Eric Church Was ‘Desperate’ for Inspiration on New Album: “I Was a Little Lost for a While”
Deeply affected by the Route 91 Festival shooting, Eric Church had a hard time getting in the right mindset to write for his new album.
Music has the power to heal, and Eric Church found himself looking looking for exactly that when it came time to write his new album, Desperate Man. Unequivocally affected by the events that took place on the final night of the Route 91 Harvest Festival in October 2017–a festival he’d headlined just days prior–Church found himself overcome by emotions surrounding the deadly shooting and unable to write.
“I was a little lost for a while. I think, like a lot of people, I was in a little bit of a funk after something like that,” he shared during a chat with Rolling Stone Country. “I was still a little burned out. A little bit going through the motions. I think that’s part of what happened when I first went into the studio, is I still wasn’t quite ready to get there.”
Finding it hard to get into the right mindset, Church called upon singer/songwriter Ray Wylie Hubbard to help. The session inspired the North Carolina native to complete his first studio release since 2015’s Mr. Misunderstood.
“That’s where ‘Desperate Man’ kind of came from,” he recalled. “I wrote that in the studio. I got a little bit desperate in there to just find an album, because it was not fu–ing happening.”
Hubbard was the perfect co-writer, thanks to a deep empathy for the singer’s state.
“eric said lets write about a desperate man. i said i once was so desperate i went to a fortune teller to get my future read and she said i didn’t have one. he smiled, laid down a groove and we rode it to town..” tweeted Hubbard.
The song is the lead single and title track from Church’s upcoming record, set for release on October 5.
