Drink In My Hand

Album: Chief (2011)
Charted: 40
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Songfacts®:

  • This rowdy party anthem finds Eric Church looking forward to the weekend. He sings, "no need to complicate it, I'm a simple man, All you gotta do is put a drink in my hand." The song was released as the second single from his third album Chief.
  • Church penned the song with Nashville songwriters Michael P. Heeney ("Love Your Love The Most") and Luke Laird ("Hungover & Hard Up").
  • Talking about recording the Chief album, Church said: "We have built our career on the backs of our fans. We have not cared what else was going on around us. The other thing, we went and played shows, and we have given those fans the keys to this vehicle, and we said, 'Drive it!' And they have told people about it, and they've spread the word, and they've preached that gospel, and they've just become an army out there. This record when we made it, it needed, for me, to sound like a live show. It needed to sound like we had recorded it live, like you were watching something that we didn't rehearse, that we didn't think out. And there are so many tracks on this record, where I am interacting with the musicians, because I am in the room with them, and either I will sing a melody line or the guitar will be playing a melody line, and we'll pick up on each other, and it will turn into this little jam moment. And that is where the magic happens. We didn't plan it, we didn't talk about it, there's as much unrehearsed magic on this record as we've ever had. There's a lot of mistakes on it, and I think that's part of a live show. We mess up every night live, and we talk about it after a show. We left it on this record. Those mistakes are in there, and I think that's what gives it its heartbeat."
  • The song was Church's first #1 on the Country chart. It was also the debut Country chart-topper for Church's label, EMI Nashville.
  • Heeney told American Songwriter the trio penned the song, "in North or South Dakota" during Church's 2011 tour with Miranda Lambert. He recalled: "We wrote most of it after one of his shows and buttoned it up the next morning. It fell out pretty fast - we were just jamming. We had been out for several days and the song was pretty much was just a reaction to his crowds…turn it loose and rock and roll."
  • The lyrical content was not inspired by drinking - Laird is a teetotaller and Heeney barely drinks. Heeney told American Songwriter: " Eric was just pumped up from the shows he had that week. His fans inspired the song."

Comments: 1

  • Danny from Texasnow that is an old style hard country song and wanna be cowboys will be standin at the jukebox playing it over and over. Big hit dude!
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