ERIC CHURCH
''MR.MISUNDERSTOOD''
NOVEMBER 5 2015
38:40
**********
01 - Mr. Misunderstood 05:19 (Eric Church, Casey Beathard)
02 - Mistress Named Music 05:22 (Eric Church, Casey Beathard)
03 - Chattanooga Lucy 03:22 (Eric Church, Jeff Hyde, Ryan Tyndell)
04 - Mixed Drinks About Feelings featuring Susan Tedeschi 02:58 (Eric Church)
05 - Knives Of New Orleans 04:01 (Eric Church, Jeremy Spillman, Travis Meadows)
06 - Round Here Buzz 03:34 (Eric Church, Jeff Hyde, Luke Dick)
07 - Kill A Word 03:19 (Eric Church, Jeff Hyde, Luke Dick)
08 - Holdin' My Own 03:55 (Eric Church)
09 - Record Year 02:59 (Eric Church, Jeff Hyde)
10 - Three Year Old 03:46 (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Monty Criswell)
**********
Eric Church – Electric and Acoustic Guitars
Craig Wright – Drums and Percussion
Lee Hendricks – Bass and Baritone Guitar
Jay Joyce – Electric Guitar and Keyboards
Jeff Hyde – Acoustic Guitar, Banjo, Mandolin, and Background Vocals
Jeff Cease – 12 String Acoustic and Electric Guitar
Driver Williams – Electric Guitar
Additional:
Casey Beathard – Background Vocals on “Mr. Misunderstood”
Joanna Cotten – Background Vocals on “Mistress Named Music” & “Chattanooga Lucy”
Andrea Davidson - Background Vocals on “Kill A Word”
Luke Dick – 12 String Guitar and Background Vocals on “Kill A Word”
Rhiannon Giddens – Background Vocals “Kill A Word”
Susan Tedeschi – Featured Vocals “Mixed Drinks About Feelings”
**********
REVIEW/AMG
Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Arriving after the deliberately overblown The Outsiders -- an outlaw album pumped up on steroids, gaining its resonance through its slow songs -- Mr. Misunderstood feels like a correction: a swift, modest album shorn of excess, released without an iota of pre-release hype. Devoid of the arena rock feints that dogged The Outsiders -- there are no two-part metallic jams, no salutations to damn rock & roll -- Mr. Misunderstood is hardly a back-to-basics move or a refutation of his over-amplified indulgences. Rather, this 2015 record pulls together the strands Church left hanging on his 2014 set, never shuffling country and rock -- or blues or soul, for that matter -- into their own categories. Church creates his own Americana, pulling from the classic rock wallpapering Middle America and the modern country that runs through the sports bars of the suburbs, making nods to swamp funk and soul along the way, but when he tips his cap to Elvis Costello, Ray Wylie Hubbard, and Jeff Tweedy, it's as telling as the Jackson Pollock allusion a few lines later: where other country is provincial, Church embraces the world without repudiating his home. Certainly, there's a strong sense of family flowing throughout Mr. Misunderstood -- he's married to a dream, but his mistress is music; he writes about one son, but puts another on the cover -- but Church takes a cue from "Give Me Back My Hometown," favoring specificity over broad clichés. Take the title track, where he tells a tale that feels autobiographical but he's seeing himself within a teenage outsider stuck in the back of class: here, he opens the door upon the possibility that the rest of the songs on the record -- the tales of heartbreak and longing, maybe even the stories of love and family -- are characters, not confession. Either way, Church's songs are anchored with an authoritative sense of sentiment and place, and they're brought to life by the precise roar of the Eric Church Band. No longer overwhelming with sheer volume, they dig into the funk of "Chattanooga Lucy" and race their leader to the conclusion of "Mr. Misunderstood," but they shine by maintaining the mournful soul of "Round Here Buzz" or by building the tension of "Knives of New Orleans" or by keeping the Susan Tedeschi duet "Mixed Drinks About Feelings" at a sweet, sad simmer. Where The Outsiders was designed to dazzle, Mr. Misunderstood is built for the long haul: it settles into the soul, its pleasures immediate but also sustained.
**********
BIOGRAPHY/AMG
William Ruhlmann
Country singer/songwriter/guitarist Eric Church grew up in Granite Falls, North Carolina, and began singing as a child. At 13, he started writing songs, later teaching himself to play guitar. While attending college at Appalachian State, he formed a band, the Mountain Boys, that played around western North Carolina. After graduating with a degree in marketing, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a career in country music. It took him a year to get a song publishing deal with Sony/ATV Tree, after which he started getting his songs recorded by other artists, an example being Terri Clark's version of "The World Needs a Drink." He met producer Jay Joyce, who took an interest in him as a recording artist, and they began making demos. That led to his being signed by Capitol Records Nashville.
Sinners Like Me
Church's debut single, "How 'Bout You," was released in early 2006, and it had reached the country Top 20 by the time Capitol released his first album, Sinners Like Me, on July 18, 2006. The album was both a critical and commercial success, and Church followed it up with Carolina in 2009, in which he swung for the contemporary country fences and hit them, scoring two Top Ten singles on the country charts with "Love Your Love the Most" (certified gold), and "Hell on the Heart." In 2010, he scored another gold single with "Smoke a Little Smoke" in 2010. He won Top New Solo Vocalist at the Academy of Country Music Awards for that calendar year. After extensive touring, Church released the Caldwell County EP in January of 2011, which reached the number 13 position on the Billboard country chart, as did the single "Homeboy." Church followed with the album Chief in July.
Chief wound up being Church's entry into superstardom. Upon its July 2011 release, it debuted at number one on both the Billboard 200 and the Top Country Albums chart. Soon afterward, "Drink in My Hand" climbed to the top of the country charts, becoming Church's first number one single. Its popularity was eclipsed in the summer of 2012 by "Springsteen," a ballad that also reached number one on the country charts but additionally crossed over to the pop Top 20. Two other singles were pulled from Chief -- "Creepin'" and "Like Jesus Does" -- and the album won Album of the Year at the 2012 Country Music Academy Awards.
Caught in the Act: Live
Early in 2013, Church released the live set Caught in the Act, which was recorded at the Tivoli Theatre in Chattanooga, Tennessee in October 2012; the album debuted at number five on the Billboard 200. Church spent the rest of 2013 working on his fourth studio album. The first taste of this work was the heavy rock of "The Outsiders," a single that turned out to be the album's title track. Preceded by the second single "Give Me Back My Hometown" (which followed the title track into the country Top Ten), The Outsiders arrived to considerable anticipation and acclaim in February 2014. It became his second album to hit number one on both the country and overall charts. The Outsiders racked up five hit singles -- the biggest were the ballads "Give Me Back My Hometown" and "Talladega," both of which reached number one on Billboard's U.S. Country Airplay charts -- and while "Like a Wrecking Ball" remained on the charts, Church released a brand-new full-length album, Mr. Misunderstood, as a surprise in the first week of November 2015.
**********
WEBSITE
**********
TO THE TOP
**********
''MR.MISUNDERSTOOD''
NOVEMBER 5 2015
38:40
**********
01 - Mr. Misunderstood 05:19 (Eric Church, Casey Beathard)
02 - Mistress Named Music 05:22 (Eric Church, Casey Beathard)
03 - Chattanooga Lucy 03:22 (Eric Church, Jeff Hyde, Ryan Tyndell)
04 - Mixed Drinks About Feelings featuring Susan Tedeschi 02:58 (Eric Church)
05 - Knives Of New Orleans 04:01 (Eric Church, Jeremy Spillman, Travis Meadows)
06 - Round Here Buzz 03:34 (Eric Church, Jeff Hyde, Luke Dick)
07 - Kill A Word 03:19 (Eric Church, Jeff Hyde, Luke Dick)
08 - Holdin' My Own 03:55 (Eric Church)
09 - Record Year 02:59 (Eric Church, Jeff Hyde)
10 - Three Year Old 03:46 (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Monty Criswell)
**********
Eric Church – Electric and Acoustic Guitars
Craig Wright – Drums and Percussion
Lee Hendricks – Bass and Baritone Guitar
Jay Joyce – Electric Guitar and Keyboards
Jeff Hyde – Acoustic Guitar, Banjo, Mandolin, and Background Vocals
Jeff Cease – 12 String Acoustic and Electric Guitar
Driver Williams – Electric Guitar
Additional:
Casey Beathard – Background Vocals on “Mr. Misunderstood”
Joanna Cotten – Background Vocals on “Mistress Named Music” & “Chattanooga Lucy”
Andrea Davidson - Background Vocals on “Kill A Word”
Luke Dick – 12 String Guitar and Background Vocals on “Kill A Word”
Rhiannon Giddens – Background Vocals “Kill A Word”
Susan Tedeschi – Featured Vocals “Mixed Drinks About Feelings”
**********
REVIEW/AMG
Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Arriving after the deliberately overblown The Outsiders -- an outlaw album pumped up on steroids, gaining its resonance through its slow songs -- Mr. Misunderstood feels like a correction: a swift, modest album shorn of excess, released without an iota of pre-release hype. Devoid of the arena rock feints that dogged The Outsiders -- there are no two-part metallic jams, no salutations to damn rock & roll -- Mr. Misunderstood is hardly a back-to-basics move or a refutation of his over-amplified indulgences. Rather, this 2015 record pulls together the strands Church left hanging on his 2014 set, never shuffling country and rock -- or blues or soul, for that matter -- into their own categories. Church creates his own Americana, pulling from the classic rock wallpapering Middle America and the modern country that runs through the sports bars of the suburbs, making nods to swamp funk and soul along the way, but when he tips his cap to Elvis Costello, Ray Wylie Hubbard, and Jeff Tweedy, it's as telling as the Jackson Pollock allusion a few lines later: where other country is provincial, Church embraces the world without repudiating his home. Certainly, there's a strong sense of family flowing throughout Mr. Misunderstood -- he's married to a dream, but his mistress is music; he writes about one son, but puts another on the cover -- but Church takes a cue from "Give Me Back My Hometown," favoring specificity over broad clichés. Take the title track, where he tells a tale that feels autobiographical but he's seeing himself within a teenage outsider stuck in the back of class: here, he opens the door upon the possibility that the rest of the songs on the record -- the tales of heartbreak and longing, maybe even the stories of love and family -- are characters, not confession. Either way, Church's songs are anchored with an authoritative sense of sentiment and place, and they're brought to life by the precise roar of the Eric Church Band. No longer overwhelming with sheer volume, they dig into the funk of "Chattanooga Lucy" and race their leader to the conclusion of "Mr. Misunderstood," but they shine by maintaining the mournful soul of "Round Here Buzz" or by building the tension of "Knives of New Orleans" or by keeping the Susan Tedeschi duet "Mixed Drinks About Feelings" at a sweet, sad simmer. Where The Outsiders was designed to dazzle, Mr. Misunderstood is built for the long haul: it settles into the soul, its pleasures immediate but also sustained.
**********
BIOGRAPHY/AMG
William Ruhlmann
Country singer/songwriter/guitarist Eric Church grew up in Granite Falls, North Carolina, and began singing as a child. At 13, he started writing songs, later teaching himself to play guitar. While attending college at Appalachian State, he formed a band, the Mountain Boys, that played around western North Carolina. After graduating with a degree in marketing, he moved to Nashville, Tennessee, to pursue a career in country music. It took him a year to get a song publishing deal with Sony/ATV Tree, after which he started getting his songs recorded by other artists, an example being Terri Clark's version of "The World Needs a Drink." He met producer Jay Joyce, who took an interest in him as a recording artist, and they began making demos. That led to his being signed by Capitol Records Nashville.
Sinners Like Me
Church's debut single, "How 'Bout You," was released in early 2006, and it had reached the country Top 20 by the time Capitol released his first album, Sinners Like Me, on July 18, 2006. The album was both a critical and commercial success, and Church followed it up with Carolina in 2009, in which he swung for the contemporary country fences and hit them, scoring two Top Ten singles on the country charts with "Love Your Love the Most" (certified gold), and "Hell on the Heart." In 2010, he scored another gold single with "Smoke a Little Smoke" in 2010. He won Top New Solo Vocalist at the Academy of Country Music Awards for that calendar year. After extensive touring, Church released the Caldwell County EP in January of 2011, which reached the number 13 position on the Billboard country chart, as did the single "Homeboy." Church followed with the album Chief in July.
Chief wound up being Church's entry into superstardom. Upon its July 2011 release, it debuted at number one on both the Billboard 200 and the Top Country Albums chart. Soon afterward, "Drink in My Hand" climbed to the top of the country charts, becoming Church's first number one single. Its popularity was eclipsed in the summer of 2012 by "Springsteen," a ballad that also reached number one on the country charts but additionally crossed over to the pop Top 20. Two other singles were pulled from Chief -- "Creepin'" and "Like Jesus Does" -- and the album won Album of the Year at the 2012 Country Music Academy Awards.
Caught in the Act: Live
Early in 2013, Church released the live set Caught in the Act, which was recorded at the Tivoli Theatre in Chattanooga, Tennessee in October 2012; the album debuted at number five on the Billboard 200. Church spent the rest of 2013 working on his fourth studio album. The first taste of this work was the heavy rock of "The Outsiders," a single that turned out to be the album's title track. Preceded by the second single "Give Me Back My Hometown" (which followed the title track into the country Top Ten), The Outsiders arrived to considerable anticipation and acclaim in February 2014. It became his second album to hit number one on both the country and overall charts. The Outsiders racked up five hit singles -- the biggest were the ballads "Give Me Back My Hometown" and "Talladega," both of which reached number one on Billboard's U.S. Country Airplay charts -- and while "Like a Wrecking Ball" remained on the charts, Church released a brand-new full-length album, Mr. Misunderstood, as a surprise in the first week of November 2015.
**********
WEBSITE
**********
TO THE TOP
**********
