Tom Dunne: So you never even heard of Luke Combs?
Luke Combs is headlining two nights in Slane. Picture: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Stagecoach
People who enjoy saying “and I’ve never even heard of him” will be having a field day this weekend. Luke Combs is playing two nights in Slane. Yes, Luke Combs. Go on, put on your best bewildered look and lean in. You haven’t, though, have you, heard of him?
And two nights! The kind of thing you thought was the preserve of U2 playing in what is essentially their back yard to a home crowd and even then only when at the height of their powers. Luke who? Is he a rapper?
But don’t be hard on yourself. Not having heard of him is quite normal. It means you probably live in Dublin or Cork, a big southern city anyway, and listen to traditional media. Luke bypassed all that. Streaming and the “socials” did his heavy lifting.
And he is huge. He is to country music what Taylor Swift is to pop. His first five singles all topped the US country charts, and that was before he really got going. The UK and Ireland are recent converts, but in the US he is seen as the last of the great traditional stars. It’s Bruce level and then some.
Country music stars tend to have great back stories: they are raised by coyotes or are singing in a bar aged two to feed the family. But Luke’s background looks fairly normal. Born near Charlotte, a great southern town, to a solid family. Young Luke sang in the choir and did musicals. No arrests, no DUIs.
It got slightly interesting in college. He attended Appalachian State University to study business. However, he soon changed courses to criminal justice because he wanted to be a homicide detective. This path we like. But, incredibly, he quit this just 21 hours short of his degree to give music a go.
He went to Nashville. It may be the centre of the songwriting universe, but it is not for the faint hearted. Songwriters on every doorstep, most are much better than you. It is dog eat dog, sink or swim. Most aspiring writers fail. Luke didn’t. Somehow, his first indie single, , got attention, its re-release on Sony the first of his five consecutive number ones.
But what is it he does? Slow moving ballads, like are his stock in trade. But upbeat songs like are not far behind. Critics, and there are many, say although he can replicate emotion — is superb — he lacks the specificity of a great artist. A southern everyman.
To which I can only say: “Heavy words are so lightly thrown” — a Smiths lyric that is incredibly useful almost every day — and “get out more.” It is the latter of these that is most apt though because if there is one thing I’ve found it’s this: Country music is “going out” music. In fact, its “going out out” music.
My experience of it, limited but intense, occurred in its spiritual home, America itself. On my various sojourns with Something Happens, we discovered a bar in the East Village called The Village Idiot. It had everything: a working toilet, cold beer, a bar man who ate coins, and, above all else, a juke box.
But it was no ordinary juke box. It was a country and western juke box. all eight minutes of it, got played about twice an hour. But once you got a taste for that you were soon into the hard stuff.
This is the environment in which Luke Combs is an actual god. Songs like or my new favourite, — why didn’t I think of that? — come into their own. But it’s the ballads that get you. There’s something about a sad song at 2am in a NYC bar that just gets you in the feels.
Bottom line is that this weekend an artist you aren’t familiar with will be entertaining 80,000 people you don’t know in a field you thought belonged to Bruce, U2, and Red Hot Chili Peppers. They will be laughing, crying, drinking beer and having fun while you’re leaning over the fence saying, “and I never even heard of him”.
