There’s a long list of potential problems that any bar-owner has is mind when they’re gearing up to open their new establishment. But their country superstar friend getting arrested on felony charges after throwing a chair off the bar’s roof probably isn’t one of them.

However, that’s exactly what happened to Eric Church, when Morgan Wallen tossed a chair off the sixth-story roof of Chief’s, Church’s downtown Nashville hot spot, just three days after its grand opening in April 2024.

In a new interview with the Los Angeles Times, Church recalls how Wallen came clean to him about the incident that same night.

“Morgan called me from the street after it happened,” the singer remembers. “I was watching college basketball, and he said, ‘Hey, this just happened.’ I said, ‘Uh-oh.'”

Church says he knew that Wallen was about to be at the center of a major scandal. “I knew it was gonna be noisy, and it was — it was damn noisy. The next. day on Fox News, the No. 1 story was Morgan throwing a chair, and No. 2 was Israel and Gaza,” he relates.

• Wallen threw a chair off the roof of the six-story bar on Apr. 7, 2024. The chair landed just a few feet from where police officers were standing.
• He was arrested on three felony charges, and the case was open for the better part of a year.
• In December 2024, Wallen pled guilty after a plea deal reduced his charges down to two misdemeanors.
• The singer avoided jail time, but was sentenced to spend seven days in an alcohol education center and serve two years’ probation.

Read More: A Timeline of Morgan Wallen’s Legal Troubles + Controversies

Though he was worried about the coming scandal, Church wasn’t angry at Wallen over the incident.

“I used the old Billy Joe Shaver line on him: ‘I’m just an old chunk of coal, but I’ll be a diamond one day,'” he relates.

Wallen made amends the right way, Church goes on to say. “He went down [to Chief’s] and apologized to the staff, shook everybody’s hand. I was proud of him,” he continues.

It wasn’t the first time that Church has extended a second chance to the younger superstar, who he also duetted with on Wallen’s single “Man Made a Bar.” In 2021, as Wallen was dealing with another scandal — his racist slur controversy — Church condemned Wallen’s words as “indefensible,” but also sent him a note encouraging him to keep “hanging in there” and tell Wallen he was praying for him.

Read More: Morgan Wallen Reveals He Hasn’t Been in a Bar Since the Chair-Throwing Incident

Recent interviews with Wallen have indicated that he’s made some major lifestyle changes since his arrest at Chief’s and the legal battle that ensued.

Church has noticed positive change in his younger friend, too.

“It was actually a good thing for Mo,” he says now, referring to the chair-throwing incident. “I think that was a line for him, and he’s done really well since then — it was a thing he’s reacted positively to as a person.”