Another came on Nov. 11, 2020, the night Church won entertainer of the year at the Country Music Association Awards after coming up short three previous times. He and Peets both saw the win as a directive to lead the best way Church knew how: by setting an example for a sensible return to touring. “I feel some responsibility now,” says Church. As Peets adds: “You’re going to wear the sash for a year, you’re the leading entertainer. Maybe there are some things that we do a little differently because of that. That kind of led into helping forge a responsible way to come back to work.”
Plenty of artists say they live for the road, but for Church it’s not hyperbole. He calls playing his high-octane, three-hour-plus concerts his “whole gig.” Today, the 43-year-old is speaking over Zoom from the wood-paneled writer’s cabin he has used as an office for the past year, 20 minutes from the Nashville home he shares with wife Katherine and sons Boone, 9, and Hawk, 6. “I make music. I play music. I’m a dad and a husband,” he says. “I like that part of my life.”
He has never made a morning TV appearance, and he last played late night in 2016. He’s an admitted social media Luddite. (“I have no passwords.”) And though he has sold over 8 million albums, it’s his Billboard Boxscore stats that really tell his story: He has raked in $204.4 million and sold over 3.74 million tickets since 2012, and his 2019 Double Down tour — Billboard’s highest-grossing country outing of that year — drew 56,521 people to Nashville’s Nissan Stadium, breaking Swift’s attendance record there.
Returning to that level of touring is easier said than done. Peets estimates that, in the (hopefully) waning days of the pandemic, it’s still at least five times the usual work to figure out how a tour could work. Even the most basic tasks — ticketing, staffing, meet-and-greets, load-in and load-out — require deep reexamination, and there’s no national standard: Counties and venues will, at least at first, each have their own safety protocols based on local vaccination rates.
But Church’s team has some ground rules in place. If new protocols incur extra expense, Peets says they hope “to try and keep as much as possible off the consumer and absorb the additional costs on our side.” Since it’s not yet clear if ticket buyers will be required to show proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test upon venue entry, Peets says tickets will go on sale much closer to show dates (likely around six weeks beforehand) instead of the usual several months prior.
Messina Touring Group CEO Louis Messina, who has been promoting Church’s tours for nearly a decade, has spent the last few months working with Church’s WME agent, Jay Williams, and venues, weaving and reweaving potential tour routings and start dates as buildings open and move toward operating at capacity. “We have planted our flag in the sand, but it’s not in concrete,” says Messina. The ground beneath them shifts almost daily.
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