If you ever meet a person who says they don’t like Luke Combs, at least as a person, get yourself away from them as quickly as possible because that person is some sort of psychopath.
One of the biggest stars in country music made another appearance on the Meateater podcast and, like most of what Luke does these days, the conversations centered on fatherhood and ensure he’s raising his kids the right way.
Luke released his latest album, Fathers & Sons, back in June of last year and as made obvious by the title, it was heavily inspired by becoming the father to two boys, Tex and Beau, over the past couple of years.
While the podcast started by talking turkey regulations and wound up in the weeds of the music publishing business, the middle was all about fatherhood, especially raising children when you’re not a “typical” dad.
His sons are only one and a half and two and a half right now, so not yet old enough to understand what their dad does for a living, but Luke wants to keep it like that for as long as he can. It won’t be too long before he has to sit them down and let them in on the secret that not only is their dad a country music singer, but one of the most successful ones of all-time. In fact, Luke owns nearly 30% of diamond certified country songs, has two singles with over 1 billion streams on Spotify alone, and 16 of the 18 songs he’s released as singles have gone number one, including an insane run of 13 straight topping the charts.
So yeah, he won’t be able to keep that a secret for too long, but until then, he’s living as normal of a life as he can.
Even though the man has more money than most of us could wrap our heads around, he, his wife, and kids live in an absolutely normal house that keeps them all pretty much on top of one another. When he’s not on stage, he wants everything to be as typical as possible so his kids get the childhood they deserve:
“We live in a 2,000 square foot house, man. It’s two bedrooms, me and my wife have a room and then the boys share a room… We’re always close together, it’s always tight in there…
My life is so normal outside of when I’m playing show. Like I really don’t do a whole lot of anything other than I go play my shows and I come home and I spend time with my wife and my kids. And I do whatever work stuff I have to do when I’m home, whether that’s writing songs, which most of the time I’m going at my house, you know, with my friends and stuff, and I’m just there dude. I’m basically like in some ways another form of a stay-at-home parent when I’m not on the road.
And even when we’re touring the stadiums I’m only gone 3 days a week. So I’m home 4 days a week every week like full-time, like sun up sun down most days. Getting the kids up, changing diapers, doing baths, cooking dinners, cooking lunches, cooking breakfasts. That occupies a lot of my time but that’s what I want. I want my kids childhood to feel as normal as it can given the very strange circumstances that it will ultimately become.”
To be fair, I think I recall Luke saying in a different interview that they were in the process of building a house, I’d be willing to bet it’s slightly bigger than 2,000 square feet, but either way, the man could easily afford to buy a mansion right now, hire people to move all their stuff, and barely be inconvenienced by having to move again once the home is finished. He’s also been on record saying they don’t have a nanny at home… it’s him and Nicole.
I mean come on now, if that doesn’t tell you parenthood is pretty much the greatest thing on the planet than I don’t know what will. The man sells out enormous stadiums, playing to tens of thousands of fans, and he makes sure his life is set up to be there with his wife and kids even though he could be off doing pretty much whatever other objectively cool thing he wants to be doing.
Without a doubt, Luke Combs is one of the best guys in country music, both musically, and as a man.
This part of the conversation takes place around the hour and six minute mark, but might as well take in the whole thing because it’s a great one.
