Luke Combs Remains Unchanged by His Success
Luke Combs has had numerous successes in his first year as a major label country star, but remains humbled and unchanged by it all.
It’s been a whirlwind year for Luke Combs. The North Carolina native had his first No.1 hit with “Hurricane,” from his freshman chart-topping This One’s For You album, not to mention garnered his first-ever CMA Award nomination, for New Artist of the Year. But for Combs, who is too busy working to dwell on his recent successes, not much has really changed for him.
“There are a lot more people showing up to the shows,” the humble singer tells Sounds Like Nashville. “There were obviously a lot of people coming out before. It’s been good. It’s been great. Obviously the album’s done really well for us. We’ve just been out playing a lot of shows. Nothing’s really changed in that sense. We were out playing shows before, three, four, five days a week. So it’s just kind of standard procedure. Just more people know me more, I guess. That’s the only difference.”
Asked if he was surprised by the success of “Hurricane,” which stayed at the top of the charts for two weeks, Combs says he already knew the song was a hit long before it hit the airwaves.
“I don’t think I was surprised by it,” says Combs. “I had it out for so long, and saw how people that were coming to our shows had taken a liking to it. I knew all it needed was the extra exposure. It wasn’t like, ‘Well I didn’t think if it got on the radio that it wouldn’t do well,’ because I already knew it was doing so well without the help, so that was just that added thing, that little push it needed to get in front of everybody. That was the biggest help with the radio exposure, so I think it was kind of to be expected. I don’t mean that in a cocky way at all. I had just been out playing so much. When there’s 500 people singing along before I had a record deal, I knew if more people heard it, it would be more of the same.”
Combs will have plenty of opportunities to perform “Hurricane” and his latest single, the Top 10 hit, “When It Rains It Pours,” this fall, when he headlines his own Don’t Tempt Me With a Good Time Tour. For Combs, what he is most looking forward to is getting the chance to perform in front of even larger crowds and earning even more fans.
“Pretty much the whole thing sold out almost instantaneously,” Combs reveals. “I think within two weeks the whole tour was sold out. Billy Bob’s I think is the only show that’s not sold out, but that’s the biggest place we’re playing. That’s been the biggest difference for sure, is the radio exposure. Album sales, I’ve definitely noticed an exponential increase in attendance for sure.”
With his name in the top spot, and his first chance as a headliner, most artists would have at least a little bit of trepidation. Thankfully, Combs isn’t most artists.
“I’m not nervous about it at all,” admits Combs. “We’ve played so many shows. It’s kind of what we do at this point. And so, obviously it’s all pretty much sold out, so there’s nothing to be nervous about there, if people are going to show up. We’re just excited to go out and build our own show. We’ve spent essentially this entire year as an opener. We’ve been out with Brantley [Gilbert] since February, and still are doing that until the end of September, when that tour finally ends. We’re doing a lot of festivals, so we’re doing shorter sets every night. We’re excited to finally have our own production out and building a show. We’ve never really done that before, as far as bringing our own lights out and set carts. Building that has been the biggest difference for us. We’re excited to get out there and present ourselves as a headliner officially for the first time this fall.”
Meanwhile, the 27-year-old is already looking ahead to his sophomore album, and reveals he has most of the songs completed for his next set of tunes.
“I’ve got the songs written,” shares Combs. “I would hope it would be pretty similar. Obviously I’ve had a lot of success with this album so far, and hopefully that keeps happening. A lot of the songs are all stuff that I’ve written and with essentially some of the same guys. We wrote so much in between recording this album and now that it’s like, up until this album came out I hadn’t written a lot recently, but I had so much backlog stuff that I had written in the year since this album came out. I had written so much. And so, it will be good. It’s all going to be the same kind of stuff. Just honest music. That’s kind of what I call it. Country music, honest music.”
A list of all of Luke Combs’ upcoming shows is available on his website.
