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|| High Country Press Newswire

October 2, 2008 issue

Eric Church To Open For Gary Allan at Holmes Center October 10

Story by David Brewer

Rising country music star and ASU graduate Eric Church will open the show for Gary Allan at the Holmes Center on Friday, October 10. Tickets are $29.50 for floor seats, $25 for lower level and $22 for upper level. ASU graduate and Granite Falls native and rising country star Eric Church will open the Gary Allan at ASU’s Holmes Convocation Center on Friday, October 10. Tickets for the show are $29.50 for floor seats, $25 for lower level and $22 for upper level. All seats are reserved. Doors to the concert open at 7:00 p.m. and the show will start at 8:00 p.m.

Church said that his musical epiphany came while watching local favorites the Harris Brothers perform at former Blowing Rock restaurant Ham’s in the late 1990s. The restaurant was packed and the crowd loved it. Church and his band the Mountain Boys soon played their first show just up the street at Woodlands, where the music-hungry crowed bombarded the new band with requests.

After making a deal with the crowd by promising to learn every song written on a napkin, Church and his band the Mountain Boys returned the next week armed with 19 new tunes and never looked back.

Church moved to Nashville following his graduation with a degree in marketing from the Walker College of Business to pursue his songwriting passion. After working under a publishing deal with Sony, he signed a recording contract with Capitol Records on his birthday. Church then teamed with producer Jay Joyce to try and “make a record with a totally different sound.”

Church scored three top 20 hits off his debut album Sinners Like Me with the singles “How ‘Bout You,” “Two Pink Lines” and “Guys Like Me.” He returned to Boone last September for a show at Legends—his first area appearance since the move to Music City in 2000 to pursue music full-time.

Earlier this year, Church released the new single “His Kind of Money (My Kind of Love)” to country radio. It debuted on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart at #55 in late April 2008, peaking at #46 in August. It is also the first single from his upcoming album, Carolina, which was set to be released on September 30, but has reportedly been pushed back to March 24, 2009.

To purchase tickets or for more info, call the Holmes Center at 828-262-7890 or click to www.theholmescenter.com.