Luke Combs (Photo by Jeremy Cowart )
Luke Combs First Gig Was $1 At The Door
Luke Combs just sat down with Dale Earnhardt Jr. on his podcast, “Dale Jr. Download”.
The interview is almost an hour and a half, but it’s worth a listen if you have the time.
Dale asked Luke about his very first gig and he told him a great story from when he lived in North Carolina.
Luke worked at a bar and lived upstairs, so he asked his manager if he could play there one night. The manager said he couldn’t have live music because there were apartments upstairs and he’d lose his license.
Luke joked,
“Well I live upstairs, and I know everybody else that lives upstairs. There’s only seven apartments up there . . . so if I played, we would all be downstairs.”
But the manager wouldn’t budge.
So, he went across the street to a different bar and asked the owner if he could play a gig there and right away the owner said, “Yeah. Just go over to the calendar and put it on there.”
And that was how Luke Combs got his very first gig.
He said he played country covers, it was $1 to get in the door, and about 200 people showed up.
He then used that show to go back to the bar he worked at and dangle the prospect of a 200-person crowd in front of his manager.
The manager rightfully changed his mind and started letting him play there. And that was the beginning of Luke Combs’ stardom.
