Eric Church Defends Canceling April Concert to Attend 'Once-in-a-Lifetime' UNC-Duke Final Four Game

Eric Church is opening up about his canceled show.

During an interview on Friday's episode of Audacy's Rob + Holly podcast, the country singer, 44, talked about why he canceled his April 2 show in San Antonio, TX to see a Final Four match in the Men's NCAA Tournament between Duke and North Carolina taking place on the same night.

"The big thing was the Duke game, for me — I hate to say this, I did care," the singer confessed. "To me, the championship was against Duke, because of the rivalry, because they've never met in the tournament, and it's Coach K's final game."

Church continued, "All those things were a perfect storm that I never would have conceptualized would have happened. It hadn't happened in my life, it hadn't happened in my dad's life. It was just one of those really unique, once-in-a-lifetime things."

Given the culmination of so many factors, the "Heart On Fire" singer felt that he needed to go to the game. "It was just something that I had to be there. I had to take my boys — I have boys that are 10 and 7 — and my dad is still alive, he's 70. I had to be at that game. There was no way that I wasn't being there. I'm very glad we went."

When asked whether he regretted making the decision, the singer felt confident he made the right choice. "I can recreate San Antonio. I can't recreate Duke and Carolina in the Final Four," he added.

Elsewhere in the podcast, Church also talked about not anticipating such an intense public response to the cancelation.

Most significantly, he knew something was up when he saw himself as a lead story on ESPN. "I thought it might be getting a little noisy when I was watching ESPN Sports Center, and I was leading on the Sports Center thing. I thought, 'Wow, that's new.' That's when I thought it's getting a little bit out of control."

Before that, the star claimed he'd been basically shielded from fans' reactions. "I've never been on social media," Church said, "I've never tweeted. I don't know how to tweet. I don't get on Instagram."

The singer noted, "Nobody gives me codes for any of this stuff, so I have no way to get on any of this. This time was a little different for me."

Even though public outcry was large, Church said he had confidence in his fans. "I've always trusted our fans. We've been through a lot together … 17 years now and I trusted they would understand."

"That's the reason I just came clean and told the truth," Church admitted, "I could have said COVID, I could have said throwing up, laryngitis. There's a 100 things, but I decided just to say, 'This is what I'm doing.' I knew they would get that."

With that said, the "Springsteen" singer did acknowledge the disappointment from the fans. "I knew the people in San Antonio were going to get disappointed. I hated that, and I knew there was no real way around that," he said. "But I also knew I could fix part of that. I could fix my part of that. It's our show, I can do that and I can make that special for them."

In addition, Church also explained why the decision was taken such last-minute: "I did feel bad that it was so late. A lot of people were upset that it was so last minute, but what I wanted people to understand was, I wasn't missing a show for anything other than a Carolina-Duke Final Four game. If it was Carolina and somebody else, I was going to do the show. I didn't know this was even a possibility until about six days before the show. There is no way to plan that out."

Since the show's cancellation, Church went to Instagram to reveal he will be making it up to disappointed fans with a "free" rescheduled show.

"Thank you to San Antonio for letting me take my family to this game," he wrote in an Instagram post. "It took a minute to figure out how and when I could properly express my thanks."

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Church then detailed that he will be coming back to Texas in early September, where he will perform "a ONE of a kind FREE show for those of you who bought tickets and were planning to attend our canceled San Antonio show."

The new show will now take place at the Whitewater Amphitheater in New Braunfels, as opposed to the AT&T Center in San Antonio. Church added that more details will "be announced soon."

Church's current tour was projected to originally end August 28.