Luke Combs… the undisputed man of the people.
In a recent feature with Billboard, he opened up about his forthcoming world tour, his incredibly successful career in country music thus far, and how he’s managed to continue to put his fans first through it all.
And one example in particular came ahead of his recent stadium show at AT&T stadium in Dallas, Texas, which was the first stop on the aforementioned tour.
Luke has a fan club, The Bootlegger’s, which has different tiers and offerings, but it’s also the only way you can score a VIP meet and greet with Luke.
The coolest part about it is, it’s 100% free to his fans, and they’re chosen at-random ahead of every show.
How cool is that?
Luke told the outlet that it’s mostly that way because he’s always “felt really weird” about making people pay to meet him, plus, he loves that it gives him the opportunity to get “a real representation of who’s there”:
“I’ve always just felt really weird about, like, charging people to meet me. Maybe that’s just me feeling like, ‘Well, it’s not worth it.'”
He added that he knows there are plenty of fans who would never otherwise be able to afford something like that, because it’s not something he ever had the opportunity to do growing up, either:
“I just want to meet people who came to the show, whether it’s their first show or their 50th show.
It’s like people who would have never gotten the chance to meet me or could never have afforded it. Because I couldn’t have afforded that growing up.”
Luke’s longtime manager, Kappy, added that they even recently turned down a banker who wanted to pay $5,000 just to have a quick meeting with Luke backstage at the aforementioned Dallas show… and they turned him down:
“That’s not the type of people we want.
I’d rather have the guy who can barely afford to come to the show because that’s more of a real fan than you wanting a picture with Luke for your Instagram.”
Damn… how can you not love that?
Luke also said it’s important for his fans to truly understand that he doesn’t make decisions based on making money more off them, saying this is just one way to, ironically, put his money where his mouth is, so to speak:
“I always want my fans to understand that I’ve never made any decisions based off how much money I can get out of them.
It already costs so much to do anything, right?
I want them to love the music and feel like they saw a great show that someone put a lot of fucking thought into and did it at a price that was affordable to them.”
He admitted he probably could’ve made an exorbitant amount of money off doing some sort of mega VIP ticket for this current world tour, but that would be inauthentic and would probably come back to bite him in the long run:
“Could I have gone out and done super-mega platinum tickets at even more stadiums and made an assload of money? Probably so.
But I think eventually the fans will be like, ‘I’m not doing that again.’ “
Inject it into my veins, honestly… he’s just a breathe of fresh air.
You can watch more of the interview here:
His fourth studio album Gettin’ Old was just released last week, and I still can’t get that “Fast Car” cover out of my head… here’s hoping it might become an official radio single sometime this year:
