Putting his wisdom in writing. If you haven’t already, you need to take time to watch Eric Church‘s powerful commencement address that he delivered at the University of North Carolina last month. The North Carolina native – and die-hard Tar Heels fan – spoke to the graduating class at UNC, using his guitar strings as a metaphor for the things that are important in life: “When all six are in tune, the chords they make can stop a conversation cold, carry a broken person through the worst night of their life, or make a roomful of strangers feel for three minutes like they’ve known each other forever.  If one is off, the whole chord unravels. Not gradually, politely. The moment you strike it, you know. I believe your life runs on this principle.” Throughout the speech, Church compared his guitar strings to important pillars in life – faith, family, community, and maintaining your own moral compass. He spoke of the importance of finding the right partner and not comparing yourself to the best version of someone else that you see on social media. And he ended it with a performance of his own song “Carolina,” his tribute to his home state from his 2008 sophomore album. It was a powerful message to the graduates that immediately began taking off on social media, racking up millions of views and earning Church praise for delivering one of the greatest commencement speeches of all time. And during an appearance on the Bussin’ With the Boys podcast that dropped today, Church revealed that he heard from a lot of book publishers after the speech: “There’s been a lot. There’s been a lot of book publisher people.” I mean, when you have something that powerful, why not turn it into a book? So Church says that’s what he plans to do: “Yeah, we’re going to do a book I think. … It’s gonna be called ‘The Six Strings of Your Life.’ It’ll be the speech, it’ll be a little more, maybe, because there’s some color. I mean, it’s really eight chapters. You have a beginning. You have six chapters and then you have an outro.” Love that. Obviously Church has proven himself to be one of the greatest writers of our generation through his music, but his commencement speech showed off an entirely different style of writing that – unsurprisingly – is just as powerful. He also spoke on the podcast about how he came up with the speech, revealing that he had discarded his initial drafts and picked up a guitar – which is when the idea came to him: “I had some anxiety just about doing a commencement speech and struggled with it. I found out about it like eight or nine months before it happened and they asked me to do it. The chancellor asked me to do it and I said yes without really thinking about what that would entail. And I worked on it a long time. I could never figure out what it was. And actually, it was in a fit of frustration that I just threw a speech across the room that I was working on. It was generic. And I grabbed a guitar just to get away from it for a little bit. And then that’s where the idea started to to percolate. ‘What am I doing? I do this all the time. I need to figure out a way to use this.’ And that’s kind of where it started, you know, just with the concept. And then it did things that I didn’t – you know, you never think about that. I was only thinking about the room and doing a good job. I have such respect and love for Carolina. I was just trying to do the the right job there. And then it became became a thing.” It definitely became a thing – and it sounds like that thing’s about to become a book. If you missed the speech, it’s well worth your time. And here’s his full interview with Will Compton and Taylor Lewan on Bussin’ With the Boys: The post Eric Church Says He’s Going To Release A Book Based On His Powerful UNC Commencement Speech first appeared on Whiskey Riff.

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