Luke Combs on becoming a dad, Ed Sheeran and his new song, "Doin’ This"

Things have changed since the last time Luke Combs was in the UK. Superstardom, a global pandemic, marriage, and now, dad life. He and his wife Nicole are expecting a baby boy in the spring.

“Part of the covid baby boom, there’s so many pregnancies here in Nashville.” Luke jokes. Thomas Rhett, Mickey Guyton, Taylor Dye and Brett Young have welcomed a child in the last year. Going to a Luke Combs show, you know to expect a good time. But what can we expect from Luke as a father?

“I would love to have them out as much as they want to. I don’t want to be a dad that’s not around or the dad you see on tv and go, oh that’s my dad, family’s important to me. I’d like to be the guy throwing the football to them, you know what I mean?”

But baby Combs won’t be hanging on the tour bus right away. “I probably won’t bring my kid on tour at the very beginning because it would be really hard but my wife comes to almost every show. I enjoy her company and she likes being out there. That will probably change a little bit with the baby.

Speaking of changes, going from small town North Carolina, to headlining C2C: Country to Country Festival this March, does it still blow Luke’s mind how far he’s come?

“You end up in all these places you never thought you’d be,” Luke tells Absolute Radio Country’s Baylen Leonard - who’s from just across the border in Tennessee. “I’d never been on an aeroplane until 2015. Now we’ve been to Europe three or four times, Australia twice, Canada, Mexico and played in every US state. It’s wild.”

Due to covid, C2C has been pushed back twice, so Luke has been waiting as long as the fans to finally return to the UK. “We’ve been looking forward to those shows for so long.”

Luke is also looking forward to eating British food again. “The English breakfast will be good. Beans for breakfast doesn’t freak me out. It’s not something I'd do here but when in Rome. Black pudding is good, dude. It’s just sausage, let’s be real.”

Ah yes, the UK, where our greatest assets are black pudding and Ed Sheeran, who Luke Combs is friendly with. They were spotted hanging out backstage at C2C in 2018.

“I’ll definitely shoot him an email and see if he’s around but he’s a great dude. We were going to write together but then covid happened. But hopefully one day. I think he’s got a lot on right now. We hung out last time, but he wasn’t on an album cycle. I think he’s doing 55 stadiums just in Europe.”

Singing, writing and performing isn’t so much a job as it is a calling for Combs. Which is the theme of his new song, “Doin’ This”. “Not only are you getting paid to do this thing that you would probably do for free anyway, getting to do it with people you like. Go on trips with your songwriter buddies and the wives. Not everybody gets to do that. It’s something that I'll never take for granted.”

“I love singing and writing songs. It's fun, playing shows especially. Gives me an opportunity to get out of my own head a little bit. It’s something I've always been kinda good at. It’s fun to be good at something, everybody knows that, whether it’s something you do for a living or in your spare time.”

There’s no denying that Luke Combs has a job most people would dream of. But did he ever work a slightly less glamorous job?

“My first job was a place similar to Chuck-E-Cheese - but way bigger. They had go-karts and laser tag. I did two different stints in that joint when I worked there in high school. It wasn’t the best job in the world but it wasn’t pouring asphalt. There were so many arcade games, if you were working on the bumper cars, they made the same sound effects for hours and hours.”

“It was so popular the best gig was working the parking lot on Saturdays. Go-karts were tough, that was the most popular thing. Indoor and outdoor. Electric and gas. You had to know how to fix two different kinds of go-karts. It went out of business about 2 years ago. “

Knowing all too well what is was like to work a job you’re not truly happy in, Luke changed his tour manager, Ethan’s life when he met him four years ago.

“Ethan was working at Boot Barn in the mall, in Nashville. This was after I released hurricane but i didn’t have a record deal or anything like that. My manager and I went in there, I needed some boots, we got talking to him and he was super nice and said he liked my song. He was about 24 at the time and moved to town wanting to be a tour manager. He also worked for another artist as an assistant tour manager whenever they needed somebody.”

“Then his boss comes up and says don’t go stealing my best employee. So of course I did, when she said that. She should have told me he was terrible. He’s been working for me ever since. He was with me in the van, now he’s riding around in a giant 360 tour at 28-29 years old. If you hate your job but do it well, that says something about your character. About your work ethic. I have a few guys like that. Once you give them a job they really like, they’re even better.”

Surrounding himself with longtime friends and colleagues he can trust is the key to keeping Luke grounded, when he could let fame get to his head.

“People who are willing to challenge your ideas and people who are willing to stand up to you. Having people who have been around for a long time, they’re willing to fight for what’s right. Not everything I say is always right, that can be a challenge for some artists, if you have a team that’s a revolving door and always afraid of losing their job they’re not willing to stick their neck on the line to make things better.”

Listen to Baylen Leonard weekdays from 9am-1pm with the No Repeat Guarantee and every Sunday afternoon from 4pm with The Front Porch Show

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• Nashville
• luke combs
• Country Music
• C2C
• ed sheeran