[TEST] “Seed Ticks!” A Brand-New Column from Eric Church

Editor’s Note: This is the first installment of Eric Church’s column, “Church Country,” in the all-new Field & Stream print journal. Become an 1871 Club member to receive the first issue, or you can purchase individual issues here.

I had just come off the road from supporting my first album, Sinners Like Me. Thirteen guys on a twelve-bunk bus, smelling of urine and whatever air freshener Glade was hawking at the time. Very little money and, more alarmingly, even smaller record sales. Sweaty clubs, dreary rock bars, dirt-filled county -rodeos, and the occasional half-empty theater left me wondering if my love for my chosen profession was noble or just insane. All that work had left me broke, and nearly broken. I was looking forward to a few days off in my favorite time of the year in Nashville—early spring.

I was with my then girlfriend, now wife, Katherine, and her dad had come into town wanting to show us a piece of property for sale he’d stumbled across just outside the city. I was still in the try-to–impress-the-girlfriend’s-parents phase of our relationship and not thinking clearly. So I agreed to see the property.

I rolled out of bed at the crack of noon and met Katherine and her father, who in the right sunlight looks like a cross between a wild-eyed Albert Einstein and a Q-tip with legs: Thin, full mane of white hair, and eyebrows like late-fall caterpillars. He also had an unwavering sense of danger and often-misguided adventure. Yes, I had liked him immediately.

So off we went—Katherine and me in my late-model Chevy pickup, and her dad in the car ahead of us—to see a piece of property I didn’t want and couldn’t afford.

It was going to be a productive day off.