Eric Church brings a whole lot of roots rock to the ACM Awards this weekend with his live debut of the new song "Bunch of Nothing."
On "Bunch of Nothing," a three-and-a-half-minute foot-stompin' jangler, Eric Church plays rough-around-the-edges narrator on who "how to kick Saturday in the**."
The back porch jam finds Eric Church's character singing about how he knows "every hole in the Clinch River/ And I know how to find them bass/ I know how to tune a six-string Martin ..."
ACM Awards 2021:Who's performing? Here's a list of artists and songs
But, when it comes to patching a broken heart, he tells listeners: "I know you want your sunshine back/ I know a whole lotta ‘bout a lil’ somethin’, somethin’/ And a whole bunch of nothing about that."
At the ACM Awards in Nashville, he joins a list of anticipated performances from Dierks Bentley with The War and Treaty, Miranda Lambert and Elle King, Kenny Chesney, and Kelsea Ballerini, Chris Stapleton, and more than a dozen others.
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Eric Church co-wrote the song with Jeff Hyde for his triple album project "Heart & Soul." Eric Church released the first installment, "Heart," last Friday. A second chapter, "&," drops Wednesday for his fan club. "Soul," the final installment, hits stores and streaming services on April 23.
Last winter, prior to COVID-19 shutdowns, Eric Church decamped to small-town Banner Elk, North Carolina, to write and record the 24-song "Heart & Soul" in 28 days. He set up shop in an empty restaurant, enlisting tenured bandmates, longtime producer Jay Joyce and a rotating cast of Nashville collaborators.
He approached the makeshift North Carolina sessions at a "manic" pace, Eric Church told The Tennessean earlier this year. For four weeks, he would wake up, write, record a song, and repeat.
"The best way [reevaluation has] ever worked for me in my career is to get as uncomfortable as you can get," Eric Church said, adding: "I think the entire thing was everything I had to give. There's nothing else — internally — by the time we got to the end of this thing. I was spent. I was like a wrung-out dishrag.
"That's where 'Heart & Soul' came from. That was everything we had."
Eric Church competes Sunday for Entertainer of the Year, top ACM Awards prize.
The ACM Awards air Sunday at 7 p.m. on CBS and Paramount+.
