This is my favorite project for that reason, because I've never really put it all out there like we've done on this one.”

And let's commit everything we have to that moment, to that song, and let it be. “Let's write the song that day,” he says, thinking back to their first conversations about Heart & Soul. We have to mess this up.'” It was then that he and his producer, Jay Joyce, decided to follow that instinct. If it's not broke-' And I stopped him, I said, 'You break it. “I remember having a conversation with my bass player, and I said, ‘Listen, I'm going to bring in some different players on this album,’” he recalls. But there's so much time that the magic just starts to die away.” That isn't what happened with Heart & Soul, a trio of new albums Church wrote and recorded with his band and team of co-writers over the course of a single month at a shuttered-for-the-season restaurant in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains. And six months later, we figure out if we're going to go into a studio and cut that song. “And what normally happens, at least in Nashville, is a song is born, and we write the song, and we go home and we make a demo. The second official single for “Heart and Soul” is titled “ Hell of a View“.“I've always believed that the moment a song is born is the most important moment of that song's life,” Eric Church tells Apple Music. The album’s first official single, “ Stick That in Your Country Song” was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Country Solo Performance following its 2020 release. The final part, “Soul” had Beathard alongside most of the aforementioned writers collaborating on lyrics. “&”, the part-two of the album, also employed Beathard and some of the names above. Some of them include Travis Hill, Jeff Hyde, Jeremy Spillman, Ryan Tyndell, Casey Beathard and Monty Criswell. For the other eight tracks in “Heart”, Church received assistance from a bunch of other writers. As a composer, Church had a few more lyricists on his team helping in the whole writing process of the album’s 24 tracks.Ĭhurch solely wrote the first track Heart on Fire for Heart and Jenny for Soul. The recording was done with a 28-day period inside a shuttered restaurant-turned studio on the North Carolina Mountains. The unlikely circumstances under which Church composed this music added more weight to the content of the album. “Soul”, another 9-track set released on 23 rd April 2021.“&”, a 6-track vinyl record released exclusively to his fans on April 20 th 2021.“Heart”, a 9-track set issued on April 16 th, 2021.While the entire release was done by EMI Nashville, the musician decided to divide it into three separate parts namely: And in that latter regard, the wording of the song is based heavily on a motif honoring Lynyrd Skynyrd, a band whose heyday was during the 1960s.Įric Church’s seventh studio album titled, “Heart & Soul” is a triptych. The lyrics are put together like a comprehensive short story centered around the biracial and musically-inspired Jones. So the story concludes as it began, with Lynyrd Skynyrd Jones’s parents. His mother, who of course played a major advisory role on his life, eventually passes away. And lo and behold, at the funeral there is a ‘Black man dressed in all black’ who identifies himself as his dad.Īnd that’s just about it as far as “Lynyrd Skynyrd Jones” is concerned.

And the theory which Eric Church is putting forth is that Jones inherited the spirit of Lynyrd Skynyrd, so to speak, due to his mom being a true fan of the band. Indeed he naturally proved to be a talented guitarist. Meanwhile Jones himself grew up depressed, alienated “and confused” due to his biracial background. That is until he discovered a love of playing music, at the age of 13, after buying a guitar from a pawn shop.

Lynyrd skynyrd jones eric church