Eric Church Gives Every Fan a Piece of His New Nashville Bar
When Eric Church announced his plans in 2022 to open a bar in Nashville’s Lower Broadway entertainment district, it was easy to be cynical and assume the venture would follow the homogenized honky-tonk playbook: lease a building, brand it with the name or likeness of a (mainstream, often male) country star, and serve the masses whiskey and beer while a country band plays “Don’t Stop Believing.”
But Church, who never met a Nashville trend he didn’t try to smash, swears that was the last thing he wanted to do with Chief’s, the six-story bar set to open this year on the corner of 2nd Avenue and Broadway. He envisioned creating what he calls a “clubhouse,” a headquarters for all things Church that caters directly to his fans, and especially members of his Church Choir fan club.
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“This is ours,” Church tells Rolling Stone. “It’s not something that I’m renting or leasing until the next artist comes along, then when that artist falls out of favor, all you do is change the sign out and it goes to the next one.” He says he asked developer Ben Weprin, with whom he purchased the building, why he couldn’t be the artist who builds his own bar exactly the way he wants it, free from the influence of a landlord. “Don’t let somebody else dictate that, based on the real estate or on how much money they can save on a renovation,” Church says, “because then you lose the ability to actually handcraft it.”
Church and his manager John Peets have rendezvoused on this February afternoon at Peets’ East Nashville offices to lay out, via a PowerPoint presentation, their ambitious idea to make Chief’s both a physical and virtual mecca for Eric Church fans. It’s a complex plan not all that dissimilar from a military campaign, one that requires a little imagination, a lot of explaining, and an unwavering faith in the United States Postal Service.
Since last week, fans have been speculating about the meaning of a countdown clock on Church’s website. On Wednesday, they have their answer. Right around now, premium members of the Church Choir fan club — around 40,000 in all — should each be receiving an envelope in their mailboxes containing an individual deed to Chief’s. It’s not just a keepsake piece of paper but a deed to a specific brick in the building, identified by a unique code. When fans enter the code into the Eric Church website, they can see exactly where their brick is located on the building and begin to immerse themselves in what Church and Peets hope will be a game-changing fan community. Current premium members of the Church Choir fan club can enter the virtual Chief’s with their digital “Founder’s Brick.” Fans who joined the Choir after Feb. 29 will receive a “Member’s Brick.” (Premium membership to the Church Choir fan club is $49 a year.)
“There’s the physical space and then the community that’s online, and the blending of this is really a mind-bender,” Peets says. “Most fan clubs are omnidirectional. People join them so they can get tickets early or a chance to meet the artist, and then the artist is in turn selling them T shirts. [Chief’s] is meant to get a community that’s working sideways with each other, that can do things with each other and really learn about each other.”
Digital tokens are key to the community-building, according to Peets. When members enter the Chief’s metaverse, they’ll immediately receive a 2024 membership badge that is redeemable for a variety of prizes, many of them tangible. There are unreleased demos of Church’s songs, copies of his albums on vinyl (some will receive vinyl copies for life of every album Church has and will release during his career), subscriptions to SiriusXM, video guitar lessons from Church band guitarist Driver Williams, and a signed guitar played by Church on his Outsiders tour. Brick holders can meet the “owners” of the bricks around theirs, connect in real life at concerts, or trade and barter for collectibles virtually.
“It’s not the value of the digital collectible,” Church says, “but what’s coming with that.”
“No one’s really used this blockchain technology in this way, where you’re kind of blending reality, not just selling clown art or something,” says Peets, who adds that the company that creates the digital collectibles is “completely carbon-neutral.”
The virtual world also acts as a database for Church’s tours. A feature that’s similar to setlist.fm assembles all the concerts that Church has performed and allows fans to check into ones they’ve attended, see the set list, and view each show’s unique tour poster.
Church is seeing this component for the first time when we meet, and his eyes light up — he’s left his signature sunglasses at home — as Peets details how the number of shows a fan has attended will be displayed on their member profiles.
“That’s some natural show-shaming. I love it,” Church says. “‘What, you’ve only been to 25?’”
To leverage Church’s growing portfolio — he has a whiskey, his own SiriusXM channel, and recently purchased Field & Stream magazine with Morgan Wallen — the digital collectibles will constantly be expanding, giving fans the chance to own more goodies. Peets even considered a hypothetical idea to share song royalties with fan club members through the blockchain. “The record label’s gonna love that,” Church deadpans.
“But the point is the fans have to take over,” Peets says. “It’s unending on how you can empower a group of people to put your career on their backs.”
Or build a career “brick by brick,” as Church said in a video message to fans on Wednesday morning to officially announce the deeds campaign.
“Believe me, this is not just another club downtown. This is our house,” he said. “You’ve helped me build my career, brick by brick, and I want the whole world to know the building is yours.”
Most fans likely won’t care much about the technology that powers the digital bricks; they’ll just want to say they own a small piece of Chief’s. This isn’t the first time that Church has used his fan club to announce unexpected career pivots. In 2015, he released his fifth album, Mr. Misunderstood, by surprise-mailing a copy to each member of the Church Choir.
He says the deeds to Chief’s are in line with that gambit. “This parallels a lot to Mr. Misunderstood,” Church says. “We’re giving them ownership.”
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