No better place to perform this one live for the first time.

I’m still recovering (both physically and mentally) from three nights at Red Rocks with Eric Church this week. Once again, Chief delivered three unique shows at the iconic venue in Colorado, breaking out both hits and deep cuts and ending with a magical acoustic show to wrap up the three night run.

(You can read our full reviews of nights one, two and three if you want to relive the magic of each show).

Of course there were plenty of surprises throughout the week, with one of the biggest coming before night three even started when Church decided to debut the studio version of his unreleased song “On The Road” before taking the stage.

Another surprise came early in the show, when Church decided to deliver a live performance of “McArthur” for the first time.

The song was written by HARDY along with Chase McGill, Jameson Rodgers and Josh Thompson, and released back in January. Church took part in the massive collaboration along with HARDY, Tim McGraw and Morgan Wallen, with each artist serving as the voice for a new generation of the titular “McArthur” family. Each generation serves as the guardian for their family land, until the youngest is on the verge of selling to a developer:

“I’m Hunter McArthur and the deal looks good
In eighteen months this’ll be a neighborhood
I got a million dollar line I could sign my name on
But there’s a whisper in the pines
That’s telling me, “don’t”

My bloodline, it bled on this ground
Soon we all find that’s where we’re bound
And father time don’t leave anyone out
When you pass on, what you gonna pass down?”

Of course Church didn’t have the other three artists with him at Red Rocks, but he did have his powerhouse background vocalist Joanna Cotten to help him out.

Giving the crowd a glimpse behind the scenes as they worked out the performance in real time, Church looked to Joanna to take the final verse – but she reminded him that they hadn’t practiced that one. Church started it himself before Joanna jumped in to powerfully close it out and draw a laugh from Church:

“Yeah, that’ll work. Sandbagger.”

It was a pretty special performance – and no doubt will be a rare opportunity for fans to hear Church perform the song live, if he ever does decide to break it out again.

Of course we know that Church is a fan of the song: HARDY revealed that Church was the first artist who agreed to be a part of the all-star collab:

“We wrote the song, and I actually drove back to my hometown after the beach to do some deer hunting and I had a pretty stiff whiskey drink, and I just said, ‘F*** it, I’m gonna send it to Eric Church.’ And I did.

I’ve known Eric now for a couple of years, but definitely took a little bit of a leap of faith. I’ve never made a move quite as impressive as, ‘Hey, we should do this song together.’ And man, he responded, it’s almost like he didn’t even listen to the whole song, because it seemed like 30 seconds went by and he responded and said, ‘I’m in.’ He said, ‘Who else should it be?’”

HARDY has also teased that there may be more in the works for the McArthur universe, so we’ll have to see if we get more from these four.

Here’s the original studio version: