It was a massive run over the last four nights at the venue that many of you still call Riverport with a Tears For Fears comeback, a tempest-shortened Post Malone show, a Snoop Dogg/Wiz Khalifa double bill that came with a surprise Nelly cameo and Saturday night’s sold-out Eric Church concert.
It was a different look for Church and not just in the fact that he swapped his trademark aviator shades for sunglasses that looked more like post-cataract wear. He still looked very cool — skinny as a rail, graying just a little on the sides, tight jeans, green T-shirt — to the extent that women in the crowd were audibly declaring him their hall pass. But the different look was in the show’s structure. Eric Church fans are accustomed to seeing their boy play indoors and with no openers, allowing for three-hour sets, as with his last three visits to Enterprise Center. For his current Outsiders Revival Tour, however, Church has taken to playing sheds and has cut his set times by an hour to make room for opening acts.
In St. Louis, those openers included Muscadine Bloodline, two ’90s-country-loving Alabamans who turned out a solid red-dirt half-hour of melody-rich tunes like “Me On You” and “Porch Swing Angel.” You know who else had a good night? Anheuser-Busch. Lines for beers were as long as bathroom lines, and when Muscadine’s Charlie Muncaster asked the crowd to hoist their alcoholic beverages, everyone turned into the Statue of Libation.
The other opener was ’90s stalwart Travis Tritt, who recently responded to Bud Light’s Dylan Mulvaney controversy by banning A-B products from his tour rider. As a counter-protest, I held up my 25-ounce Bud Light can every time Tritt walked over to my side of the stage. As Church himself might say, damn, that was a cold one.
Church knows how to make an entrance. First a Missouri state flag was unfurled and slowly raised to a position above the stage where it remained for the main set before a set of castle doors majestically opened upstage, and Church, bathed in shadows, strolled forward carrying his acoustic guitar. The song was “Chattanooga Lucy,” a swamp-funk workout that showed off Church’s formidable falsetto, while the second song, the Southern-rocking “Bad Mother Trucker,” exercised his sinewy baritone, and then gospel-shimmy of “Hangin’ Around” emphasized his aphrodisiacal low-bass register.
His 2011 smash “Drink in My Hand” — his was a tumbler inscribed with his nickname, “Chief” — came next, making for four songs drawn for four different albums to start the show, an indication of the kind of career-spanning set Church was after though it was one in which he didn’t mind leaving out some of his biggest hits. “Talladega,” “Some Of It” and “Record Year,” for instance, are all No.1 singles left off the setlist. Likewise, the Church show ritual of fans getting sock-footed and holding their cowboy boots high in the air during “These Boots” was skipped this time out.
In fact, set lists have been relatively stagnant on this tour, as Church clearly has a show he wants everyone to see, picking many of his favorite songs and giving them an expanded sonic overhaul courtesy of a huge band that saw as many as 13 musicians on stage, including a three-piece horn section that embellished even early country tracks like “Livin’ Part of Life” with New Orleans-style trombone oomph.
So, yes, there was an outdoor revival feel to the evening, just as Church promised early in the show. “By the end of this night, it will feel like you’ve been to a revival,” he said. “My job is to take you there.” Church’s shows are famous for this kind of almighty passion for the music and the site-specific in-the-moment celebration of the gathering, and Church continually altered lyrics all night with St. Louis references, even throwing in a nod to Mizzou at one point.
The bragging-rights moments came with rarities that hadn’t been played elsewhere on the tour, in some cases in years, including a punchy cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Tennessee Jed,” which no one in the crowd seemed to know. It was a stellar version of the song, though Chief later joked that it didn’t go well. “Never Break Heart” was even rarer. “I don't know that we’ve done this more than one or two times ever,” he said.
After some final crowd-pleasers — “Cold One,” “Pledge Allegiance to the Hag” — Church returned for a two-song encore. First, a retooled “Springsteen” with a new intro, a solo-acoustic first verse and a full-band second half highlighted by a big Clarence Clemons-esque sax solo. Then a final rarity, at least for Church, Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” a song Church first played during his 2016 Red Rocks run and revisited just five times since then, performed solo on his red Gibson hollow-body.
It was an emotional ending to a show from a guy who knows how to stir up a crowd. And in front of another sold-out St. Louis audience, Church proved again that he has an extraordinary charisma and the stellar body of work to deliver a uniquely satisfying experience every time.
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