Luke Combs: "No one can agree to disagree."

Luke Combs is drinking beer. About an hour's drive from Nashville, it's about 10am on the vast 140-acre grounds of a country music star in Tennessee. But hey, he's probably getting it.

In just five years, Combs has gone from being virtually unknown to one of the most famous names in the country. Growing up in Ashville, a thriving art hub overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains in Carolina, this 32-year-old woman is a country of tragic events, sickness, her hometown and more that sells out football stadiums in seconds. Will be. His debut single "Hurricane" was a lovely national anthem that introduced the voice of his whiskey barrel to the United States and made him sign the engraving of Nashville in Colombia. He says he's vague, but for now he enjoys the ride.

"I didn't know I was going to do this," he tells me in a video call from the self-proclaimed "Man's Cave." The wall behind him is adorned with a framed sports jersey and platinum records. Next door is the house he shares with his wife Nicole and their little son Tech Lawrence Combs. Before the music, Combs thought he could be a detective ("But I don't think he's smart enough"). Then he went home during his college summer vacation and was tired of working in a local arcade. He found a guitar that his parents bought when he was 11 years old. “I got it because I had nothing else to do,” he says. "I enjoyed it."

It's part of his charm that Combs still seems so unfounded. Until a few years ago, he was less adventurous than the next three states. On the day his new albumGrowin’Upwas released, he went out into the garden and fed chickens like any other morning. A search for "Just Your Average Guy" in the dictionary will probably find a picture of Combs with a baseball hat sewn on his head.

"I'm happy to be the same person in many ways," he says in a moody way. "But that's what you need to do, because [by success] people treat you differently. Sometimes it's difficult, but I always love to sing and I can be pretty good at it. I'm lucky. ”

The industry took some time to understand the homely appeal of Combs. Label executives kicked him out of the office because he wasn't a buff and wasn't an auto-tuned crewer. He was rejected by thevoicebecause he lacked any kind of sobbing story. "My parents were playing gigs on a regular basis. My mother worked in a bank and my father was a maintenance man," he shrugs. Both his parents loved music, and Combs grew up in the sounds of Tom Petty, John Melencamp, Reed Zeppelin, and Garth Brooks.

His own sound sways and sways – he has the talent of hooks – but keeps the outlaw grit that keeps him to the right of the commercial. And then there is his composition. It's closer to Chris Stapleton's composition than the Florida Georgia line, the prince of Brocountry. He has a sweet wording-"I wanted to hit them like the chipper did / but I did it a little too late," he said, "used to hope I was." Sing in "Ta"-It's an organ and electric guitar solo that surprises you in Hammond.

Growin'Up, his third album is the best career to playfully quarrel between his responsibility as a new husband and father and his love for good times. .. It has a rebellious singing voice similar to his 2019 hit "Beer Never Broke My Heart", in the form of "Ain't Far from It" and "Any Given Friday Night". Grammy Award-winning Country Queen Miranda Lambert will be joining the bittersweet "Outrunning Your Memory". Perhaps the most inspirational is "in the middle of somewhere", and Combs celebrates his most reassuring "sweet, slow and simple" way of life.

"People are very proud to be here," he says. "They're probably in this place that most people haven't heard of. For example, when a friend came out of Nashville to write a song here, they said," Man, where he lives in the middle. It will be like "I'm out". Of ideas. A little tribute to this place. I think it really changed the way I think about many things. In the past, he was dissatisfied with his sneaky attitude towards the South. "Being in the South, the joke is always that we speak slowly, that's a little bit," he says. The same is true for country music. "Especially when I was growing up, it was like," Oh, I'm listening to all countries except. " I couldn't fully understand it. ”

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In recent years, country music has been scrutinized in a difficult political situation, and many artists are still categorically refusing to take the risk of alienating more conservative fans. A good example: Taylor Swift, who jumped from the country to pop a few years ago, still gained international attention when he opposed Trump in 2020. In a documentary released that year, she said, "Iraq. "Dixie Chicks" was virtually expelled from Nashville in 2003 after blaming George W. Bush in the war.

When Combs claimed that her independent song "The Great Divide" in 2021 was not political, she seemed to be aware of it. Still, it evoked a fierce reaction from his fellow artist, Margo Price. Margo Price resurfaced the Combs photo on a guitar with a Confederate flag sticker, suggesting he was a fake. Shortly thereafter, he apologized in a panel with country singer Maren Morris and music critic Unpowers.

"When I was young, that was the image I associated with to mean something else," he said at the time. "I grew up as an artist and the world has changed dramatically in the last five to seven years, so I now realize how painful that image is to others, regardless of what I thought at the time. .. "Morris said he had to educate himself about why the flag was a problem. "I'm from Texas, but I didn't know what the rebel flag meant until I was probably 15 or 16 years old."

Today, Combs I regret using the image of the flag, but it seems a little angry that the song ignited such an ironic line. In his apology last year, he talked about his belief that "people can change," but if both sides have the understanding and patience, he seems to have said. "Everything gets very controversial and hot, which is always very frustrating for me," he says now. "I think what makes our country great is that people have their own opinions and the ability to disagree. Now everyone is very enthusiastic about everything, and that's it. It adds to the tension that was happening. "

For him and his co-author, the Grammy Award-winning bluegrass musician Billy Strings, the song" agrees to everyone's opposition. " I can't even do it. " Combs sings with a warm and intricate selection of acoustic guitars, banjos and mandolin: It evoked a climate where everyone had to have the strongest opinion, the last word. "It certainly upset some people," he says of his reaction to the song. "But that's what it is. I'm not afraid to confront what I think is right."

"Growin" Up has been released