Watch A Young Eric Church Perform Garth Brooks’ “We Shall Be Free” Way Back In High School

Long before he became the Chief.

Of course these days Eric Church is one of the biggest names in country music of the past two decades. He’s sold out festivals, stadiums, amphitheaters and arenas all across the country, has nearly a dozen #1 hits as both a solo and featured artist, and has served as an inspiration for an entirely new generation of country artists.

But before that he was just Eric Church, a kid from Granite Falls, North Carolina.

Even back then, though, Eric was showing off his musical talent, including in this throwback video that shows a young Eric Church performing the Garth Brooks hit “We Shall Be Free” for an audition in the early ’90s.

There’s not a lot of information about the clip, which was posted by Jeff Hartman, a fellow artist from North Carolina who’s built his own successful music career and classmate of Church’s back at Appalachian State University. According to the description, their paths crossed in 1994, which would mean Church was around 17 at the time of the audition – and his style was obviously different than the black t-shirts and aviators we’re used to seeing him in today.

For the audition, Church chose to perform “We Shall Be Free,” which was a controversial song when it was released back in 1992 in the wake of the LA riots.

Written by Garth and songwriter Stephanie Davis, he revealed that he was inspired to write the song after being in Los Angeles for the ACM Awards while the riots were taking place:

“The night the riots hit we watched it all on TV on the bus leaving LA. And as you drove out of LA you could see the buildings on fire. It was pretty scary for all of us, especially a bunch of guys from Oklahoma. Ya know this is intense out here.”

He goes into more detail in the linear notes from his The Hits album:

“‘We Shall Be Free’ is definitely and easily the most controversial song I have ever done. A song of love, a song of tolerance from someone who claims not to be a prophet but just an ordinary man.

I never thought there would be any problems with this song. Sometimes the roads we take do not turn out to be the roads we envisioned them to be. All I can say about ‘We Shall Be Free” is that I will stand by every line of this song as long as I live.

I am very proud of it. And I am very proud of Stephanie Davis, the writer. I hope you enjoy it and see it for what it was meant to be.”

Obviously the song was a hit for Garth in the early ’90s, so it’s no surprise that Church decided to perform it back in high school.

And like everybody else around that time, it’s clear that Church was listening to a lot of Garth Brooks: Another video posted by Hartman shows the future superstar singing “Friends In Low Places,” as well as “Take It Easy” by the Eagles, with a group of his fellow students around the same time.

Talk about a blast from the past.The post Watch A Young Eric Church Perform Garth Brooks’ “We Shall Be Free” Way Back In High School first appeared on Whiskey Riff.