Country ‘outlaw’ Eric Church comes to D.C.’s 9:30 Club

You can call Eric Church an outlaw country musician if you want — but it may not be an accurate depiction. This North Carolina singer and guitar player grew up with a deep affection for the stories told in country songs while loving the energy of AC/DC and other rock heavyweights.

“I’m not trying to be that,” Church said when asked whether he considers himself an outlaw country performer. “I’ve just done some things that make people put me in that category.”

Not that the guy who grew up in Granite Falls, N.C., who taught himself to play guitar at age 13 intended to win that moniker. After college, he headed to Nashville, Tenn., and soon had a contract with Sony Nashville and a 2006 debut album, “Sinners Like Me,” that won him critical and popular success.

Yet as Church moved along the road to the charts, he felt it was important to keep his songs as honest as possible.

“I go where the music takes me, and I don’t try to put it into a genre,” he said. “If I came out in the era of Waylon [Jennings] or Johnny [Cash] or Willie [Nelson], would I be considered an outlaw? Probably not. But I get that a lot.”

Take the song “Lotta Boot Left to Fill” off his 2009 album, “Carolina.” The lyrics — including “Get-ups, gimmicks, one-hit wonders that don’t stick/Pretty boys acting tough, boy bands give it up/and if it looks good on TV, it’ll look good on a CD/shape it up, trim it down, who gives a damn ’bout how it sounds?” — rubbed some the wrong way, he said.

Of course Church is taking a swing at musicians who write insincere songs and goes on to compare them with country greats including Jennings and Cash.

“People think I’m being self-righteous and I am poking fun at a lot of people in the industry,” he said. “But it’s tongue in cheek. I’m name checking Waylon, so I’m doing the same thing that I accuse them of doing.”

Although Church said many within his label and the industry didn’t want him to record the song, he wants to be true to the honesty in country music that first lured him to the genre.

That’s not new for him. After all, he’s the guy who wrote the song “Two Pink Lines” — a story about pregnancy scares — and included it on his debut album.

“I’m just trying to reach out, to be honest,” he said. “Maybe I am outlaw. I just don’t care. If people are passionately hating me … at least I’m invoking some sort of emotion.”