Country Thunder Arizona: Eric Church's rowdy set closes with epic 'Springsteen' singalong

Ed Masley, Arizona Republic

Updated April 14, 2024 at 2:24 PM·4 min read

The party people came in from the Canyon Moon Ranch campgrounds for Friday’s main event — a headlining set by Eric Church, a Country Thunder Arizona regular who last played the festival back in 2021.

And Church’s entrance did not disappoint — a haunting verse of “The Outsiders” that featured Church starting off with an electric guitar as the members of his band strolled out to join him, kicking in at full intensity for maximum effect.

The man who gave us “Springsteen” has assembled his version of the E Street Band at last, a stage full of musicians fleshing out his songs with the dynamic range to take you from a whisper to an epic wall of sound.

With 13 people on stage, Eric Church stirred up a glorious racket

There were three to four guitarists (depending on whether the multi-instrumentalist was playing banjo, mandolin, the dobro or acoustic guitar), a three-man horn squad, three women adding gospel-flavored vocals, a keyboardist, a bassist and a drummer.

It could’ve felt like too much of a good thing, but someone on that stage clearly put a lot of thought into the ebb and flow of those arrangements, allowing each song all the space it needed to find its own crescendo.

That's not to say there weren't occasions where they used that extra firepower just because they could, attacking the accents on ”Cold One,” for example, with the force of a battering ram (before the trombone player stole the spotlight with the most outrageous trombone solo most of us will ever see.)

On “Smoke a Little Smoke,” Church brought the backup singers and horn players to the front of the stage to show what they could do before ending the song on a high note with the horn section rocking the iconic stoner-rock riff of the Black Sabbath masterstroke "Sweet Leaf."

The setlist offered fans a fairly decent overview of Church's catalog, including such crowd-pleasing staples as "Country Music Jesus," "Pledge Allegiance to the Hag" and "Springsteen."

After setting the tone with "The Outsiders," Church introduced his breakthrough single, "How 'Bout You," with "Take you back to the beginning here. The year was 2005."

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Country Thunder is 'one of my favorite places to come to,' according to Church

Church was clearly enjoying his return to Country Thunder Arizona, calling it "one of my favorite places to come to" as the set was winding down.

"Welcome to a gorgeous Friday night in the desert," he said in the first of several lengthy interactions with the fans after following "Country Music Jesus" with "Drink in My Hand."

"We have done this many times with you guys. We're gonna do it the same way, except only longer, harder, louder, maybe drunker. But you're gonna (expletive) love it."

And they did, singing along to classics touching on all stages of the man's career, from such first-album standouts as "These Boots" and "Pledge Allegiance to the Hag" to his latest hits "Hell of a View" and "Heart on Fire."

Midway through the set, he told the crowd he'd been out jogging through the campsites.

"I was watching all you guys play really drunken cornhole," he said to much applause. "I watched one guy throw a horseshoe through his camper window."

Church's setlist: From 'Smoke a Little Smoke' to 'Springsteen'

A surprise 'Talladega' and a 'Springsteen' singalong

The scene reminded him of childhood memories, having grown up in NASCAR country, leading him to dust off "Talladega," a song he said they hadn't done in a while.

The concert ended, as it had to, with a song from "Chief" that topped the country charts and remains his biggest hit.

"We're gonna leave you with this one because you want us to leave you with this one," he said. "This is what this whole environment here is made for. It's about connecting what's happening up here with your lives. And if the music connects with a memory, it'll last forever."

And with that, the stage was set for Church to make another memory while paying tribute to the power of nostalgia with a massive singalong of "Springsteen."