Throwing it way back with this one.
Luke Combs is a global country music superstar, who racks up #1 single after #1 single, sells out huge venues all over the world, right up there with Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan, he’s the biggest thing in the business.
But he got his start in the college town of Boone, North Carolina, when he was in college at Appalachian State University back around 2011-ish. That’s when he met his now close friend, local musician Adam Church (who was featured in his ‘Doin’ This’ music video), and they stared playing as a duo around town.
The rest, as they say, is history, and Combs’ first few projects he self released were his 2014 EP The Way She Rides, which includes songs in the title track, “I Know She Ain’t Ready” and “Let the Moonshine.” I still think “I Know She Ain’t Ready” is one of his best songs, but I digress…
Not long after that, Combs self-released “Can I Get an Outlaw” in 2016 as the title track to his EP, which included one other song in “Sheriff You Want To.” I was in college in Boone around this time, and I remember listening to both of those projects non-stop. He was already a local legend at this point, and those songs really got me hooked on country and I really started to fall in love with it in a completely different way. It was also around the time that Tyler Childers released Purgatory in 2017, which rocked my world and here I am now, but there really was some great country music coming out around this time, and it certainly shaped the type of songs I love to this day.
Combs penned “Can I Get An Outlaw” with Josh Phillips, but there was also a rap (remix?) version of the song with Ryan Upchurch that had a controversial accompanying music video. I’m sure a lot of you remember in 2021 (right at the peak of cancel culture) when Combs issued an apology for the Confederate flag imagery in the 2015 music video. It has since been removed from YouTube, but the song itself is still available.
It’s really about how the music coming out at the time was super pop-influenced and a product of “bro-country” having success on country radio, and during a recent interview with Clint Black on Circle Country, Black asked if Luke ever got grief from his contemporaries for putting that out.
Luke explained that this song came out when he was still living in North Carolina, and he simply was not resonating with any of the music coming out then. He noted Eric Church as the exception, because Luke wanted to hear a song that made him want to crack a cold one, not “a bunch of trap beats on the radio”:
“A buddy of mine had started that song, this is back when I was living in North Carolina. And I was in that same mindset of, just nothing I was hearing at the time resonated with me at all. Besides Eric Church, I was like, ‘there’s a lot of stuff I don’t get right now.’ It doesn’t make me wanna crack a cold one, dude, you know what I mean?
And that’s kind of what it always did. I hate to be the cliché guy, but I wanna stand in the garage and drink beer, dude. I don’t wanna hear a bunch of trap beats on the radio. I wanna hear some fiddle and steel. And I fell in love with what Eric Church was doing at the time, and my buddy Josh approached me with this verse/chorus idea that he was toying with, and I was like, ‘Dude, I feel this, man.’
And I never intended to write this song as, I am the answer to the question. I almost wanted to say, there was something that wasn’t there that I wanted to hear. I mean, I guess at 23-years-old, it’s like, that’s the way I know how to say it.”
I can certainly hear the Eric Church inspiration in it, as the concept reminds me a lot of Eric’s song “Lotta Boot Left to Fill,” which is from his 2009 Carolina record and touches on the same kind of subject matter.
Luke is humble and of course isn’t going to take credit for being the “answer to the question” in terms of looking for an artist who honors the traditions of country with real interments like fiddle and steel, not 808 drums and trap beats, but he was certainly part of pushing the commercial side of the genre back that direction.
It’s been a long time since I’ve listened to some of his first stuff, but man, it is a walk down memory lane for sure… he’s been a star since day one, and I love looking back on how far he’s come since his college days.
Turn it up:
“Can I Get an Outlaw”
This one NEVER got the credit it deserved, either…
“I Know She Ain’t Ready”
The full interview:
