{"id":1301456,"date":"2018-12-14T10:30:09","date_gmt":"2018-12-14T17:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cmt.com\/news\/?p=1801668"},"modified":"2018-12-14T10:30:09","modified_gmt":"2018-12-14T17:30:09","slug":"luke-combs-the-year-end-qa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/music-news\/luke-combs-the-year-end-qa\/","title":{"rendered":"Luke Combs: The Year-End Q&A"},"content":{"rendered":"
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by Alison Bonaguro<\/a><\/span> 19m ago<\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n

If anyone owned 2018, it was Luke Combs.<\/a><\/p>\n

He headed into this year with a second No. 1 song, and he\u2019s ending it with a Grammy nomination. And in between? He released three more bona fide country hits, won a CMA Award, wrote a love song for his girlfriend, proposed to her, headlined a tour, bought a house, and became a household name in all the households that appreciate genuine country music.<\/p>\n

When Combs reflects on the bucket list of a year he\u2019s had, he cites humbling gigs, a push from his ex-girlfriend and his ten-year hiatus from country music as the main reasons he is where he is. Our conversation \u2014 right before he took the stage at Chicago\u2019s WEBG Country Christmas show at Joe\u2019s Live \u2014 covered everything from Pearl Jam concerts with his mom to what he sees when he looks at that CMA Award on his shelf.<\/p>\n

Q. What were you doing exactly one year ago?<\/strong>
A. I remember feeling really good, because we were ending our tour in my hometown in North Carolina, in Asheville. And there were 6,500 people (at the U.S. Cellular Center). It meant so much, because I used to go to concerts there, I graduated from high school there, I\u2019d been to the Warren Haynes Christmas Jam there. That\u2019s where I saw Pearl Jam.<\/p>\n

Q. Wait. Pearl Jam? I don\u2019t know if I hear that influence in your music at all. Did you grow up listening to a lot of rock?<\/strong>
A. Kind of. I asked my parents for Pearl Jam tickets. I was so young that I had to go to the concert with my mom. I think I was only 11. It was right when I was getting out of country music and then rediscovering it.<\/p>\n

Q. I didn\u2019t know you\u2019d ever left. What made you turn away from country?<\/strong>
A. I felt a little disenfranchised, I guess. I lived in the mountains, and everyone was singing songs about the beach. It was that era. I love that stuff when I\u2019m at the beach, but not every day. So it meant that there were so many things I missed because I left. I missed the start of Dierks Bentley, the start of Brad Paisley, all that stuff.<\/p>\n

I was done with country when I was about 8 or 9 years old, around 1998. I\u2019d loved Brooks & Dunn, and I\u2019m still obsessed with their music. I listened to Clint Black. My first concert was Vince Gill. I grew up on that because that\u2019s what me and my mom listened to that in the car.<\/p>\n

Q. Then what?<\/strong>
A. When you\u2019re between 8-11 years old, I think, you just listen to what your parents listen to. It\u2019s not up to you. But then when I was about 13, I was like, \u201cI\u2019m a grown up now, so I want to listen to what I want to listen to.\u201d And Asheville has always had a super progressive music scene, so it just is not set up for people who like country music.<\/p>\n

Q. Now that I understand why you left, what was it that brought you back?<\/strong>
A. Eric Church. I was in Boone at Appalachian State University, and a buddy of mine brought his album up to my dorm room. And I was like, \u201cMan. You know I\u2019m not down with country right now.\u201d And he was like, \u201cBut this guy went to school here.\u201d
So I listened to Carolina<\/em> from 2009, and I fell in love. Then I went and bought his older one, Sinners Like Me<\/em>. I got obsessed with the songwriting and the artistry of everything he\u2019d done.<\/p>\n

Then I dove back in to everything I had missed. I had this entire vault of the decade of music that I could listen to that was out when I was between 8 and 18. Listening to all the stuff that I let fall through the cracks because I had stereotyped one thing? I felt guilty about that for a while. But I was always jamming with that, and people were like, \u201cWhy are you listening to this? It came out ten years ago.\u201d And I was like, \u201cI know, but I just heard it last week, and these songs rock.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q. So you and country music broke up, then got back together, and then after college you felt like that relationship was solid enough to make the move to Nashville?<\/strong>
A. The real reason that I made it to Nashville was that I had a little bit of a kick in the ass from an ex-girlfriend. We met in college, and she wanted us to move to Nashville. I don\u2019t know if I ever would\u2019ve otherwise. I get hesitant about big life-altering decisions like that. I get cold feet. But my lease was running out in Boone, so without her pushing me, I probably wouldn\u2019t be sitting on this bus right now talking to you. There are things that I think happen in your life for a reason.<\/p>\n

Q. And once you got to Nashville to chase that neon rainbow, was there a welcome mat waiting for you?<\/strong>
A. Not at all. The first eight months I was there, nobody would touch me with a ten-foot pole. I had meetings with publishers and labels, and people would say, \u201cMan, the songs just aren\u2019t that great.\u201d But it was my songs, it was \u201cHurricane,\u201d it was \u201cWhen It Rains.\u201d<\/p>\n

Q. Ouch. How did that initial rejection feel?<\/strong>
A. It was fuel for me. That motivated me so much. I don\u2019t ever want to get to the pinnacle of my success and gloat to anybody. That\u2019s not the right thing to do. I\u2019m proud of what we have, and I\u2019m proud of how it all happened. Those things that didn\u2019t work out for me probably mean that at the time, I wasn\u2019t ready yet.<\/p>\n

Q. What changed?<\/strong>
A. I met Chris Kappy. He\u2019s my manager, and he was the first person who really saw something in me. After I\u2019d moved to Nashville, I played shows in Georgia, one at the Rome Brew House in Rome and one at 40 Watt in Athens. That one was over Labor Day weekend in a college town, so there were maybe 80 people at the show. I remember the owner telling me not to let it bum me out, and I said, \u201cIt didn\u2019t bum me out. This is cool. Now 80 people know who I am.\u201d Then he told me that when Nirvana first played there there were only about 20 people. \u201cIf that\u2019s any indication of where you\u2019re headed, it\u2019s gonna be great,\u201d he said. But I met Kappy that night, and he told me he was going to quit his job in Atlanta, move to Nashville and manage me.<\/p>\n

Q. And now you have a whole team of like-minded people around you. Were those people your record label just assigned to you?<\/strong>
A. It\u2019s never really been about me, per se. So no. I\u2019ve always been about being able to provide for the team I have, and everyone on this team has been found in the most perfect way. A couple years ago, I was buying boots at the Boot Barn at Opry Mills. It was before I got my record deal. And I liked the guy selling me the boots. So I was like, \u201cYou\u2019re cool. What\u2019s your deal? You want to be our tour manager?\u201d Everything that I can do better, it means all of us get better.<\/p>\n

Q. And it is definitely getting better, right? Last year at this time you only had two big singles, and now you\u2019re the CMA new artist of the year and you have an all-genre Grammy nomination for best new artist of the year.<\/strong>
A. Awards are great. But I\u2019m not gonna sit in my house 25 years from now and look at my CMA Award and be like, \u201cMan, that award is what makes me feel like my life has been well lived.\u201d I know it\u2019s gonna be the memories I made with the people I care about.<\/p>\n

Q. Has the fame that\u2019s come along with all the success been hard to wrap your head around?<\/strong>
A. You can never prepare yourself for it. Never. You can have 100 people tell you about it, but you never truly understand. What it\u2019s allowed me to do, though, is buy a house, and help my parents out.<\/p>\n

About a year after I\u2019d moved to Nashville, I\u2019d saved up money in a coffee can and bought a new Ford Fusion. I literally had all the cash in this coffee can. I hadn\u2019t made any money off my music yet, but when we\u2019d play live shows, whatever money I had left over after I paid everyone else went into this coffee can. Every month, I\u2019d count it. At the time, I was driving a 2000 Dodge Neon with manual windows and manual locks. So any car with air conditioning was real nice for me. Then a year later I bought a truck, so I gave that Fusion to my parents. I even paid cash for my new truck. I hate being in debt, and I don\u2019t like owing people stuff. I just paid my student loans off this year. I\u2019d been paying it down very month, and when you\u2019re trying to be a singer-songwriters, that\u2019s really rough.<\/p>\n

Q. What lessons did you learn from some of your earliest gigs?<\/strong>
A. I never played the honky-tonks up and down Broadway, but I did those same kinds of gigs in North Carolina. And those are definitely the humbling experiences you need to have. Anyone who starts out at some kind of heightened level is missing out. You need to feel that whole thing of how hard it is when you\u2019re playing a room, a bar or a restaurant, there\u2019s about 250 people there, and most of them don\u2019t even want to hear you. They want you to turn it down. That\u2019s brutal.<\/p>\n

Q. You recently shared that you and your girlfriend Nicole Hocking are engaged. Do you think that being in love and then being a married man will change the way you approach that blank sheet of paper?<\/strong>
A. It already has. I wrote \u201cBeautiful Crazy\u201d about Nicole. We weren\u2019t boyfriend and girlfriend, but we\u2019d hung out. We were in no way dating. But I was falling for her so hard. I wrote \u201cBeautiful Crazy\u201d and played it for her. To me, that was the moment when it changed. It wasn\u2019t going to just be hanging out after that. I\u2019d never written a song that personal. But I don\u2019t think it will change things in the grand scheme of things. You\u2019re never gonna listen to one of my albums and think, \u201cThis guy is such a total love nerd.\u201d That\u2019ll never happen. I\u2019ll always love a good honky-tonk drinking song as much as the next guy.<\/p>\n

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