When Eric Church takes the stage at tonight‘s CMA Awards, he won’t be performing a song just to further his own career. Instead, the 47-year-old will sing “Darkest Hour,” a song he released in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Helene, donating all of the proceeds from the song to help in ongoing recovery efforts.
“The biggest thing for me with this performance is continuing to shed a light on Hurricane Helene, and what happened to my home, which is Western North Carolina,” Church tells the CMA. “The devastation is immense, and the biggest part for me is, I feel like in this country, with our news cycle, we move along very quickly to the next thing. And those people are going to need help for a long time. The more I can shine a light on that, the more I can raise awareness on that, the more good we can do. So that’s my hope and reason for doing ‘Darkest Hour.'”
Church did more than donate proceeds from a song to help North Carolina residents. He also, along with Luke Combs, organized the Concert for Carolina, joined by artists like James Taylor, Billy Strings, Keith Urban, Bailey Zimmerman, Sheryl Crow, Scotty McCreery, Chase Rice and Parmalee to help raise more than $24 million.
“I’ve played a lot of concerts in my career, and a lot of special concerts,” Church reflects. “I’ve never felt an energy like I felt at the Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was almost redemptive; it was a revival-type thing. But it was also a mission, that we knew we were there to experience the music, but then we had a mission. And that mission was to help the people of North Carolina. I’ve never felt a spirit like that at a concert, knowing that once that concert was done, the real work started. And that’s what we’re doing now.”
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the CMA
When Church released “Darkest Hour,” he said it was to have something that would help the people of North Carolina for years to come.
“This song, ‘Darkest Hour,’ was the best way I could think to try to help,” Church explained at the time. “We’ve been helping with boots on the ground efforts, but this is something that will live beyond just the immediate recovery. This is not a quick thing to fix, so hopefully ‘Darkest Hour’ will be able to contribute to that for a long time to come. This song goes to my home, North Carolina, now and forever.”
Church had already written “Darkest Hour” prior to the hurricane, waiting for the right time to share it with the world.
“I’ve been in the studio for a while, trying some different things and exploring creativity,” Church said. “I had this song that I’d written, and the line that struck me in light of the recent devastation was ‘I’ll come running,’ because there are a lot of people out there right now who are in their darkest hour and they need people to come running. We were going to wait to release music until next year, but it just didn’t feel right to wait with this song. Sometimes you give songs their moment and sometimes they find their own moment.”
Find “Darkest Hour” and all of Church’s music and upcoming shows at EricChurch.com.
The 2024 CMA Awards will air live from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on November 20, at 8:00 PM ET on ABC. The show will also stream the next day on Hulu.