Eric Church Finds His Faith Restored With Success of ‘Chief’

Eric Church scored his first No. 1 album last week with his third CD, 'Chief.' Taking the top spot on both the Top Country Albums and the all-genre Billboard 200 chart was a pleasant surprise and gave the North Carolina native a renewed hope in the business he loves.

"People were looking at Kelly Rowland's numbers," Eric tells Billboard. "All of a sudden, we blow by everybody and people are asking, 'Who the hell is Eric Church, and how did he sell this many records without No. 1 songs?' I don't tweet. I'm not a Facebook guy. I don't do any of those things. To have this kind of success the first week, it's about the music. It's really restoring my faith."

In an era where artists spend weeks doing promotional TV appearances and utilizing every form of social network media to hype up a new album before its release date, the 34-year-old stayed out of the limelight, and chose to let the music speak for itself. It was a risky move that clearly paid off.

"Word-of-mouth has to be the reason," Eric offers as an explanation for selling almost 145,000 copies of the CD the first week. "There's no other way. In no other category do we stack up to do the kind of numbers we did this week based on past sales, based on past radio success, based on anything. It has to be the fans who took the reins and said, 'We're going to be the one to carry the flag for him. We're going to be the ones that are ambassadors for letting everybody else know about this music.'"

The brazen singer-songwriter fiercely defends his own musical style, even though it is a sharp contrast to what many of his fellow artists play. "I don't use steel guitars, fiddles and stuff other people may have in country music," he notes. "We're a little more progressive with the sound, but at the same time [album track] 'I'm Getting Stoned' can't get more country. We just gave it a little twist."

The soon-to-be dad says he was also meticulous in crafting not just each song but also the way in which they meld together on 'Chief.' "I don't know if other people think about it, but I'm obsessed with the order of the songs," he tells The Boot. "I think about the space between songs, because sometimes, it's a big rockin' song and the next one's a ballad, and you don't want to go right to it. You want to breathe a minute, then go to it. So I look at the spacing between them. You can get real anal and look, you'll see there are different spaces between the songs on the album. A lot of albums these days are uniform, ours aren't. We actually make them longer or shorter, depending on the songs."

Eric's first single, 'Homeboy,' from 'Chief,' is in the Top 15 and climbing. He is currently serving as opening act for Toby Keith on his Locked & Loaded tour. Keep track of his concert schedule here.