One of the most famous stories in country music from the last two decades involves Eric Church, Taylor Swift, and Rascal Flatts.

If you’re a country music fan — and if you clicked on this article there’s a good chance you are — you’re probably familiar with the story.

But if you’re not, it’s essentially this: Church was an opening act in 2006 for Rascal Flatts on their headlining tour. He was eventually kicked off the tour because he kept playing too long and was replaced by Taylor Swift, who was just 16 at the time.

The last straw came when Church went well over his allotted time during a concert at Madison Square Garden. But the drama really started at the concert in the previous stop on the tour: Knoxville.

Eric Church details the Taylor Swift Rascal Flatts story on ‘Bussin with the Boys’

Church joined Will “Scrimp” Compton and Taylor Lewan on Bussin with the Boys this week and shared the Rascal Flatts tour story.

“When I say I played too long, I had like 15 minutes, and the crowd was good, and I would go a little longer,” explained Church. “When I would go a little bit longer, there would end up being more rules the next night. And I was the personality that when there were more of those [rules] that weren’t there initially, I would break those. And then there were more — it was just an unsustainable kind of thing.

“And there was some pettiness — we were all younger — but there was some pettiness that was involved. So we had played Thompson-Boling Arena in Knoxville, and the next night was Madison Square Garden. And some things were done at Thompson-Boling that I thought were unfair to a band (Church’s band) that had been out there six days a week prior. And we had come in there [after] not sleeping, and we had to go through some things — I’ll leave some of the details of this out. But we go to Madison Square Garden, which is a union-controlled event, and there were some things that went on there that were set up in a way that penalized us. So going into that night, I decided that we were going to follow none of the rules, and we were going to play our entire set — knowing that it’s a union-based arena. So the longer I go, the shorter they have to play — because I know there’s an end time. I’ve done the math. So as we went on that night, we play for like 45 minutes and the lights were turning off. That’s where it all came to a head.”

“I was supposed to play with them the next week, and I got a call from a young new artist that was doing really well at the time, and she was really sweet, and she had replaced me. Her name is Taylor Swift. She had replaced me, and she was great. And she said she hoped there’s no bad blood… But she was great. And she said, ‘I want to make sure we’re good,’ and I said, ‘No, we’re great’. I didn’t even know I’d been fired at that time. Taylor told me that I’d been fired. I was like, ‘Well, that’s good to know.’ I was gonna be there next week, but whatever, we won’t be there now.”

Church went on to say that since he had some free time because he wasn’t on the tour anymore that he went to each city Rascal Flatts played in for the rest of the tour and played at a bar next to the arena and called it the “Me and Myself Tour” (the Rascal Flatts tour was called the “Me and My Gang Tour).

Swift famously gave Church her first gold record as a thank you for “playing too long” on the Rascal Flatts tour.

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Swift was going to be a superstar no matter what, but her career got a bit of a boost early on thanks to whatever went down in Knoxville in 2006 when Church opened for Rascal Flatts (hopefully one day Church shares those details).