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Eric Church delivered a reflective new ballad on Thursday (September 10).
The country star, 49, wrote “On The Road” as a tribute to his decades-long career as a touring artist. The Jay Joyce-produced ballad “traces the winding path of Church’s career through the memories that stay with him: playing to 50,000 people beneath the Northern Lights, taking the stage at Colorado’s iconic Red Rocks and sharing the stage with artists who helped define the music he came to make, including Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson and George Strait,” according to a press release issued Thursday morning. In his lyrics, Church pays tribute to the legends who paved the way for him, and nodded to the next generation of artists on the horizon.
The release also points out Church’s poignant lyrics to acknowledge “moments no artist could ever anticipate,” including the North Carolina-born artist’s reflection of the tragedy at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada. “Set alongside memories of career-defining stages and once-in-a-lifetime moments, the lines acknowledge the full weight of a life spent on the road.”
“There’s something about a life on the road where the miles start to blur together, yet the people and the moments never do,” Church said in a statement. “Those are the things you carry with you. You realize how much of who you are was shaped somewhere between one town and the next, and maybe that’s why you never really stop wondering what’s waiting down the road.”
Listen to “On The Road” here: