Eric Church Shares a Memorable Halloween … as Big Bird?!

Eric Church looks back fondly on his most memorable Halloween, during his first year of college. As Halloween approaches, the country singer recalls one specific Halloween celebration in Chapel Hill, N.C., on Franklin Street with his college buddies.

"I had a bunch of friends that went to University of North Carolina, and we didn’t have costumes and didn’t realize until we were on the way that we had to have costumes," he recalls. "So, we stopped at a costume place in Greensboro, N. C. It’s Halloween, so there’s a run on everything and couldn’t find anything."

So Church and his friends drove around town in search of a store where there were costumes they could purchase for the festivities.

"We end up finding this hole in the wall place, but they had the full-costume, Sesame Street outfits. The real deal. The real ones [with] feathers and fur. We were Elmo, Cookie Monster and I was Big Bird, and the Big Bird was the actual Big Bird. It’s about 7 foot 4, and you looked out of the body and then you had these straps that went on, since the head was a lot higher."

Church admits that there is often much beer involved during the Franklin Street Halloween party, and by the end of the night the straps on his Big Bird costume had broken so the head would pivot.

"I would be walking one way and the head would be facing the other, and it just became this funny . . . I didn’t know the head was on backwards. I had no idea. I see out of the body, so I’m just walking around and people were talking to my ass end," he relates with a laugh. "The whole time people’d come up and start talking and go, ‘Hey, turn around.’ And I’d turn around, and they’d go, ‘No, turn around.’ It was a mess. That year, there was no other Big Bird on Franklin Street."

While Church's days of dressing as Big Bird for Halloween may be over, he can enjoy the holiday through his two sons' eyes this year.

See Country Stars' Halloween Costumes