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.
Eric church the outsiders full#
In those earlier times, Eric saw something in the crowd that struck a chord. The title tune is a raging outlaw anthem full of stadium-sized hard-rock riffs, but its followed by the sparsely produced, intensely inward-looking ballad 'A Man Who Was Gonna Die Young.' Church manages to maintain the dynamic tension between these two poles throughout the album 'A Cold One' and 'Thats Damn Rock. When it came to the roll out of Eric Church’s The Outsiders eight months later, almost the same exact video concept was employed to promote the album, with vague, ambiguous plot lines to create intrigue and hint to a larger narrative, which would eventually resolve once all the videos and the album were released. 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. The Outsiders (2014) If there were 10 stars that would be my choice. Always a little different, but still him. 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! Desperate Man (2018) Eric Church is as dependable as the sun, he always brings some good sound and lyrics in each album.
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. 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. 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. New version includes bonus tracks and new packaging