Eric Church Fans Spread the Love

Eric Church says the concert bill he's sharing with Jason Aldean gets both sets of fans plenty fired up. His loyal fans make sure that Jason's fans check out Eric's music -- whether they want to or not.

"We were in Lubbock, Texas," Eric tells The Boot. "We haven't played Texas a lot. It was real neat to watch our fans [interact] with some of the fans that hadn't been exposed to us. It's funny to watch my fans take things personally and personally be responsible for all the fans enjoying the show. You see these mini-fights. If a fan is sitting down or not paying attention, you'll see one of my fans jerk them up by the collar and say, 'Love it!' They feel so passionately about our music. They say 'This is my guy and my music.'"

Eric says he's content letting other artists' fans discover his music at their own pace, but his fan base won't have any of that. Perhaps that's not surprising when you consider that Eric's fans aggressively voiced their dismay that he was slated to play acoustic sets on the Outlaw stage at last year's Country Throwdown. The fans were so vocal -- even during other artists' sets -- that Eric was invited to fire up his electric guitars and move to the main stage.

"Now we're just ripping people's faces off," Eric told The Boot at the time.

When Eric teams up on tour with Toby Keith this summer, he expects the shows to become even more intense. In talking about about the 2009 incident when Toby climbed into the stands of an arena and confronted a belligerent fan, Eric says he expects the fans will be rowdy but respectful.

"I don't know," says Eric with a laugh. "If the crowd don't fight, we may fight the crowd."

Eric is on tour for much of this year. His next scheduled concert is with Jason on February 24 in Florence, S.C. For more information on his upcoming shows, click here.

Watch Eric's 'Smoke a Little Smoke' Video