Eric Church: The Halloween Costume That Was a ‘Mess’
Eric Church had one Halloween in college where he had quite a unique costume. It’s a costume he had to get at the last minute, but it fit him just fine.
He told us, “My favorite Halloween costume really came, I remember when I got a little older my first year of college, there’s this thing they do every year in Chapel Hill, North Carolina – Halloween on Franklin Street. We drove down from Boone, North Carolina. I had a bunch of friends that went to the University of North Carolina, and we didn’t have costumes and didn’t realize until we were on the way that we had to have costumes. So, we stopped at a costume place in Greensboro, North Carolina. It’s Halloween, so there’s a run on everything, and couldn’t find anything. We ended up finding this hole-in-the-wall place, but they had the full costume, Sesame Street outfits. The real deal. The real ones [with] feathers and fur. We were Elmo, Cookie Monster, and I was Big Bird.”
He continued, “It’s about 7-foot-4, and you looked out of the body, and then you had these straps that went on since the head was a lot higher. There’s a lot of beer involved on Franklin Street, so we get down there, and as the night went on, my straps broke, so the head would pivot. And so, I would be walking one way, and the head would be facing the other, and it just became this funny…I didn’t know the head was on backward.”
Eric concluded, “I had no idea. I see out of the body, so I’m just kinda walking around, and people were talking to my ass-end. [laughs] The whole time people’d come up and start talking and go, ‘Hey, turn around.’ And I’d turn around, and they’d go, ‘No turnaround.’ It was a mess. That year, there was no other Big Bird on Franklin Street.”
Church recently helped to provide immediate relief following the devastation of Hurricane Helene while also providing ongoing funds to support a more resilient future for North Carolina. He announced he is signing over all of his publishing royalties for his new song to the people of North Carolina.
Eric said, “From Western North Carolina, East Tennessee, Upstate South Carolina, parts of Georgia, and even Florida, which took a direct hit, there are so many places that were impacted. Specifically, in the area that I’m from, the mountains of Western North Carolina were devastated. There are places that are just biblically gone. These are our family members, they’re our friends, they’re our neighbors – and they’re in dire need of help.”
Church explains, “This song, ‘Darkest Hour,’ was the best way I could think to try to help. 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.”
