Church said he's active on stage and likes to stomp and march around while he sings, which is what he was doing during a show at the Syracuse, N.Y., state fair.
"It was a concrete stage, and over the course of the show, I broke a bone in my foot," Church said. "The problem was, I didn't know I had broken the bone, so I played two more shows afterward, and ended up hurting the rest of the foot trying to cover for that bone."
He got fitted for crutches and traded in his cowboy boot for a medical one, but Church insisted his career would continue.
"The first five or six shows I went out on crutches and even played on a stool," Church said. "When you see our shows, they're high energy, and I know that the crowd has a certain expectation of what they want the show to be, and I was concerned that we may not be able to live up to that. But I was blown away, I don't know whether the crowd felt sorry for me and gave me a little extra, but some of the best shows we've had is when I just sat there on the stool and let those guys do their thing."
Soon enough, Church ditched the crutches and wore only his medical boot on and off the stage. A couple of weeks later, however, he was using crutches around the BMI Awards' red carpet, with his foot tightly wrapped in what looked like a cast.
He said he had re-injured himself on stage, "and now it's angry. So I'm off it for a bit."
"When I was in the boot, something, I don't know, on stage turned or did something, and here I am," he said.
Church said his busy schedule makes it difficult to follow the doctor's orders and let his foot heal. He said he's been playing five or six shows a week, leaving little time for him to be off his feet nursing the broken bone.
"So I'm just going to keep playing, and it will either fall off or heal at some point in time," he said. "That's my plan. Not a good plan, but it's my plan."
