Eric Church is in awe of Marcus King. While on his Free the Machine Tour, Church teamed up with King to perform an incredible cover of The Beatles’ 1968 track “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
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During a tour stop in Kentucky, Church invited King, his opening act, onstage with him to perform the cover. King didn’t let the moment go to waste, wowing with his incredible guitar skills throughout the performance.
Church took notice of King’s talent. In fan videos from the show, the headliner clapped with his mouth agape as he watched King shred.
Eric Church’s Latest Tour
Church’s tour kicked off earlier this month in Pittsburgh. Dates are scheduled all the way through April 2026. Throughout the run, Church will host openers Charles Wesley Godwin, Caylee Hammack, Ella Langley, 49 Winchester, Stephen Wilson Jr., Kashus Culpepper, and Ashley McBryde.
In an interview with Variety, Church shared what fans can expect from the tour. The singer noted that he conceptualized the shows based off of his three shows at Colorado’s Red Rocks.
“Everything we do every stop on the tour is gonna be within the scope of those three nights,” he explained. “So the first night at Red Rocks, we’re gonna do an orchestra, big band kind of thing. Night two, we’re gonna do old-school band, the OG group. And then night three is me acoustic.”
As such, the typical show on the Free the Machine Tour, he said, “will end up being in some way the three Red Rocks shows combined into one.”
“I like going big to small,” Church said. “I like seeing that throughout the course of a show. So it has a theme. It has a thing. And I think the fans will like that, where they understand the program and kind of where we’re heading.”
The run of shows is in support of Church’s latest album, Evangeline vs. the Machine, which was released in May.
“This was really about a dichotomy between creativity and the machine that that creativity has to live and breathe in,” Church told the outlet while discussing the title of his LP. “I’ve seen, as I’ve gotten older, that it becomes harder and harder to be able to embrace what that creative spirit is, against something—against a world, really—that is disposable.”
Photo by Rosalind O’Connor/NBC via Getty Images
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