Eric Church returns to Rupp Arena with energetic 40-song bonanza

Three songs into his exhaustive three-hour country-meets-rock ‘n’ roll bonanza on Friday evening at Rupp Arena, Eric Church let down his guard.

Having just dispatched the corporate Nashville reality check single “Stick That in Your Country Song” (with its delicious chorus lyric, “take that to Number One”), the reigning Country Music Association Entertainer of the Year confessed to the crowd of 15,000-plus that he was a touch nervous taking the stage, having not performed a full-production arena concert in two years.

“I should have just trusted Lexington, Kentucky and Rupp Arena.”

Well, of course he should have. Church has been playing Rupp as both headliner and opening act for over a decade. But this 40-plus-song opening night performance of a 55-city tour was certainly grander than any previous outing. Dispensing with the usual weighty trappings of arena-level country shows – i.e., opening acts, radio station emcees and, worst of all, between-set DJs – Church and his seven-member band commandeered the entire evening for themselves.

Taking the stage to a recording of the Tom Cochrane staple “Lunatic Fringe” and a barrage of computerized lighting effects, Church offered an evening of tunes that went heavy on electric might, casual but affirmative physicality and strong accents of Southern soul and grit.

The latter might seem obvious given Church’s North Carolina roots. Still, the Southern sway largely went in different directions – namely, to the swampier regions of Louisiana and Alabama that colored works like “Country Music Jesus,” “Homeboy,” the show-opening “Through My Ray-Bans” and the title tune to 2018’s “Desperate Man” album. But the entire show possessed an intriguing stylistic variance. There was little during the performance that could be termed traditional country outside of the honky tonk charm of “Drink in My Hand,” and even that was simmered in Rolling Stones fervor. But the Southern accents that Church appropriated so readily often produced some striking permutations, especially when he favored music from his recent triple album project “Heart & Soul.”

From that camp came the slinky pop lyricism of “Rock and Roll Found Me,” the jittery funk manifesto “Break It Kind of Guy” and the John Mellencamp-style “Heart on Fire.”

While the show’s mammoth running time might suggest a production of Springsteen-ian proportions, Church rode the Southern crests of his music with a casual command of his own design. Nothing sounded forced or ill-placed. If a tune like “Cold One” called for an ensemble electric jolt reminiscent of, curiously enough, Foghat, he rode with it. Same thing for when a homier atonement like “How ‘Bout You” meant allowing a banjo riff to blow up into a chunky, guitar-fueled joyride.

The two-set concert was performed in the round – or more exactly, on a massive, multi-level, rectangular stage on the Rupp floor that had Church in almost constant motion, with platforms for drums and keyboards sliding back and forth throughout the evening.

Not surprisingly, the entire affair was massively audience-friendly, sending Church frequently into the crowd and the crowd, as it did during “Drink in My Hand,” robustly singing along.

Nowhere was the audience/artist camaraderie chummier than during “How ‘Bout You.” Here, Church, flanked by a giddy child in sunglasses, gave the audience just the right incentive to go righteously nuts.

“Shout so all the people in Louisville can hear your ass.”

Let’s see if the reverse will hold true when Church’s tour makes its way to Derby City in February.