Eric Church Once Sent An Entire Thanksgiving Dinner To A Crew Member Whose Mother Was In The Hospital – And He Hadn’t Even Started His Job Yet
Working in the country music world, you realize you can tell a lot about who an artist is as a person by their crew.
If you want to know which artists are genuinely good people, look at how much turnover they have in their band and crew. It says a lot about an artist when they’ve had the same crew by their side for much of their career, and equally as much when they’re getting a new team every six months. In my experience, a crew is a reflection of an artist and vice versa, almost without fail.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise that Eric Church has a first-class crew, most of whom have been with him for much of his career.
This was the final weekend of the first leg of the Free the Machine tour, and after every show Church shares a recap written by Adam Lucas. And the recap for the show on Thursday, November 14 at the Save Mart Center in Fresno, California largely focused on what goes on behind the scenes with Church’s crew.
Church has been with his manager John Peets since 2004, which is basically a lifetime in a music industry where trends quickly change and careers have highs and lows. (Not to mention the personality clashes that often happen between creative types). But out on the road, much of Church’s crew has been with him for the long haul too.
The road crew is led by tour manager Todd Bunch, who’s been with Church for nearly 20 years now. And along with the TM, Lucas reveals that there are at least 10 members of Church’s road crew who have been with him more than a decade – meaning these folks stayed on through the COVID pandemic, at a time when a lot of people in the industry moved around based on where they could find work at the time. (Church paid his crew even when they were forced off the road during the pandemic, so I imagine that it was an easy decision to stick around).
Even Charles Wesley Godwin, who just wrapped up a run of shows opening for Church, had high praise for Chief and his team:
“When a tour gets this big, it’s easy for the culture to get away. The culture comes from the top down. And it says a lot about Eric that our entire crew has noticed that everyone on this tour has fun, is incredibly friendly and respectful to us, and still makes sure everything happens exactly the way it’s supposed to.”
(There’s no doubt that Church is acutely aware of how he treats his openers given his own experience as an opening act early in his career…)
But it was a story from Church’s stage manager Sambo Coats that really gives you a look at the kind of guy Eric Church is, and why his crew members have stuck with him for all these years.
According to Coats, his mother was in the hospital when he was first hired for Church’s tour. And before he had even started on the job, Church and his wife Katherine still made sure that he and his family were taken care of:
“Before I even started with them, my mother was in the ICU in Mississippi dying of cancer. Eric and Katherine sent an entire Thanksgiving dinner to the hospital. I fed the entire floor with what they sent—every nurse, every family that was there. I hadn’t even started on the job yet.
There is no wall I won’t move for them because of what they did for me. Everyone on tour knows that when we need them, they will show up for us.”
That’s the kind of thing that keeps people wanting to work for you for a decade or two in a business that has such high turnover. And it also helps attract not only the best talent, but also the best people. Because more often than not, a crew is a reflection of the artist they work for.
And it’s clear that Church and his crew are as good as it gets.
