Eric Church to Release Triple Album, “Heart & Soul”

photo: Reid Long

Always looking to shake things up and steal the attention of the music listening public, Eric Church’s next release will be three records instead of one, titled Heart & Soul. Heart will be made available on April 16th, Soul will be released on April 23rd, and ‘&’ will only be available as a vinyl record to members of his fan club on Tuesday, April 20th.

“I have three albums coming out in April,” Eric Church said in an address to his fan club called The Church Choir. “They came out of my 28 days in the mountains of North Carolina, where the songs were recorded and written. The collection is entitled Heart-&-Soul … the middle record ‘&’ was made for and only available to you. It’s been a long 10 months. With the power of music, and a love for each other, we will get through this. We will gather again soon.”

Along with Church co-writing all but two of the songs, the songwriters to be featured on the three records represent a close knit group of cohorts, likely due to the isolated nature of the writing and recording sessions. Casey Beathard, Jeff Hyde, and Jeffrey Steele walk away with numerous co-writes, while there are no guests spots like on some other Eric Church records, at least from what we can glean from the track list (see below).

Even though it’s three records, it’s only 24 tracks, with the two main acts coming in with 9 songs, and the middle exclusive fan club portion with 6 songs. Even though the one record is only being made available physically to his club members (a play to drive subscriber numbers, for sure), two of the songs—“Through My Ray-Bans” and “Doing Life with Me”—have already been released as digital singles. That is two of the six pre-release singles so far, including radio singles, “Stick That In Your Country Song,” and the current single “Hell of a View.”

Though not nearly the 30-track juggernaut just released by Morgan Wallen called Dangerous, this triple threat by Church is likely a harbinger of things to come as artists extend the size of projects and release deluxe editions to increase streams and chart placement with mammoth releases meant to bust through to busy ears.

No word as of yet on a specific direction or theme of the album(s), but the rhetoric around them and the early singles seems to hint Church may try to keep it a bit more positive than some previous releases. According to Church, he would write songs in the morning, and then record them later that night. Once again the set is produced by Jay Joyce, and features Eric Church’s touring band, including vocalist Joanna Cotten.

Pre-orders start Friday, January 29th.

Heart Track List

1. Heart On Fire (Eric Church)
2. Heart Of The Night (Eric Church, Jeremy Spillman, Jeff Hyde, Ryan Tyndell, Travis Hill)
3. Russian Roulette (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Monty Criswell)
4. People Break (Eric Church, Luke Laird)
5. Stick That In Your Country Song (Davis Naish, Jeffrey Steele)
6. Never Break Heart (Eric Church, Luke Dick)
7. Crazyland (Eric Church, Luke Laird, Michael Heeney)
8. Bunch Of Nothing (Eric Church, Jeff Hyde)
9. Love Shine Down (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Jeffrey Steele)

& Track List

1. Through My Ray-Bans (Eric Church, Luke Laird, Barry Dean)
2. Doing Life With Me (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Jeffrey Steele)
3. Do Side (Eric Church, Casey Beathard)
4. Kiss Her Goodbye (Eric Church, Casey Beathard)
5. Mad Man (Eric Church, Casey Beathard)
6. Lone Wolf (Eric Church, Jeff Hyde, Ryan Tyndell)

Soul Track List

1. Rock & Roll Found Me (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Driver Williams)
2. Look Good And You Know It (Eric Church, Jonathan Singleton, Travis Meadows)
3. Bright Side Girl (Eric Church, Jeff Hyde, Scotty Emerick, Clint Daniels)
4. Break It Kind Of Guy (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Luke Dick)
5. Hell Of A View (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Monty Criswell)
6. Where I Wanna Be (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Jeremy Spillman, Ryan Tyndell)
7. Jenny (Eric Church)
8. Bad Mother Trucker (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Luke Dick, Jeremy Spillman)
9. Lynyrd Skynyrd Jones (Casey Beathard)

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