Eric Church plays Pechanga Arena Friday. What classic 'San Diego songs' might he do here?

Eric Church plays Pechanga Arena Friday. What classic ‘San Diego songs’ might he do here?

How different is the hard-rocking Eric Church from other country-music stars?

San Diego Union-Tribune

May 5, 2022 12:30 PM PT

How different is the hard-rocking Eric Church from other country-music stars?

Last year, he posed for the cover of a national weekly music industry magazine while getting a COVID-19 vaccination.

This year, he canceled his sold-out April 2 San Antonio concert so he could instead attend a Final Four basketball match in New Orleans.

As a songwriter, Church addresses issues few country artists go near, be it the death penalty (“Lightning”), a teen couple awaiting the results of a pregnancy test (“Two Pink Lines”) or the pain hateful rhetoric can cause (“Kill a Word”).

On tour, when the mood strikes, he’ll do songs by artists from the city he is playing in (Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” and Nelly’s “Country Grammar” and “Ride Wit Me” at his March 12 St. Louis concert). It’s a crowd-pleasing move that everyone from Patti Smith to have Taylor Swift have employed over the years, but they have done so with a single song, not several.

So, what “San Diego songs” might Church do for his concert Friday night at Pechanga Arena?

Here are some suggestions:

Tom Waits’ “San Diego Serenade,” Rosie & The Originals’ “Angel Baby,” Jack Tempchin’s “Peaceful Easy Feeling,” JJ Cale and Eric Clapton’s “Road to Escondido” and, of course, Iron Butterfly’s “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.”

There is at least one other enticing option.

Since Church’s April concerts have featured a Bruce Springsteen classic each night immediately preceding Church’s 2012 hit, “Springsteen,” he could up the ante here by singing The Boss’ “Balboa Park” and “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight),” the latter of which includes the choice couplet: “I know a pretty little place in Southern California, down San Diego way ...”

8 p.m. Friday. Pechanga Arena, 3500 Sports Arena Blvd., Midway District. $34 to $164. axs.com

Music

George Varga

San Diego Union-Tribune music critic George Varga began drumming in rock bands at 12 and writing professionally about music at 15. A Louisiana native who grew up mostly in Germany, Varga has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations for his writing at the U-T and is a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to providing live coverage of the Grammy Awards and festivals from Coachella and KAABOO to the 1994 edition of Woodstock, he has interviewed everyone from Miles Davis, Britney Spears and (over a game of chess) Ray Charles to Willie Nelson, Kanye West and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis. A triple first prize-winner for criticism and arts writing at the 2022 San Diego Press Club awards and a first prize-winner at the 2022 San Diego Society of Professional Journalists awards, Varga is also a contributing writer for Jazz Times magazine and has written for Billboard, Spin and other publications. After attending San Diego City College and San Diego State University, he created and taught the 2002 UC San Diego Extension course, “Jazz in a Post-Ken-Burns World.” Varga has written liner notes for more than a dozen albums, including by jazz sax greats James Moody and Michael Brecker, and contributed two chapters to the book, “Dylan: Disc By Disc.”