“Not A Very Good One” – Luke Combs Recalls His “Bouncer Days” Before He Went Full Time Playing Music

A couple of “Entertainers of the Year” cutting it up.

It’s always interesting to hear how celebrities and musicians first got started in their profession, and most of the time, it’s not necessarily a linear path to the top. That is certainly the case for Luke Combs’ story, who went from bouncer to beloved country star… though the story isn’t that simple.

Combs sat down with the legendary Garth Brooks for an “Artist-to-Artist” conversation on the BIG 615 radio station. Garth launched the station (on TuneIn) in June of 2023, and in his words, it was an effort to take country music to the global scale, while honoring where it comes from (hence the 615 area code).

The radio station is currently in the middle of airing an in-depth discussion that Combs and Brooks shared, and in this first clip that’s been released, a backwards-chair-sitting Brooks puts on his journalist cap and asks Luke Combs some hard hitting questions. The first was about how he got started playing gigs, which goes all the way back to Combs’ Boone, North Carolina days when he was working as a bouncer:

“I was (a bouncer). Not a very good one, but I was. I was a bouncer at a bar called The Town Tavern in Boone, North Carolina. I actually lived upstairs above the bar in an apartment. So I could just walk downstairs, go to work, come back upstairs… play guitar, you know whatever. And then eventually started getting shows there.”

Brooks then asked a great follow up question (he’s got a legit back up career as an interviewer if the music thing doesn’t work out), inquiring how long it took Combs to go from part time bouncer and part time musician to full time music. Luke explained that his bouncer days were numbered once he got busy with music:

“Not very long. By the time I left Boone, we were probably playing three nights a week minimum in Boone, then four to five nights a week around North Carolina. We would drive around the state in my bass player’s Chevy Avalanche and rent a U-Haul trailer and load all the gear up.

We had these speakers that were barely loud enough to play anywhere we went. It was a trip. I’m doing all of it. I’m cold calling bars trying to get gigs, and I’m making and sending press packets and mailing them out to people. I was just trying to get gigs because I was like, ‘This is my job. So I have to apply myself.'”

Humble beginnings.

But it is cool to hear that Combs had an incomparable work ethic with his music, and treated it like a job as soon as he started dedicating all of his time to it. Now, armed with hindsight, Combs realizes that treating the gig life so seriously ultimately led him to where he is today:

“I was always – unknowingly almost – moving myself towards the next goal. Which was now let’s put a band together, now it’s get a show in another state, and then it’s get a show in South Carolina, then it’s visit Nashville, and then it’s put music out.

Until eventually, the next logical step is playing stadiums. It was always these baby steps. I wish I could say I was smart enough to have known at that time what I was doing, but I was just doing what I thought made sense.”

You can hear more from Combs and Brooks in the interview clip below: