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January 1, 2025 11 mins

"An insane blessing": Luke Combs on his country music stardom, chances of a NZ tour 

Luke Combs is a country music megastar. 

The 34-year-old is one of the biggest names in the world right now, consistently battling it out against Morgan Wallen for the number one spot.  

He’s broken records, gone platinum, and earned a range of awards, including three Grammy nominations.  

It all started when he dropped out of college to pursue his musical career, moving to Nashville and making it big. 

Combs told Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking that he got really lucky in having his career take off the way it did. 

“Yes, I worked really hard at it, but there’s a ton of luck involved as well,” he said. 

“I don't know how it never dawned on me until, until I picked the guitar up. Like, man, I could really, you know, maybe there's a chance that this could be what my life is, is gonna be.” 

While he doesn’t take his success for granted, fame was never quite what Combs was after. 

“I never put any pressure on myself to be a certain way or achieve certain things,” he told Hosking. 

“Anything beyond just being able to be happy and have a good life was always more than I had ever asked for.” 

 “To have ended up here is an insane blessing.” 

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Luke Holmes is the biggest name in country music. He
is the Fairy Tales story, dropped out of college, moved
to Nashville. The rest is full of Grammy nominations, records
broken in stadiums, full of fans. His new album is
Fathers and Sons and Luke Colmes as well as from Nashville.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Good morning, likewise, Bud, how are you?

Speaker 1 (00:15):
I'm very well. Indeed, let me catch up from last
time because we didn't talk when you were last here,
but you went I am told hunting and you went
to see the All Blacks. Taught me through the hunting.
First of all, how was it?

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Man?

Speaker 2 (00:27):
It was a lot of fun. It was a lot
of fun.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
We were in the South Island and man, it was
just really really beautiful down there. Never seen anything quite
like it, to be honest. Had so much fun. That
was at the beginning of our tour. We didn't even
played a show yet, so we kind of went and
did that. We did that first and it was gosh, man,

(00:50):
it was so much fun. We had such a great
time doing that.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
And your rugby experience, what position did you play and
how good were you?

Speaker 3 (01:00):
One in a three? So one or three depended on
depending on the game. To be honest, I mean I was.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
I was not bad. I wasn't great. You know, I
wouldn't have I wouldn't have made the I wouldn't made.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
The All Blacks by any any stretch of the imagination.
But I enjoyed it.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Man. I like to hit people.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Fair enough to I listened to your CEC song how
Big of Football? And when we say football, we mean NFL.
Now for a sec purposes college, I've been listening to
the SEC song. That's brilliant. How did that come about?

Speaker 3 (01:31):
Yeah, you're talking about the Petty Yeah, yeah, that came
about through you know, when they were putting that whole
project together, and it reached out to me to be
a part of that.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
And my mom.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
Is a massive Petty fan, right, I am, of course
by proxy.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
So that was always playing in our house growing up.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
And you know, when you're when you're you know, eight
or nine years old, you're like, you know, turn the
shit off, Like I don't want to hear it, you
know whatever. You know, anything your parents listen to is
not cool when you're you know, eight or nine years old,
And then after hearing it so many times, you kind
of fall in love with it. And I mean, obviously
I couldn't love you know, Petty anymore than yeah I

(02:18):
do now.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Right, you know, so I jumped at the opportunity.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
Man, it was easy. It was fun.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
It was you know, it was a really cool thing
to be a part of. And you know, to get
to get to tell my mom I was going to
do that. I think she was really excited about that.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
And it was fun. It's fun experience, fantastic.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
I want to talk about your junny in the moment.
But the other thing I noticed on you social the
other day, you were at the Bengals practice. This once
again is the NFL. Well, I hate you as a
Panthers fan, you're not a Panthers fan. And as being
a Panthers fan, you top of the Bengals practice.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Oh man, I'm a huge Panthers fan. For better or worse.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
We're the worst team in the NFL as of right now.
So I'm diehard Panthers fan. But we play, you know,
over here in the States, we play NFL stick right.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
So, as the.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
As the tour started getting towards the end here, we
just finished it up last weekend. But as the tour
kind of finished up, you know, that starting to get
into the beginning of the NFL season. So they were
actually just having practice, like just a regular practice. So
we were up there to play two shows in their
in their stadium. So that was something we did, and

(03:25):
we do that a lot, you know, if teams are
practicing or whatever, you know, I try to try to
take some folks over and watch it.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
You know, it's just.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
Something that not everybody gets to go to and not
everybody gets to experience.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
So it was cool, man, It's cool getting to go
do that.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
That's that's what I want to talk to you about
your journey. At what point or are you still in it? Well,
you're talking to Jama Chase, who if you're an NFL fan,
is as big as it gets, and you're not thinking
how lucky is this? How cool is all of this
that I just get to wander in and do this stuff.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
I mean, I definitely think about that anytime we get
to do to get to do anything right, like whether
it's go to a baseball game, or go to a
football practice or go to the Grammys. You know, I'm
always kind of aware of, you know, how insanely unusual
it is to get to to get to do those
things on a regular basis, and so it's.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Never lost on me.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
I think you you know, you get accustomed to anything, right,
like it be kind of become your normal of like, okay,
well you know we have access to this or to that,
And I think as long as that doesn't, you know,
change you as a person. You know, I think that
there's nothing wrong with it, right, you know, I'm no
different than anybody else.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
I'm just lucky. I got really lucky. I have a
really cool job.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
Yes I work really hard at it, but there's a
ton of a ton of luck involved as well. And
I'm I understand that as good as anybody, right, you know,
it can be it can be taken away as as
soon as it can be given.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Right.

Speaker 3 (04:50):
So I just try to appreciate, you know, every opportunity
that I have to do something special, and I also
try to have those opportunities and moments with people that
I care about to share those moments with them, you know,
because none of it would be fun to do by yourself, right,
you know, I think doing it with friends and with
family is is what makes it even more special.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
But I think that's true. Let's talk about you, Junie,
and how much of this is true. You seem to
me like this is the story. I moved to Nashville,
I got discovered, I became the biggest thing in the world.
I mean, there's got to be more to it than that.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
Yeah, I mean I think that's the uh, that's the
really boiled down, that's the chicken broth version of you know,
of the story. I guess that's the that's the children's
book version of the story, I guess, but yeah, it was.
It's you know, I'm thirty four now, so thirteen years
ago I taught myself how to play guitar as a

(05:41):
kid who was failing out of college. I think you
guys university probably as well. You guys call it over
there kind of in the in the process of not
doing very well in school there and enjoy and I
really enjoyed my time at school, but I didn't enjoy
the school part very much. It was kind of everything
that came with it. But that being the rugby and

(06:03):
the you know, the weekends and stuff like.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
That was always some of my favorites.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
But you know, it just I've been singing my whole life,
you know, so it just kind of made sense.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
You know.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
I always enjoyed singing, and I never really considered it
to be anything other than a hobby, right, you know,
it was never It was just something that I loved
to do and something that I felt like I was
good at.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
And I just never I don't know how.

Speaker 3 (06:33):
It never dawned on me until until I picked the
guitar up, like, man, I could really, you know, maybe
there's a chance that this could be what my life
is is going to be, like, you know, And once
I figured that out, you know, once I stumbled upon that,
I just had, you know, I had horse blinders on
men like that was just what I was going to do,
and nobody was going to stop me from doing it,

(06:53):
you know, And it wasn't that I was ever going
to be in the situation that I am now. I
think you'd be crazy to believe that. I think anybody
would be crazy to believe that.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
I think you have to.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
Be a little bit crazy to make it to this point,
to be completely honest, But I knew for sure that
I could live a happy life and make a living
and pay my bills, right, whether that was a one
bedroom apartment, you know, as long as when it rained
I didn't get wet, and you know, if I was sleeping,

(07:25):
you know, that's that's that would have been enough for me.
You know, everything else was always extra. So I never
put any pressure on myself to be a certain way
or achieve certain things, you know, because anything beyond just
being able to be happy and have a good life
was always more than I had ever asked for. So
to have ended up here as an insane blessing, and

(07:48):
you know I wanted a billion chants, right So, yeah, man,
I never take it for granted. But yeah, it's it's
more complicated than moved to Nashville. And you know, nobody
I didn't walk in the door at someplace and went, god.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
Dang, look at this good look at some bitch. Nobody
that didn't.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
And kepture. So I've been a country music fan my
entire life, right, So I Willie Nelson and Nancy Griffith
and all those sort of things country music, Emmy Lou Harris.
Yes they've been popular, but it's never been your popular.
It's not stadium popular. Encapsulate for us what you've been
able to do and how you've been able to do
it and why it's been that way.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Gosh, man.

Speaker 3 (08:33):
You know, I always tell people if I if I
knew the real answer to that, I would be selling
that instead of doing what I'm doing.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
You know. But I think it has something to do
with one. The genre is as big as it's.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
Ever been right now, Okay, So there's no doubt in
that sense that it's more popular than it's ever been.
I don't necessarily think that has anything to do with
me in particular. I think I'm the lucky guy that's
happens to be existing as a country singer at the
time where the genre is at kind of its peak

(09:06):
that it's ever been at and kind of just really
continuing to grow, to be honest. So I think there's
some element of that, you know, But it's a lot
of intent too, right Like the way we've toured for
the last seven or eight years has always been, you know,
it was intentional.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
You know.

Speaker 3 (09:23):
We've been to you know, we've been to Australia three
or four times. You know, we've been to and we
just went to our New Zealand for the first time
last year, you know, And so we've always been intentional
about wanting to you know, we look at you know,
we don't look at Australia, New Zealand or Europe or
Canada as a man, it'd be cool to go there
and play one show one time, you.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (09:46):
Like, we looked at it from the beginning as how
do we make this a place that people will want
us to come back to for as long as we
want to go back, right, And so there was always
intent in in touring, and I think that's really important.
I think having really long term goals is really really

(10:07):
important because you don't get to where we've ended up
now on accident. As far as the being able to
do the big shows and being able to go overseas
and being able to do big shows overseas, it was
all very very very intentional.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
Well all is. I hope you're enjoying it, And what
I want you to do is tell us you're coming
back to New Zealand because once it's not enough, as
I think you probably found out the first time around,
So you need to make some arrangements around that and
let us know when you're doing it.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
Oh absolutely, man, we're going to be back. We're going
to be back asap as soon as we can. You know,
we're excited to get back over. Obviously, last time we
were there, you know in Australia was the Women's World
Cup was going on at that time, and you know,
you guys were gearing up for the Rugby World Cup
to start I think maybe the month after we left,

(10:58):
and so yeah, we weren't able to get in any
any of the bigger venues and so that was kind
of a that was a little bit of a speedbump.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
So we had to you know, we had.

Speaker 3 (11:08):
To do multiple nights and smaller venues, and there was
still a ton of people that didn't get to Calm
I know that wanted to be there, and so we
definitely want to get back as soon as we can
and do some of those bigger shows for you guys
over there.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
Fantastic listen, a joy to meet and talk with you.
Go well, enjoy and let us know when you're coming
and we'll catch up.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
Then maybe, yes, sir Mike Wise, appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
Bud, there we go bloo coms out of Nashville this morning.
Feedback is what you would expect. But fathers and sons
is the element. It's brilliant. They're all brilliant. For more
from the mic Hosking Breakfast listen live to news talks
it'd be from six am weekdays, or follow the podcast
on iHeartRadio
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