Newcomer Luke Combs Finds Success In Being Himself

26-year-old Asheville, NC native Luke Combs has been working at his dream of becoming a country music artist for years. Since he was a young kid, Combs found himself constantly performing and trying to be in the spotlight.

“I had performed my whole life really. From chorus in middle school all the way up to the end of high school. In college, I was in some different vocal groups and stuff like that. It was just something that I enjoyed doing and felt like I was good at,” Combs recently told Sounds Like Nashville. “That part of it just kind of came naturally to me. If you’d have told me ten years ago that this is what I’d be doing, I’d have told you that you were crazy. But now, I can’t see myself doing anything else.”

The singer admits that he lost interest in the genre for a period of time since he couldn’t relate to many of the current songs at the time. But he credits Eric Church as an inspiration to get back into country music after a friend brought a copy of the superstar’s album Carolina to his dorm room (note: Combs and Church attended the same college — Appalachian State University in Boone, NC).

“A buddy of mine walked into my dorm room with a CD and was like ‘This guy went to App, check it out.’ It was Eric Church’s Carolina. I listened to it and was like ‘man, this guy is really good.’ I went back and listened to his first album and dove back into the ten years of country music that I had missed.”

After delving back into the years of music and miscellaneous records he had missed, Combs’s mom encouraged him to pick up a guitar (“Kenny Chesney didn’t learn guitar until he was like 21,” she said.), which he picked up naturally and ultimately let him to move to Music City.

“From there, I started playing gigs. The next summer, I moved to Charlotte and lived with my grandmother so I could play open mic nights and stuff like that,” he explained. “I did that awhile and then went back to school and played of my first gigs in Boone. It all kind of blossomed from there. I started writing songs and playing three or four nights a week. One thing led to another and I ultimately made the decision to move out here to Nashville. It’ll be two years in September.”

Combs has spent the last two years honing his craft and touring the country, playing nearly 200 shows a year. He even released a six-song EP, which features his single “Hurricane.”

“I don’t know how I’ve never told this story, but the way it all kind of came to fruition was I was working on the six-song EP with my producer Scott, who has produced the new album as well. I said ‘look man, I’ve run out of money to do this EP. I’ve run out of money.’ So the vocal track on ‘Hurricane’ is the scratch vocal from the tracking session,” he said with a laugh. “I was like ‘I’ve got to get this song out and I’ve got to sell it because I need the money to get the rest of the EP out.’ That was kind of just the small world of how it came as a single was really kind of dumb luck. It was like ‘oh, I’ve got to throw this out there. I hope that people like it. I think people are going to love it.’ And that’s kind of how it came to be. It just crossed seven million on Spotify. It’s going great. I’m so thankful for that.”

The success of the single allowed him to release the rest of the project and has since allowed him to work on a full-length project.

“I co-wrote all 12 songs on the album. I just love writing songs and I think for me, as a fan of music, nothing against cutting songs, I would cut a great song if I heard it, but I just had the songs and I was like ‘let’s do this,’” he said. “When I go and see a concert, when I watch somebody and say ‘okay, well this guy wrote everything, I feel like I’m really connecting with that guy because those are his thoughts that he’s put down and turned into a song.’ I really enjoy that aspect of music so I’m trying to bring that to what I’m doing.”

It seems that Combs’ songwriting is connecting to fans everywhere because he typically sees entire audiences singing his songs right back to him.

“People are singing back everything. It’s insane. We go and play a town we’ve never played and there’s 350 people there, 400 people there, and they know every word to everything, from stuff that’s three or four years old. It’s wild to see how many people out there are digging into the old music and listening to the new stuff and asking about the album. It’s just super cool.”

Having people relate to his music pushes the rising star to continue to write and record. But most of all, it validates his effort to remain as honest and open about his life as possible.

“My sound is just really who I am,” he claimed. “It’s not anything that I’m trying to chase. I’m not trying to be different or special or anything like that. It’s really just the songs became what they are because that’s what I think they needed to be.”

Fans can check out Combs’ This One’s For You EP on Spotify. He’ll spend the rest of the year on tour with shows nearly every weekend through November. Keep up with him on his website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.