A new Eric Church song, AND it’s all going to a good cause?
It’s been a long time since we got new music from Church. His last solo release came with his three part Heart & Soul album back in 2021. And with everything else he’s had going on, like his new Nashville bar Chief’s, his whiskey brand Whiskey JYPSI, and his recent purchase of Field & Stream, we haven’t heard much about new music from Chief lately.
But Church has always been one to do things his way, so he just dropped a surprise song on us.
The surprise release is a soulful new song called “Darkest Hour,” and it’s a timely one to release for the North Carolina native as so many in his state are suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene:
“In your darkest hour
Baby I’d come runnin’
In your darkest hour
I’d light your way
Baby don’t give up
I’ll do everything in my power
To take even a minute off your darkest hour”
And that’s not all: Church is signing away all of his rights and royalties to the song to the people of North Carolina to help provide relief for those affected by the storm.
As Church explained in a message to his fan club, the Church Choir, that doesn’t mean he’s just donating the royalties:
“Not only for now, but forever. It’s no longer mine. It’ll be theirs. All the proceeds, all the money, all the future money.”
It turns out that Church wasn’t planning on releasing the song just yet, but he says that he was in the studio working on a project for next year and had just finished this one up when the hurricane hit, so he knew he had to get it out as soon as possible:
“I’ve been in the studio for a while, trying some different things and exploring creativity. I had this song that I’d written, and the line that struck me in light of the recent devastation was ‘I’ll come running,’ because there are a lot of people out there right now who are in their darkest hour and they need people to come running.
We were going to wait to release music until next year, but it just didn’t feel right to wait with this song. Sometimes you give songs their moment and sometimes they find their own moment.”
The song also gives us a peak of what we can expect from this next project, featuring both a choir and an orchestra backing his vocals.
Of course as great as it is to have new music from Church, it’s even better that it’s helping out those in need.