Eric Church’s To Beat the Devil residency at his Nashville bar, Chief’s, has redefined what fans can expect from a live country music experience. More than just a concert, the show is an immersive journey into Church’s songwriting soul—set in an intimate, theatre-style space built on the second floor of the bar he designed himself. With no setlist and a stripped-back stage setup, each night unfolds like a storytelling session, where Church candidly explores the inspirations, struggles and spiritual threads behind his songs. The residency has earned a reputation for its raw authenticity, unpredictability, and the rare feeling that the audience is witnessing something personal and unrehearsed—something made just for them.
Now, for the first time ever, Church is bringing this singular experience overseas, debuting To Beat the Devil in London. The anticipation was high, not just because it’s his first time performing the show outside the U.S., but because it represents a bold cultural export—an artist inviting fans abroad into the same sacred, stripped-down space he created on Broadway in Nashville. While the venue may change, the essence of the residency—its vulnerability, grit, and spiritual introspection—resonated just as powerfully across the Atlantic as it did in Nashville when we first saw the show last year during CMA Fest.
Performing alone with his guitar, Church creates a living room-like atmosphere, allowing for candid storytelling and the debut of unreleased songs. He addresses significant personal events, such as his near-fatal blood clot, the tragic Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting and the loss of his brother in 2018. These narratives provide context to his music, offering fans a deeper understanding of the inspirations behind his songs. The performance space Church has created within his bar, Chief's, in Nashville is a perfect setting to host such an intimate show but walking on stage to a standing ovation at the Royal Albert Hall in London must be a close second for Church in the journey of this project.
“Welcome to the Royal Albert Hall,” Church said as a way on an introduction, “I'll tell you some things and play you some songs that will never be heard outside this room.” And he wasn't lying. The first half of the show is very new song heavy: songs written specifically for this project. Opening with a wonderful, sentimental tribute to Broadway, its music and its history, Church set the scene for the storytelling journey to come. He cleverly swapped out the reference to Broadway in the song's climax and inserted a shout out to the Royal Albert Hall, which elicited a huge cheer from the crowd.
“I'm gonna take you back in time to the year 2000,” Church promised, “back to my hometown of Granite Falls, North Carolina…….. and I was the shit!' he chuckled before weaving a spellbinding tale of a small town boy with big town dreams that didn't work out at first as we find our hero down on his uppers with the other ‘derelicts' (as he calls them) in bars on the infamous Printers Alley in Nashville. A chance meeting with a legendary songwriter one night is the pivotal moment in both Eric Church's career and the journey of this show as we get two of its most impactful songs from it. A touching tribute to the advice of Michael Heeney, the songwriter in question who went on to co-write such early Church classics as ‘These Boots' and ‘The Hard Way,' and the wonderfully nostalgic nod to ‘the boys who make the noise down on 16th Avenue.' Church wrote these songs specifically to advance the narrative of this unique and mesmerising show and they stand toe-to-toe with anything he has recorded throughout his career.
As the show advances sequentially through Church's career we start to hear familiar snippets of much-loved songs, especially after Church is signed to a publishing deal with Sony after a disastrous meeting with “Ron” from BMG who doesn't like ‘How ‘Bout You,' ‘Two Pink Lines,' Pledge Allegiance to the Hag' or ‘Sinners Like Me' – we get to hear verses and chorus of all of them, re-enforcing just what a missed opportunity not signing this talented musician was for that particular record label!
It was ‘Lightning' that saved Eric Church's career and that's the first song we got to hear played in full. Elsewhere in the show Church played such classics as ‘Country Music Jesus,' Springsteen,' Record Year' and ‘Cold One' (which he forgot the words to and decided to abandon, not that anyone minded, it was a brief glimpse of frailty and only served to humanise and ground him as being just a ‘normal person.')
Anecdotes about his brother were sweet and touching and, having seen this show at Chief's during CMA Fest last year, served as a reminder for the gut-punch that I knew was coming. There were stories about failed jobs, drinking, drugs and a depiction of a rawer, looser Nashville back in the 00s that, much like Ernest Tubbs' famous record store, has since been swept aside as the town commercialised beyond all recognition to those who frequented it's dive bars and haunts twenty five years ago. The story about how Church got fired from the Rascal Flatts tour was toned down a little from it's original incarnation with Church being very mindful of the fact that this was the first time he was telling these stories in a public setting with phones in attendance and Instagram, Youtube and TikTok just a matter of a few clicks away.
The show built to a thunderous climax, much like any book, film or piece of art that has been designed to stir your emotions and move you and I won't spoil that denouement here. Needless to say it's very in-keeping with the rest of what comes before it – touching, raw, honest and handled with a mesmeric delivery from the man on stage.
‘To Beat the Devil,' and you will find out along the way why the show has been given that title, is a unique and creatively ambitious project that brings both Eric Church's career and the man himself alive. You laugh, gasp, feel and even, dare I say it, cry, along with a musician who hitherto has had somewhat of a punkish and stand-offish attitude – to share two hours in the presence of Eric Church whilst he opens up his life's stories with you in such an honest and authentic way is a privilege that should not be played down or underestimated. He'll probably never do something like this ever again and he remains one of only a handful of musicians working in the Country music space with the chops, guts and charisma to pull off a show of this magnitude – it takes some guts to walk out on a stage with nothing between you and the audience but a handful of guitars and it also takes some skill to be able to hold that audience in the palm of your hand, which is what Eric Church did in London last night.
Some timing issues and a late start meant that some people had to leave before the end of the show as it crept past 11pm and last buses and last trains beckoned but that niggle aside this was a once-in-a-lifetime (or twice for me!) opportunity to see one of Nashville's most creatively ambitious musicians telling stories and singing songs with his heart entirely on his sleeve. You could list superlatives that might describe the show till you are blue in the face – powerful, emotional, funny, impactful, mesmerising – take your pick. One thing is for sure, though, London is now a fully-fledged part of the ‘To Beat the Devil' journey.
Through personal storytelling, acoustic performances of much-loved classics and ‘never to be heard again' originals PLUS a thoughtfully chosen venue full of its own history and stories, Eric Church provided his British fans with an unforgettable window into the moments that have shaped his life and music. There has never been a show like it in Country music before so what a privilege it was to have been part of the journey.
