Author: Chris Armstrong (Page 22 of 51)

THIS LANDMARK, CHART-TOPPING STATEMENT COMES WITH 
BONUS TRACKS & SPECIAL PACKAGING

The most successful country album of 2014, ‘The Outsiders’ is a true
statement of intent, defining the North Carolina story-teller’s view that song-writing shouldn’t be restrained by convention or by style.

There’s a lot of current talk about the crossover between country and rock, which makes now the perfect time for this ground-breaking outing to be getting an official June 12th re-issue via Snakefarm Records across CD, double gatefold vinyl & digital, complete with special packaging and extra tracks – including a bonus CD of live material with the LP.

Pre-order the album HERE.

Simply, ‘The Outsiders’ was boldly blurring those rock / country lines back in 2014, with tracks such as ‘That’s Damn Rock & Roll’ and the title song showing that Eric and his band needed no encouragement to move into the rock ‘n’ roll fast lane; elsewhere, numbers such as ‘A Man Who Was Gonna Die Young’ and ‘Talladega’ show the artist in a more vulnerable, retrospective light, but every number is bound together by the same consuming desire to follow the natural flow of the music and to keep things real.

These recordings, over-seen as usual by producer Jay Joyce, weren’t going to be judged on how perfect they were; the litmus test was simply ‘how does it feel?’, both for listener and performer – which is why the aforementioned ‘A Man Who Was Gonna Die Young’ is essentially a microphone check that turned into a spontaneous performance. and why the spoken word intro to ‘Devil, Devil’ (‘Princess Of Darkness’) was recorded on Eric‘s phone in the Opry Mills mall parking lot in Nashville!

Now at double platinum status in the US, ‘The Outsiders’ stands for all of those values most closely associated with Eric Church – creativity over commerce, “front row over Music Row”, remembering earlier, tougher times, and thinking well outside of the box… in fact, reducing that box to matchwood.

In those earlier times, Eric saw something in the crowd that struck a chord. He felt they needed a voice – a cause, not just to rally behind but to be a key part of; and with ‘The Outsiders’, studio album Number 4, artist and audience came together to make a collective fist.