Eric Church Says He Regrets How He Handled His Brother’s Funeral With His Young Kids
Eric Church built his career on raw honesty in his music.
In a rare interview, the country star went further than he ever has publicly, sharing the grief, regret, and family fractures that followed the death of his younger brother, Brandon Church.
The conversation, released Feb. 19 on All There Is with Anderson Cooper, gave fans an unguarded look at a side of Eric he doesn’t often show.
He talked about the brother who literally kept his Nashville dream alive, the parenting decision he now calls a mistake, and the grief that has only grown stronger with time.
A Loss That Changed Everything
Brandon Church died in 2018 of “consequences of chronic alcoholism,” according to People. He was 36 years old.
For Eric, the loss reshaped his entire family in ways he never saw coming.
“When my brother died, I didn’t comprehend that it’s never going to be the same again — with my parents, with their relationship, with our relationship, the whole family dynamic,” Eric said. “I wasn’t prepared for that part.”
Not long after Brandon died, country music legend Vince Gill — someone Eric had met but didn’t know personally — picked up the phone and called him.
Gill told him that he might not see it now, but “you’re never going to be the same.”
“Your mom and dad are never going to be the same. Your sister’s never going to be the same. Y’all are never going to be the same as a unit,” Eric recalled of the advice.
“Nothing is ever gonna be the same,” Gill told him. “And the quicker you understand that, the better you’ll deal with it.”
Eric said he didn’t believe Gill at the time. Looking back, he can see that Gill was right.
“It never is the same,” Eric said. “When something like that happens, it changes everything. And it becomes a new normal.”
The Decision He Calls a ‘Mistake’
Eric also shared a deeply personal revelation about how he and his wife handled his brother’s funeral.
The singer shares two sons — Boone McCoy, now 14, and Tennessee Hawkins, now 11 — with his wife Katherine Church (née Blasingame), according to People. At the time of Brandon’s death, the boys were around seven and five.
Eric and Katherine decided not to take the children to the funeral. He thought it was the right call at the time. Now he describes it as a “mistake.”
“We left them back with a relative,” Church said. “At the time, it sounded like the exact right thing to do. ‘Cause I was a wreck. I was a mess. My family was a mess.”
“I look back on it now and sometimes it’s good for a child, if they’re in that age, to see everybody hurting, to see the life changing, to see what that death is,” he added. “So that’s one thing I regret. If I could go back, I would do that different.”
Eric went on to admit that he regretted how he reacted when his brother would talk about the struggles he was going through.
“I did a little bit of the, ‘You’re not doing the things you’re supposed to be doing,’ and it was a little bit of the ‘tough love,’ big brother thing. I wish I’d had more grace and been more compassionate, now,” he said.
“But at the time, you think, ‘Oh, come on, get your s**t together.’ I regret that now,” Church added.
The Brother Who Kept Him in Nashville
For longtime fans, one of the most revelatory parts of the interview was Eric’s account of how close he came to never making it in country music — and how Brandon was the reason he did.
Church had moved to Nashville to pursue music but said he was “treading water” for a few years. He reached a point where he was ready to give up and leave. His brother wouldn’t let him.
Brandon showed up at his doorstep one day and lived on his couch for a year so Eric wouldn’t leave.
“A year later, things started to kind of happen, but I don’t tell a lot of people that, but I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him doing that, because that was an ultimate commitment. He dropped everything,” Church said.
Eric went on to co-write the song “How ‘Bout You” off his 2006 debut album with his brother. They also co-wrote 2009’s “Without You Here” together.
A Grief That Doesn’t Fade
Near the end of the conversation with Cooper, Eric addressed something that anyone who has experienced loss understands — that grief doesn’t follow a clean timeline.
“It’s been eight years, and those [emotions] will come out of nowhere,” he said.
“You would think, after five, six, seven years, that wouldn’t happen, or they would be less frequent,” he added. “But I’ve found that they’ve been more frequent over the last few years.”
For fans who have followed Eric through the evolution of his music — from that debut album Brandon helped shape to the reflective, emotionally complex work of his more recent records — this interview offers a deeply human portrait of the artist they admire.
Behind every song, every arena show, and every carefully crafted album, there is a man who still misses his little brother.
Production of this article included the use of AI. It was reviewed and edited by a team of content specialists.
