So it turns out Eric Church isn't just being a cool kid when he wears his sunglasses. There is a practical reason he has to don the shades during his performances.
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Eric Church is known for wearing his sunglasses. I'm sure you're picturing him wearing them now, aren't you? Well, it's only natural. He seems to never perform with a pair of Ray-Bans. I've always assumed this was done for the sake of image.
But Church actually needs these sunglasses. Well, if you want him to see what he's doing.
The Chief recently sat down on the Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist podcast, where he touched on the origin story of his sunglasses.
Early in his career, Eric Church didn't wear sunglasses on stage. Recalling the story, he says, "I wear contacts, and I'm 6'3"."
"On these little stages, they have these par can lights. I've always had a condition with my eyes where they don't lubricate real well. It's not a big deal... until you put a contact in and stand in front of par can lights," he explained.
"So every night, I was losing a contact, I was losing both contacts."
Fed up with losing contacts and struggling to see, a band member came up with a revolutionary idea.
Sunglasses Help Eric Church See While On Stage
"I was blind half the show. This went on for a while," he continued.
"Finally, one of my band members said, 'Hey, have you thought about wearing shades tonight?' Nobody cared. There were 15 people there. Nobody was at these shows. So my band member said, 'Put the shades on.' So I did it, and I kind of... it worked. I didn't lose my contacts. It shielded the heat."
I suppose the necessity of his sunglasses became a cool selling point as he got more famous. He didn't plan to keep using them, but they soon became a part of his identity. An accessory that defined him as much as his voice did.
So, he continues to use them to this day, whether necessary or not.
"Overtime, it became a little bit of, I don't want to say a cape. But it became a little bit of a cape," he said. "It gave me a different mentality. It gave me a different mindset."
"And then it stuck," he admitted. "I'm the only guy that goes to the beach and takes my shades off. I become anonymous as soon as I pull them off. It's the Clark Kent opposite."
