I think Chief is ready for a break.

Eric Church is wrapping up his 46-date Free the Machine Tour tonight, and he’s already limping to the finish line thanks to a broken foot that he suffered earlier this week after losing a fight with a suitcase. But tonight, on the last show of the tour at Benchmark International Arena in Tampa, Florida, Church walked out on stage with another noticeable difference: He wasn’t wearing his signature shades.

Church is well known for wearing sunglasses during his shows, so it was no doubt a little jarring for the crowd to see him without them as he launched into “Hands of Time,” the leadoff track to both his tour and his Evangeline vs. the Machine album.

Luckily midway through the song a member of his crew fetched the sunglasses and handed them to background vocalist Joanna Cotten, who got them to their rightful place.

And midway through the show, Church explained what happened that caused him to walk out without the shades:

“I want to tell you about the shitshow that was the last minute of my life before I came through those doors. So I broke my foot a couple days ago, that’s why I’m in a boot. So as we’re going to the stage, everybody’s worried about, ‘Did you take Advil?’ Yes. ‘Did you do this?’ Yes. And then, ‘I don’t have my [in-ear monitors], do you have my ears?’ Yes, they’re here. 

And they’re still focused on the boot, they’re focused on these things. And as I was about to walk out, I looked at my wife who was doing most of this and I went, ‘You know what we forgot?’

And she looked straight at me and went, ‘What?’

And my beautiful southern wife looks at me and she goes, ‘Oh shit!’ And the doors open.”

Church humorously summed up everything that’s gone wrong the past couple days:

“Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”

Hey, after 46 shows, you gotta expect a few hiccups. That’s why you’ve got a killer crew, and Joanna Cotten, to save the day when you need it.

Church’s sunglasses have been a signature part of his look for a long time. It’s rare that you see him without them (I talked to him on the rooftop bar at Chief’s one night and he was still rockin’ the Ray-Bans long after the sun had gone down), and as he has explained in the past, they’re actually functional and not just for style:

“I wear contacts, and I’m 6’3”, so on these little stages they have these par can lights. I’ve always had a condition with my eyes where they don’t lubricate real well. It’s not a big deal… until you put a contact in and stand in front of par can lights. So every night, I was losing a contact, I was losing both contacts.

I was blind half the show. This went on for a while. Finally, one of my band members said, ‘Hey, have you thought about wearing shades tonight?’ Nobody cared. There were 15 people there. Nobody was at these shows. So my band member said, ‘Put the shades on.’ So I did it, and I kind of… it worked. I didn’t lose my contacts. It shielded the heat.”

As someone who also wears contacts and is constantly blinking in the sun and around bright lights to keep them from drying out, I get it.

Luckily, after tonight, Church won’t have to worry about forgetting his sunglasses on stage for a little while.