1 of 3 | Country music artist Eric Church performed his song “Johnny” and discussed the track’s meaning when he visited “The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon” Sunday. File Photo by Ian Halperin/UPI | License Photo
Country music artist Eric Church performed and discussed his song “Johnny” on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon Sunday.
Church, 38, appeared on the stage in a leather jacket and dark sunglasses, and was joined by a chorus of back-up singers as the track continued.
“Johnny, oh Johnny, where did you go? The devil’s broke out of Georgia and he’s feasting on my soul,” he sang.
“The hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life — we had a school shooting in Nashville at the Covenant School, and dropping my — I have two boys, 13 and 10 — and the day after that school shooting, dropping them off at school was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” he told Fallon, explaining the meaning behind the song.
“And I watched them walk in , and you feel — you feel helpless… I’ve never felt anything like that, and I didn’t know what to do. So, as they walk in the school, I just pulled in the parking lot, because I felt like I needed to be there, and as I’m sitting there, the interesting thing to me was I was lost in my own world, but I happened to look to my right and look to my left, and there were other parents sitting there, and we were lined up as you know, the wolves guarding the sheep,” he continued.
He said that in the background, “Devil Went Down to Georgia” by Charlie Daniels was playing.
“And I remember thinking, ‘The devil’s not in Georgia. He’s here.’ And I went home and I wrote ‘Johnny,'” he said.
“Johnny” was released Sept. 12.
