This Eric Church Performance Of His Fan Favorite Deep Cut “The Hard Way” Sounds VERY Different Than The Album Version

Could have been a very different song.

For my money, Eric Church‘s 2006 debut album Sinners Like Me is one of the greatest country albums of all time. The song was a minor commercial success at the time, reaching only #7 on the country albums charts. The album produced four singles, including “How ‘Bout You,” “Two Pink Lines,” “Guys Like Me” and the title track, but all of them failed to even chart inside the top 10.

And it’s still one of the most influential country albums of the past two decades.

Not only is the album an absolute masterpiece that launched the career of one of the biggest country artists of the past 20 years, but it also inspired an entire generation of country artists, with artists like Luke Combs, Morgan Wallen, HARDY and many others citing Eric in general, and Sinners Like Me in particular, for inspiring them to get into country music.

It’s not hard to see why. The album was a gamechanger: A departure from the smooth, “mom-country” songs of the early 2000s coming from some of the biggest names in country music at the time like Keith Urban, Rascal Flatts, Sara Evans, and later that same year, Carrie Underwood. It had an edge to it. It leaned into a rock sound at some points.

And the songwriting was incredible.

One of the songs on the album that was never a single, but is still a fan favorite, is “The Hard Way.” And it’s not hard (no pun intended) to see why the song about all of the life lessons you learn “The Hard Way” resonated with so many people:

“Only fools don’t take the time of day
They stay too busy runnin’
To stop just once and tell their dad
Just how much they love him
That’s a lesson I wish I would’ve learned
Before that phone call came and it was her
No, mama never had to say a word
I knew it was too late
That’s a lesson I wish I didn’t learn the hard way”

That’s some powerful stuff.

To this day it’s in my top 5 Eric Church songs of all time, even though it’s not one of his better known releases outside of his fan base.

But I have to say, I’m glad he recorded it the way he did and not the way he performed it in this video back in 2007.

The song, which was co-written by Church along with Michael P. Heeney and Casey Beathard (two of the all-time great songwriters in country music history), is a slow-tempo, reflective ballad. But in this performance from the Wildhorse Saloon here in Nashville the year after the album was released, Church performed it as an up-tempo acoustic song, in the same style as songs like “Two Pink Lines” and “Guys Like Me.”

It’s definitely a different take on the song. And it almost makes me want to hear what it would sound like this way with a full band behind it.

But the song’s pretty much perfect the way it is – so maybe he shouldn’t mess with it and just leave this version in the past.The post This Eric Church Performance Of His Fan Favorite Deep Cut “The Hard Way” Sounds VERY Different Than The Album Version first appeared on Whiskey Riff.