On May 9, North Carolina singer-songwriter Eric Church did what he does best. He picked up his guitar, and he created a moment for the graduating class at UNC-Chapel Hill they will never forget.
He talked to the graduates about what it is like when life is out of tune.
And he talked to the graduates about the six strings of a guitar and how to get life back in tune. His own riff on string theory includes faith, family, love and partnership, ambition versus resilience, community, and individuality.
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With every string, Church acknowledged just how hard this life is.
“The people who tend to their faith in ordinary seasons do not come undone in extraordinary ones,” he said talking about the low E string. “The world will try to untune this string,” he cautioned.
“Somewhere in that crowd is someone who has loved you longer than you’ve been easy to love,” said Church on family. The A string, he said, is where the music and life starts to get warm. “Call your people,” he said. “The A string is not a holiday string. It’s an everyday string. Protect it.”
The D string, Church said, is the heart of the chord, full of body and soul. He said it represents what the right spouse or partner brings to your life. “Find your best friend,” he said. “Choose them wisely and then love them fiercely.”
Ambition and resilience live on the G string, said Church. “I want you to want things,” he said. “The world has more than enough people standing at the edge of their own potential.”
The B string is about community, according to Church.
Your generation faces a temptation no generation before has ever faced. The temptation to perform for everyone and belong to no one. To be globally visible and locally invisible. To have thousands of followers and no one knows actually where you live.
Resist this.
Plant yourself somewhere. Put down roots with the full intention of growing there. Learn the actual names — not user names — of the people around you.
Volunteer. Coach the team. Build the thing your community needs even if the Internet will never see it.
Generosity is not something you do after you make it. It’s how you make it.
— Eric Church
The high E string, Church said, is the “one most easily bent by outside pressure.” He talked about all the people and all the pressures graduates will face that threaten their individuality. “Do not let them touch your string. You were made uniquely, wonderfully, distinctly,” he said.
He said the difference between a life that sounds like music instead of noise is the capacity to stop, listen, and tune up.
And then Eric Church traded his black sunglasses for a pair that was Carolina blue, and he sang his song, beloved across our state, “Carolina.”
Chief Cares, Hurricane Helene, and home
Church practices his own B string on generosity and community.
Chief Cares is the nonprofit founded by Church and his wife Katherine in 2013 and led by John Blackburn, who serves as executive director. Many of you know Blackburn from EdNC’s coverage of the N.C. State Board of Education, where you can find him serving our students and our state.
Chief Cares broke ground in April 2025 on its first housing development to support families displaced by Hurricane Helene. Right beside Church on his 100th day in office was Gov. Josh Stein.
The development, called Blue Haven, is located in Avery County — an area close to Church’s heart, according to this press release.
“This is a place my family and I are proud to call home,” said Church at the groundbreaking. “Mountain people, my people.”
In the wake of Helene, which devastated parts of western North Carolina in September 2024, Chief Cares shifted its mission to address a growing need: keeping people in their communities after disaster strikes by providing families with a path to stability, homeownership, and dignity.
Blue Haven will offer about 45 homes with one-, two-, and three-bedroom floor plans.
Later in 2025 in June, Blackburn met with a group of philanthropists and other leaders at DTs Blue Ridge Java in Spruce Pine, which had to relocate after the storm while its storefront was repaired after flooding. That conversation was one of many that is leading to another path to stability and dignity for western North Carolina: good jobs.
‘You did great kid’
At the end of Church’s commencement address, he said, “The world does not need another cover song. It needs an original.”
In the aftermath of Helene, a younger group of singer-songwriters from Avery and Watauga counties banded together to make meaning of life in Appalachia, which was too often too hard long before our 1,000-year storm.
Represented by WME and signed to Lost Highway in 2026, Cigarettes@Sunset “channels the rugged beauty and resilience of their mountain roots into every performance,” according to this website.
Frontman Garrett Dellinger, who grew up in Lick Log and attended Avery High School, lost his mom in 2021.
From loss to drug use to self-harm to the reaction of their generation to the politics of our day — “this country needs a facelift,” they sing in “Rewind” — this High Country band reminds us that all too often our kids aren’t just missing out on Church’s string theory, they are missing out on the most basic of affirmations.
Let’s not pretend the world ain’t caving in.
I was a young guy. I was dumb. A soul full of rage.
I was a young guy. I was dumb. Didn’t know how to change.
Hear me out before I drown.
If somebody could have just said, “You did great kid.”
— Cigarettes@Sunset’s “Great Kid“
Kids can be challenged by life and great at the very same time. Educators often know this better than parents.
These public school kids are my great kids. My son, Wells, plays bass, and calls this band his chosen family.
As their song “Appalachian Raised” is released Friday, May 29, our family is headed to Ireland for their first international tour opening for another High Country band, Rainbow Kitten Surprise.
They are anxious, scared, and thankful, says Dellinger, who also writes, “IDK man everyone always told me growing up that being a songwriter/musician was impossible.”
This graduation season, please reach out to your own great kids — both those that are graduating and those that are not.
Hear what they are telling us.
And let’s find a way to honor what is hardest about their experience of life and help them find their way to believing in Church’s string theory.
Garrett, you are doing great kid.
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