Well… it all worked out for him in the end. Luke Combs just released his The Way I Am, which debuted at #1 on Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart, selling 101,000 equivalent units in its first week.
Debuting at #2 on the Billboard 200, The Way I Am marks Combs’ seventh Top 10 record on the all-genre chart, following the likes of Fathers & Sons (#6), Gettin’ Old (#4), Growin’ Old (#2), What You See Is What You Get (#1), The Prequel (#4) and This One’s for You (#4). Most weeks, it would have been a shoo-in for the #1 spot on the all-genre Billboard 200; however, the “1, 2 Many” singer was blocked by Korean superstars, BTS, and their return album, ARIRANG, which debuted at #1 with a staggering 641,000 total units.
In addition to releasing the album, he’s already kicked off his My Kinda Saturday Night stadium tour, and has plans to open his second Category 10 location in Las Vegas this fall, with a third one headed to Orlando, Florida in 2027.
He’s come a long way from Boone, North Carolina, where he first started playing country music, and during a recent event to promote the forthcoming Vegas location, Combs recalled the first time he met Blake Shelton, when he found himself simply trying not to get sick to his stomach, according to People.
He was at the home of the former Ryman CEO, and he was incredibly sick, and already felt out of place on top of that:
“I’m the new guy, nobody knows who I am, and I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there. I’m in there, and Colin has this beautiful farm in Mississippi, and there’s deer, and I’m like, ‘Man, this is like Mecca for a redneck.’ There are ducks in the pond, and here I am, chugging the Imodium on the toilet.”
He said he spent most of the trip in his room eating soup, and it was obviously “less than ideal,” and he thought his career was over:
“It was less than ideal. I remember thinking, like, ‘Well, this is it. My career’s over.’ I finally got invited to a cool thing, and I’m the weird guy in the room that’s sick.”
On the final night of the trip, Combs mustered up enough energy to sit out by the fire with everyone, and Shelton of course played a few songs, and when it got to Combs, he took the guitar and told Shelton specifically that he didn’t have anything to his name, really, but he knew “Hurricane” could be the one, which is what he played for everyone:
“I don’t even have a record deal. I’ve never had a No. 1, but if I get a record deal, this song I’m going to play is a song I’ve written.”
Of course, “Hurricane” ended up being Combs’ major label debut single, which he self-released in 2015, when it initially charted and it gained traction on iTunes organically. A year later, in 2016, Luke’s label re-released it and in 2017, “Hurricane” peaked at the top of the Billboard Country Airplay chart, becoming his first #1 single. It kicked off a run of around 20 straight #1 singles at country radio.
Combs wrote it in December of 2014, and he had done the vocals, mixed it, and was ready to put it out… the only problem was, he still needed to get it mastered (basically, the final step to make sure a song is “polished” and sounds perfect before it gets released), and he didn’t even know that was, much less how much it would cost.
His friend Scott was producing the music then, and he told him it would be $200 to have it mastered… and Combs was down to his last $200:
“I wrote that in December of that year. Went to Nashville, I record the songs, I sing the track and vocal, sing the vocal, mix it, and then I hit my buddy Scott up who was producing my stuff at the time, and I’m like, ‘Hey man, let’s release these songs.’
And he’s like, ‘Well, we’ve got to master all the songs.’ And I’m like, ‘One, what is that? Two, how much does it cost?’ He’s like, ‘$200 a song.’ ‘$200 a song? What does it… does it make it spit out a gold bar at the end? $200? I had $200 left, I’m like, ‘I can do one song.’”
He took the chance, and “Hurricane” ended up selling 10,000 copies the first week, which was incredibly impressive considering he had no record deal, manager, or anything of that kind at that moment. Combs joked that the song did, in fact, end up spitting out a gold bar in the end:
“So I spent $200 to do ‘Hurricane,’ put it out, it sells 10,000 copies the first week. No deal, no manager, no nothing going on.
Use that money to master the rest of the songs, record the rest of the album, meet my manager, use the album to then get a record deal. Here we are. It did spit out a gold bar at the end, actually. It really did.”
He boiled the success of that risk down to the fact that he was willing to be on himself, and encouraged others to do the same. Even when it seems truly impossible, “it can happen,” and Combs says he living proof of it.
These days, he sells out stadiums all over the world, and has nearly 20 #1 hits at country radio. Luke is truly one of the biggest music stars on the planet right now, and it all happened because he spent his last $200 on a great song called “Hurricane.”
And I have to imagine Blake Shelton probably hardly even remembers Combs being sick that weekend
“Hurricane”
My Kinda Saturday Night Tour Dates
April 4 Scott Stadium – Charlottesville, VA
April 11 Jack Trice Stadium – Ames, IA
April 18 Notre Dame Stadium – South Bend, IN
April 25 Ohio Stadium – Columbus, OH
May 2 Neyland Stadium – Knoxville, TN
May 9 Gaylord Family – Oklahoma Memorial Stadium – Norman, OK
May 15 Lambeau Field – Green Bay, WI
May 16 Lambeau Field – Green Bay, WI
May 30 Parc Jean-Drapeau – Montreal, QC
June 5 Rogers Stadium – Toronto, ON
June 6 Rogers Stadium – Toronto, ON
July 4 Ullevi – Gothenburg, Sweden
July 7 Accor Arena – Paris, France
July 11 Johan Cruijff ArenA – Amsterdam, Netherlands
July 18 Slane Castle – Slane, Ireland
July 19 Slane Castle – Slane, Ireland
July 25 Scottish Gas Murrayfield – Edinburgh, UK
July 31 Wembley Stadium – London, UK
August 1 Wembley Stadium – London, UK
