On Friday night, February 6th, Eric Church surprised the American Airlines Center, in Dallas, crowd when he introduced Texas legend, Ray Wylie Hubbard. Hubbard then joined Church on stage where the two sang, “Screw You, We’re From Texas.”

so i driving thursday and judy calls and says eric church wants you to come up to dallas and sing ‘screw you, we’re from texas’ with him at his american airlines colosseum gig. i say ‘colosseum?; she says you know, whatever they call it.
just so you know i have never met eric or even talked to him.
i know who he is cause he mentioned me in a song of his called ‘mr misunderstood.
i heard about this one night when i was messing with a guitar lick on the couch and judy was watching ‘criminal minds.’
i get a text from caitlin everden the great young fiddle player who used to play with taylor swift when she was country that i met in california at a gig and she texted that she is at a big televised country award show in nashvile and eric church is singing about me.
i say judy, ‘eric church is singing about me on tv right now.’
she says, ‘don’t think about changing the channel, dog..spencer and jj are about to grab the serial killer.’
so i see it the next day on youtube.
well thats cool and i am impressed and honored as he mentions me with elvis costello and jeff tweedy.
so we drive up and get there and we got our own dressing room and i took lucas’ es335 with the whammy bar and i wish i could remember all his crews names but can’t. anyhow his stage guy takes me down and he tapes a wireless rig on my strap and his sound guy asks if i brought my own in ear monitors or if not they have some generic ones. i say well i don’t have any as i’ve never used them. he says we kinna figured you were old school so we rented some monitor wedges for you that we’ll set up before you go out.
so then eric shows up under the stage where the guitar tech is and he thanks me for doing this and i say how did i end in that song?
he says when he was writing it with casey beathard, the vinyl albums he had on his turntable were me and elvis costello and jeff tweedy.
we walk up on stage and i meet his band and they asked about the arrangement and i says its in E, no third, it thinks about going to an A chord but doesn’t and its verse, chorus, ride, verse, chorus, ride, verse, chorus, chorus, tag, fall apart ending.
they nod and say got it.
i start it, eric and his guys fall in and it doth rock.
after the echo of the last note dies off eric says i discovered the 13th floor elevators because you mentioned them in this song. i say yeah i saw them play at a sorority house in arlington in 66 and they were the coolest band i’d ever seen.
he meets judy and they hit it off and i got to say that his crew were so accommodating and professional and kept asking up if we needed anything. top notch pros.
so we went to eat with the crew and hang and then the show starts and the colosseum is sold out and this audience loves the eric church guy. they go nuts.
he plays hour and half and then a twenty min break and the second set starts.
he does this song ‘jack daniels’ and then i go strap on the 335 and the song ends and the crew set up the monitors and mic and i couldn’t hear eric’s intro for me but i guess he said something nice and i walk out and its an E ticket ride at disneyland. we do the song and it explodes like the volcano above pompeii.
it was indeed fun. after a cool ragged just right fall apart rude ending eric comes over and hugs me and says ”thank you so much for doing this.”
i say it was my pleasure and we can’t stay for the rest of the show as we gotta drive back to wimberley. he says cool, travel safe. he says thanks again.
i walk back down the stairs and the crew slaps me on the back and rave about it and they take off the wireless rig.
we go back to the room and his manager says take all the swag stuff from the dressing room with us. he walks us out to my van and we are loaded down with hats, t-shirts, candles, a couple of his merch bottle openers (eric church key..get it?) a flower arrangement, a full coffee thermos so we wouldn’t go to sleep on the way.
we got back home bout 3 something.
judy told me today that when eric introduce me, she teared up.
so there you go.
my undying thanks to eric church for asking me to do this.
i’ve been fortunate enough to have experienced some incredible moments during my old life and have shared the stage with some amazing musicians though out my so called career but this..this was a doing of paramount quality unmatched.
keep the faith.
yours truly,
ray wylie

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