Eric Church’s public service makes him ideal for Commencement
Adam Lucas of GoHeels writes about the country star’s love for the Tar Heels and his incredible Helene recovery efforts.
Eric Church has been all over the world. He’s played the biggest stages in music. He’s hosted the largest concert in North Carolina’s history. He’s one of three country artists ever to play multiple nights at London’s legendary Royal Albert Hall. He packed three shows at Denver’s famed Red Rocks this summer.
And through all the sold-out concerts and awards and overnight bus rides, his heart has never left the state of North Carolina.
The most recent recipient of the Academy of Country Music Icon award grew up in Granite Falls as a Tar Heel. He watched the game of the week on Raycom on Saturday afternoon. He can still recite the starting lineup of the 1986-87 men’s basketball team and recap all the agonizing moments of that team’s loss to Syracuse in the regional final.
We all knew a fan like Eric Church growing up. Maybe we even were that fan.
His broad love of Carolina is well known. He made the well-documented decision to cancel a concert the night of the 2022 Final Four matchup against Duke. It’s a choice he doesn’t regret, because that night he sat in the Superdome with his sons and watched the Tar Heels dispatch Mike Krzyzewski. As he sings in his song “Talladega,” “Most days in life don’t stand out, but life’s about those days that will.”
But he doesn’t just show up at the once-in-a-lifetime games. In the last 18 months, he’s made trips to watch Carolina in person at the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, the First Four in Dayton, Ohio, and the football season opener at Kenan Stadium.
That Tar Heel fan he was as a kid has never left him. He’s taken fines for going on stage late so he could catch the end of Carolina sporting events.
He now owns a bar on Broadway in Nashville called Chief’s. That building hosted a series of successful residency shows in which he showcased a storytelling ability that will be integral to what promises to be an incredible Commencement speech. His private green room at the venue includes music memorabilia, artifacts from his career — and a signed, framed Carolina jersey from former basketball player J.R. Reid.
But there are lots of big Carolina fans who don’t get the call to speak at Commencement. Naming the current Tar Heel football two-deep doesn’t earn that plum assignment (but he could do it if you asked).
Nor, truthfully, does writing dozens of songs that have become part of the lives of millions of fans who couldn’t care less about anyone in an argyle jersey. Go to one Eric Church live show and you will meet people who have his lyrics tattooed on their body parts, who line up hours before doors open just to have the chance to get a little closer to the stage to hear him sing and who know every word of every song from every album.
You will meet people who cry when they talk about how his songs got them through the death of a loved one or provided the soundtrack to their military service overseas or have bonded generations of their family. Music has been the way he’s written through his own achievements and tragedies and memories, and he’s helped countless others do the same.
It’s an extreme honor that fans make him such an integral part of their lives. It enables him to fill arenas on his current “Free the Machine” tour and sell albums. But that’s not why he’ll stand in front of a Spring Commencement crowd on May 9 at Kenan Stadium.
In the last 12 months, he’s found the ultimate purpose for all his success. When Hurricane Helene hit his beloved western North Carolina, he immediately jumped into relief efforts with his time and his money. He still spends a significant portion of the year in Banner Elk, North Carolina, and he was getting real-time reports from friends and neighbors whose lives had been devastated.
He signed over the royalties from his song “Darkest Hour,” which he’d recorded just a month earlier. All profits from that song in perpetuity go to relief efforts.
But he wanted to do something more impactful for the people of North Carolina, for his people. In addition to co-hosting the Concert for Carolina, which raised $24.5 million for relief efforts, he made an even bigger commitment. Through his Chief Cares organization, he purchased $850,000 worth of land in Avery County and began constructing homes for those displaced by the storm.
The first new residents are moving into those homes this fall, and the neighborhoods will ultimately house 45 families. It’s his way of trying to ensure that one of the greatest assets in western North Carolina — the people who provide its spirit and sense of community — don’t have to leave. For his efforts, Time put Church on its Philanthropy 100 list for 2025.
“Ask any songwriter, any artist, ‘What do you want to do with your music?’” he says. “Most every answer will be some version of ‘make a difference.’ I believe we are doing that in western North Carolina. It’s taken a village and the hand of God. And it’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done. Music is the reason that we were in the right spot at a devastating time. I’m humbled by that.”
Music is the reason he has a platform. What he did with that platform is why he’ll stand on the stage at Spring Commencement.
