Eric Church To Be Honored With The ACM Icon Award Following Impressive Philanthropic Efforts In The Wake Of Hurricane Helene

Very well-deserved.

This year, Eric Church will be honored with the ACM Icon Award at the ACM Honors, which is an event that celebrates special award recipients, off-camera category winners, and winners of ACM Industry and Studio Recording Awards. It’s a separate event held after the main ACM Awards show, and there are usually some decent performances and great people who are honored.

The Icon award is:

“Presented to a Country Music artist, duo/group or industry leader who, throughout their career, has advanced the popularity of the genre through their contributions in multiple facets of the industry, such as songwriting, recording, production, touring, film, television, literary works, philanthropic contributions, and other goodwill efforts.”

Of course, Eric has done a ton of philanthropic work for his home state of North Carolina since last October when Hurricane Helene ravaged western North Carolina, so it’s great to see him being recognized for all he has done in this way, in addition to his obvious musical contributions to country music:

“Eric Church will be honored with the ACM Icon Award. Eric, who has received seven ACM Awards, has continually pushed the boundaries of the genre, blending elements of blues, rock, and outlaw country while continuing to explore new, unique sounds and inviting the genre to follow. As a prolific songwriter, Church has racked up numerous hits. His fearless approach to both his music and his career path has made him a lasting influence and a true icon of Country Music.”

The show will be next month on August 20th, and if you happen to be in Nashville, tickets to attend the event at The Pinnacle will go on sale this Friday, July 11th. Ben Vaughn, the late President & CEO of Warner Chappell Music, will also be honored posthumously after he tragically passed away earlier this year:

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Of course, Eric alongside Luke Combs, they raised over $24.5 million for residents in western North Carolina that were devastated by historic flooding from Hurricane Helene with their Concert For Carolina benefit show last year, and Eric has gone onto start his Blue Print for the Blue Ridge initiative, which is the umbrella that his Blue Haven community is under.

He has broken ground on that neighborhood in Avery county, where a new community of homes are being built for those who lost everything in the floods. Families should be moving in soon if they haven’t already, and Eric has already purchased more land in the area to start another similar neighborhood because the need is so high.

During an appearance on Bobby Bones’ podcast not long ago, he talked about the idea behind it and why he felt it was necessary to implement everything this way, which gives the families a pathway to ownership of the homes:

“When the concert was over with, we were able to raise a substantial amount of money. When we had raised the money, immediately it was like, what are we gonna do with it? And there were four or five charities that were lined up, that are great charities, they do great work, and they said, why don’t you give it to us? And my next question was, okay, what are you doing? And a lot of them were doing immediate stuff, keeping people alive, water, diapers, just temporary housing.

But none of that did anything to change the trajectory of the lives that the people who had lost homes, none of that was going on. So I asked about housing, and nobody had an answer for me on housing. So as opposed to what the government does, where they come in and they provide temporary hosing, in a different location to have a roof over their head… so basically, it’s little small communities. and there’s not a lot of people in these communities, some of these communities are 300 or 400 people.

So we really came up with a novel idea of building permanent housing, not temporary. And not only allowing them to live there for a period of time cost free, we call it Blueprint For the Blue Ridge, the whole key is, we want to give them a path to ownership for that home. So a lot of these people are people that could have never maybe owned a home in their life because of their financial situation, but now, with our help, and with the people who gave help, you can change that entire family in a generational way. Not just theirs, but their kids.”

It’s really a completely different type of program that’s never been done this way before, and I have a feeling he’s only going to continue these efforts and change the lives of people who have been so devastated:

“So for those 45 families, the idea would be, they’ll end up owning those homes. We just closed on two other properties, we’re doing two other properties. We’ll end up doing about, as of right now, about 200 homes. The best thing is, as I looked around the country, nobody has done this, which is shocking by the way. That in the United States of America, this is not done, but it wasn’t done during Katrina, it wasn’t done during any other disaster we’ve had.

And affordable housing is a major problem in the U.S. and when a disaster happens, it just shines a spotlight on that problem. So we’re trying to solve that the best we can, in something that is blue printable for other states when a disaster happens.”

Eric explained that this approach is obviously vastly different from how the government does things, but it was extremely important for him to make sure these people, who lost everything, got to keep their community:

“From a government standpoint, the way they would look at it, you’re probably not affecting as many people in a minor way, where you take a big sum of money and you put more people in something for a year, but you’re not changing those peoples’ lives. Then you have problem #2, which is year two, year three.

So what we looked at was, you can effect a smaller number and change their entire life, and their families life, it provides a pillar for the foundation of that community. It’s completely different from what’s been done, it’s what we’re doing, and so far, it’s going well. We’ll see where we go from here.”

Eric also put out “Darkest Hour” in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Helene, of which the money made from the song will forever go towards helping with Hurricane Helene recovery efforts.

Impressive doesn’t feel like a strong enough word for everything Eric has done, and I know his intention for doing all of this amazing work obviously isn’t to get some award from the ACM’s, but I’m still proud to see him be recognized for hit because he’s beyond deserving of it.

“Darkest Hour”

The post Eric Church To Be Honored With The ACM Icon Award Following Impressive Philanthropic Efforts In The Wake Of Hurricane Helene first appeared on Whiskey Riff.