Eric Church on the Isolation of Recording His New Album: ‘It Was Like ‘The Shining”

Eric Church says he’s currently at work on the follow-up to 2018’s Desperate Man. The singer-songwriter sat for a Q&A with radio personality Lon Helton during Country Radio Seminar in Nashville on Thursday, during which he shared the status of his next album.

Church said that instead of recording in East Nashville at Joy Joyce’s Neon Cross studio, as he’s done consistently for his past projects, he decamped to the mountains of his native North Carolina.

“I felt like it was time to do something nuts,” he said, describing how he holed up in a restaurant converted into a studio in Banner Elk, North Carolina, with a specific plan of attack in mind. “The goal was to write and record 28 songs in 28 days. I’d write a song in the morning, we’d cut it that night. We removed all the barriers. Chase that as hard as you can, move on. For me, it’s as far out there as I have gotten.”

Church brought along recording equipment and a close team of writers and immersed himself in the isolation.

“It was kind of like The Shining,” Church said. “Looking back at what came out of it, everyone needed to be uncomfortable. The writers had no clue what they were in for. All that is what made it great.”

Church also debuted a work-in-progress song during his CRS Q&A, a Bob Seger-like acoustic number about a girl named “Jenny from the block” and a Chevy.

Church’s most recent two radio singles came as guest appearances: he duetted with Keith Urban on last year’s “We Were,” which he co-wrote, and currently trades verses with Luke Combs on Combs’ new single “Does to Me.”

[Reporting by Marissa R. Moss]

Featured via: Rollingstone