WATCH – Eric Church played songs at Red Rocks he hadn’t touched in 20 years — and probably never will again
Jul 7, 2026, 4:11 PM
Eric Church has now played four shows at Red Rocks in the last 51 weeks. He’s performed roughly 111 songs across those four nights and played 85 different ones. No other solo artist in any genre has sold out six shows at Red Rocks in the past two years. And on Monday night (July 6), he did something that made even the diehards in the GA line — some of whom showed up before 10 a.m. for 6 p.m. doors — lose their minds.
Church played every single song from his debut album Sinners Like Me in its entirety, celebrating the record’s 20th anniversary 12 days early. The album turns 20 on July 18, and Church decided Red Rocks was the place to mark it. That meant deep cuts like “Can’t Take It With You,” “What I Almost Was,” “The Hard Way” and “Two Pink Lines” — songs that haven’t seen a stage in years, and in some cases, haven’t been played since the days when Church was working club stages at places like the Grizzly Rose, which he mentioned during the show. He also dusted off covers he used to play when he didn’t have enough originals to fill a set, including The Band’s “The Shape I’m In” and Queen’s “Fat Bottomed Girls.”
It wasn’t flawless. Church came in early on the opener and the band had to catch up. He forgot lyrics a couple of times. But as Whiskey Riff’s Aaron Ryan wrote, “it wasn’t perfect in those early days either, which made it perfect for last night.” If you came hoping to hear “Drink in My Hand” and “Talladega,” you were probably disappointed. If you’ve been with Church since the rock-club days, it was one of the most personal shows he’s ever played — and Red Rocks, with 9,525 people tucked between 300-million-year-old sandstone formations in Morrison, was the only place to do it.
Church has two more nights at Red Rocks — Tuesday with 49 Winchester opening and Wednesday with The Creekers — and all three are being livestreamed on nugs in HD and 4K. Each night is expected to be a completely different show, which at this point is less a promise and more a guarantee. The man played 85 different songs in four Red Rocks shows. He’s not going to repeat himself now.
Here’s one of those special moments from Monday night’s show….
