Eric Church Shares Importance Of His Hurricane Helene Benefit Show

Eric Church joined The Bobby Bones Show to talk about the benefit concert he is doing for those affected from the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.

Church, Luke Combs , James Taylor and Billy Strings will headline Concert for Carolina on Oct. 26 at Charlotte's Bank of America Stadium. The event will be hosted by ESPN's Marty Smith and Barstool Sports' Caleb Pressley and will feature additional artists to be announced. Church and Combs, who were both born and raised in North Carolina, felt compelled to help out the people there in any way they could after the destruction caused by Hurricane Helene.

Combs, who came up with the idea for the event, contacted Church about it and he immediately agreed. They went through their phones to reach out to other people to ask if they wanted to get involved and within days had the show planned. Combs got ahold of Strings and Church made it his mission to get Taylor. He knew someone was going to sing his song “Carolina On My Mind,” that night and he wanted it to come from Taylor himself.

Church is also contributing with boots on the ground efforts and has seen first-hand the destruction that will take years to rebuild. Most of the devastation happened in small communities in the mountains that are divided by creeks and rivers, which flooded the towns completely erasing them. Church noted that the people from those areas are tough and make up the fabric of America. Those communities usually can rely on the town next to them to help, but the unique situation here is that the community next door can’t help now because they are also gone.

Church also decided to release his first solo song in over three years, ‘ Darkest Hour (Helene Edit) ’, with him signing over the publishing royalties to North Carolina, to offer long-term support for the rebuilding process. For the past year, he’s been in the studio working on a new project that is due next year, but he knew he had to release this song early to help and he’d regret it if he released it a year later. He recorded it a few weeks before the Hurricane happened and when he was listening back to some mixes and heard that song, he had an emotional reaction. He explained that sometimes you give a song a moment and sometimes it finds its moment on its own. Although the money made from this song will help North Carolina for years to come, Church hopes it also shines a light on what is happening there.

Tickets to the forthcoming Concert for Carolina are on-sale from Thursday, October 10th at 9am CT. The proceeds will be donated to a variety of organizations helping the Hurricane Helene relief effort, including Samaritan’s Purse, Manna Food Bank and Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC.