At a recent show, Eric Church took this whole “kicking unruly people out of your show” trend (that Tim McGraw seems to have started) to a new level. He actually kicked out a security guard! In this case, there was a fan who tossed a boot up on stage for Eric to sign. This wasn’t bugging Eric at all, but what did bug him was that the guard cracked down pretty hard on the fan and “manhandled” her a little bit. So Eric told the security guard to back off. When the same security guard tried to stop her second attempt to get the boot up to Eric, Eric stopped the show and told the security guard to leave. “the fans loved it,” he said, which may explain why a lot of artists are kicking people out of their shows these days.

Eric Church says that before he became a country star, he actually sold knives in the middle of the night to drunk people.  How great is that?  Here’s the deal:  He was a phone operator for one of those home shopping networks, and he worked the night shift during the time when they were selling those knife sets where you get 200 for $19.95.  Eric says he was TERRIBLE at this job, because, as he says, “I was young and I’d been in a lot of these peoples’ shoes…I knew they were drunk..They’d just come home from the bar, flipped on Shop at Home and said, ‘You know what?  I need that.’”  When Eric’s bosses realized that he was actually talking these drunk people out of buying the knives, they fired him, of course.

It’s 2 weeks now for Eric Church at the top of the country charts.  Not even Trace Adkins’ new CD, “Proud To Be Here,” could beat out Church’s “Chief,” which sold 53,000 copies.  If you look at the Billboard 200, the chart for all types of music, there’s a ton of country music in the top ten.  Eric’s #2, Trace is #3, Jason Aldean’s #6 and Blake Shelton is #10.

We’ve known for a while that Eric Church had a fanatical following…if you’ve ever been to one of his shows, you know what I’m talking about.  But he’s not exactly a household name…YET, anyway.  His huge sales numbers surprised a lot of people this past week when they realized Eric’s new CD “Chief” was not only the top selling album in the land, but that it also outsold any other country release this year in its debut week.  And here’s something unusual:  The guy has never even had a song crack the top 5 on country radio!  No country act has topped the album charts without ever having a #1 country hit since 1967.  And if you’re a geek like me, you will want to know that this was the album “Ode to Billy Joe” by Bobbie Gentry.

He looks like he's going to kick some butt, doesn't he?

Eric Church, that’s who.  I have to admit I’m surprised that he’s on track to sell more copies of his new CD “Chief” this week than Blake sold during his first week with “Red River Blue.”  So even with Blake’s sudden superstar status thanks to  ”The Voice” and “The Marriage” to Miranda Lambert, Eric Church is going to have higher numbers, with an expected 120-130,000 copies sold (Blake sold 116,000).  Like Blake, Eric will be at the top of the Billboard 200, which means he’s got the top CD of any kind of music this week.  So congratulations to secret superstar Eric Church!

Eric Church and The Band Perry have already won ACMs!  They have been selected by fan voting as Top New Solo Artist and Top New Duo or Group, respectively.  But the ACMs are getting more and more like American Idol:  there’s still one more elimination round.  Even though both acts get ACMs, they’re still duking it out for the Top New Artist ACM.  Voting for this final round will open in a few weeks and continue all the way up until the beginning of the show on April 3rd.

Two guys in country music keep getting confused for each other:

Eric Church and Dave Haywood of Lady Antebellum look enough alike that even they themselves have to admit it.  It’s to the point where one time at some big country music gathering, Lady A was posing for a photo but cound’t find Dave.  So Eric stepped in, and pretty much no one noticed!