”), his shift may have felt less jarring here ... perhaps because we were automatically predisposed to be more forgiving?

After all, in some ways, the whole night served as an effort to honor his roots in and his ties to North Carolina.

As the show began, a 10-foot N.C. state flag was raised to the rafters, where it hung for the duration of a 25-song set that seemed to replace an original lyric with a nod to Carolina at every other turn.

“Hell of a View”: It’s a hell of a view of North Caroliiiiiiii-iiii-naaaaa...

“Mr. Misunderstood”: Yeah, and everybody held up their hands / And every soul in North Carolina danced...

“Round Here Buzz”: I swear I’m catching a small-town North Carolina buzz...

“Pledge of Allegiance to the Hag”: When the weekend comes an’ the weather’s clear / I know a pretty good high spot two hours from here...

“Give Me Back My Hometown”: Cause this is my hometown / All the colors of my youth / The red, the green, the Carolina blue...

After closing the latter, Church picked up a Caldwell County flag that had been tossed on stage, then draped it around his neck, then raised his fists and leaned his head back as the crowd thunderously roared — a moment that had to have put lumps in a few fans’ throats, if not his own.

“Everything that I am in my life — in music, and everything else — came from this state right here,” the singer had said earlier, during the first half of the show, right before performing a song that surely hits different for him here: “Carolina.” When he finished that one, someone tossed him a Charlotte Hornets jersey that had the No. 23 and his last name emblazoned on the back, prompting him to finally remove his jet-black Ray-Bans a full 50 minutes into his set while letting out a sentimental sigh that put more lumps in more throats.

He took off his trademark shades only a few other times on Saturday night.

But it was the last one that made the biggest impact — and once more, it involved a request from a young fan.

I think it’s got to be because Church himself is a dad of two sons, one who’s 7 and another who’s about to turn 12. Those first two little girls he dedicated songs to Saturday were both 7-ish, and this third one looked like she was about 12. It’s probably just a coincidence, the closeness of them to his sons’ ages. At the same time, it tracks that he would have such a particular soft spot.

Anyway, the time was well after 11 p.m. by then, and therefore well after the official curfew for PNC.

He’d just sang “Holdin’ My Own,” which has often been his last song and which was the last song printed on the setlist I’d been given. Church held his hands up, then clasped them together as a “thank-you” gesture to the crowd. His band had already exited to the wings. The show should have otherwise been over.

But Church had noticed another sign in the crowd, held by that third girl, so he returned to center stage and read it aloud:

“‘It’s my first concert. Let me see you through YOUR Ray-Bans,’” another cute-as-a-button reference, this time to “Through My Ray-Bans.”

“We can do that,” he said, nodding matter-of-factly. He told her to make her way to the front row, and then proceeded to play the track off of his 2022 EP “&” all by himself save for an electric guitar.

When he finished the song, on the other side of 11:30, Church leaned over and removed his sunglasses for the last time.

“Try ’em on,” he said, as he handed them down to her. The girl slid the shades onto her face right before she began sobbing.

Church smiled. “Thank you,” he told the crowd. “See you tomorrow night.”

Then he blew a kiss, bowed, waved, and walked off the stage — with what genuinely looked like twinkles in his usually unseen eyes — as the video screens showed the girl burying her head in her mother’s arms.

Eric Church’s setlist

1. “The Outsiders”

2. “Chattanooga Lucy”

3. “Bad Mother Trucker”

4. “Heart on Fire”

5. “Hangin’ Around”

6. “Drink in My Hand”

7. “Hell of a View”

8. “Country Music Jesus”

9. “Mr. Misunderstood”

10. “Carolina”

11. “How ‘Bout You”

12. “Creepin’”

13. “That’s Damn Rock & Roll”

14. “Round Here Buzz”

15. “Look Good and You Know It”

16. “Some of It”

17. “Smoke a Little Smoke”

18. “Give Me Back My Hometown”

19. “Sailin’ Shoes”

20. “Cold One”

21. “Pledge Allegiance to the Hag”

Encore:

22. “Sinners Like Me”

23. “Springsteen”

24. “Holdin’ My Own”

25. “Through My Ray-Bans”