Sometimes, we can’t recognize a musical moment for the critical milestone it is until we receive the gift of hindsight years later, and that’s precisely what Eric Church thinks was happening during his divisive Stagecoach set in 2024. Church headlined the festival along with Morgan Wallen and Miranda Lambert, promising a weekend full of country hits and good times…or so the California crowd thought.
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When the time came for Church to take the stage, he took a reverent-over-rowdy approach that confused some onlookers and enraptured others. Nearly one year to the day of his controversial and cover-heavy set, Church reflected on (and defended) his performance.
Eric Church Tried (and Succeeded) To Do Something Different
Festival-goers typically expect a weekend headlining spot by a popular artist to be full of the musician’s biggest hits. It’s a chance to let loose, party, and sing along to your favorite tracks with thousands and thousands of other people. But Eric Church had something different in mind for his 2024 Stagecoach set. As he explained to the Los Angeles Times in May 2025, he had already played the West Coast country festival several times by that point. So, he was incredibly aware that the set he was working on wasn’t going to fit the vibe of the event.
“I kind of knew going in [that] this is probably not the place for this show,” he admitted. “You know there’s gonna be 30,000 TikTokers out there on people’s shoulders trying to take pictures of themselves. But I did it because it was the biggest megaphone, and it would get the biggest reaction.”
Church used that massive megaphone to deliver a set that ranged from secular to sacred, with covers like Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice,” Al Green’s “Take Me to the River,” and traditional hymns like “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and “This Little Light of Mine.” Los Angeles Times reporter Mikael Wood recalled one audience member shouting nearby, “This is Friday night, not Sunday morning!” Simply put, not everyone in the crowd loved it. But Church was okay with that.
The Country Singer Compared His Stagecoach Set To A Different Festival Decades Earlier
Eric Church knew going into his 2024 Stagecoach performance that he was about to deliver something the audience wasn’t expecting. “What I hope fans understand,” he told the Los Angeles Times, “is that it would have been easy for me to do what a lot of artists do and take too much money to come play the hits, then get back on the plane and go home. But I actually thought, I respect this festival enough that I’m gonna work my ass off for a month. I didn’t just the day before go, ‘Let’s do this.’ I know the effort that went into it. And what we gave you, good or bad, was a show you’re never gonna see again.”
Church compared the moment to when Bob Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival. The now-historic moment marked a turning point not only in Dylan’s career but in the direction popular music was going altogether. “But in the moment,” Church said, “that didn’t go well for Dylan. He was booed. People threw s***. But now, that’s a paradigm shift, right? You and I are going, ‘F***, I wish I was there.’ Ten years from now, people are gonna go, ‘I was at that Stagecoach show, and I stayed ‘til the end.’”
Photo by Suzanne Cordeiro/Shutterstock
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