#1956 - Luke Combs

Joe Rogan (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience. Trained by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

Cheers, sir. Pleasure to meet you.

Luke Combs (0:15)

Yeah, and likewise, man.

Joe Rogan (0:19)

I love your shit, dude.

Luke Combs (0:20)

Thanks, man, I appreciate that.

Joe Rogan (0:21)

You got a great voice and great songwriting.

Luke Combs (0:24)

I try my best, I really do.

Joe Rogan (0:26)

Great shit, solid country.

Luke Combs (0:29)

Yeah, I try, man, I really do. You never know. A lot of, I don't know, I guess you always have doubts. That comes with, at least I do, constantly like, is this good enough or is it country enough or is it, I don't know, it's just always, I'd be lying if I said I didn't have.

Joe Rogan (0:48)

I think that's what makes you great.

I think you have to have those doubts. I mean, I think every artist is always like self-analyzing and-

Luke Combs (0:57)

Always.

Joe Rogan (0:58)

You have to be.

Luke Combs (0:59)

You have to. I mean, or else you're just, my biggest fear is like making the same record a hundred times.

Joe Rogan (1:05)

Yeah, because we all know people who've done that before. And when you're a fan of someone and they do that, that's one of the things I love about Sturgill is like every album, it's like he's a new artist. It's like, who are you?

Luke Combs (1:18)

Yeah, everything's way different with him, man. I remember Turtles all the way down coming out, and I was like, man, this is just such a departure from the last thing.

Joe Rogan (1:28)

Yeah.

Luke Combs (1:28)

And that can be scary as an artist, too, because you're like, well, all my fans that I have were the fan of this previous thing, right? So it's the new thing.

Alienate those people. It's just tough, man. It's weird.

Joe Rogan (1:43)

I think people have to do that, though, if you, you know, if that's what you feel.

I think they go along with you, especially today. I think people are more willing than ever to let people take chances.

Luke Combs (1:55)

No doubt. And I mean, I think that comes with the artists now has the power in a lot of ways, right? With the rise of the Internet.

Joe Rogan (2:02)

Yes.

Luke Combs (2:03)

I mean, I think I was really kind of one of the first people who was able to bring something to, like when I got my first deal, it was like, well, I already had a built in fan base.

And that wasn't really ever happening at that time. Like as I was on this social media app called Vine, do you remember that?

Joe Rogan (2:22)

Yeah.

Luke Combs (2:22)

And it was like, I mean, I wasn't like, you know, mega big on there or anything, but I had enough fans, I guess, where I was selling music that, and I didn't realize that that was weird.

So I got to Nashville and they're like, wait, you're selling how much? And I'm like, oh, I thought that was, that's low, right? And they're like, not really. It's not really that low at all. And I was like, oh, that's cool.

Joe Rogan (2:42)

You know, so then you got some negotiating power to when you were one of the first artists that in the country scene that kind of made it off of social media.

Luke Combs (2:51)

I would. Yeah. I would say me and Cain Brown probably were like the first two. And he, we both got signed at Sony.

And I think that's to credit to, you know, I mean, Randy Goodman, who still runs Sony Nashville, has always been forward thinking in that, like at least before, in my opinion, all the other labels in Nashville were thinking about that stuff. He was always thinking about what's the next thing or like, how do we stay ahead of the trend or whatever? And other other labels weren't doing that at that time.

Joe Rogan (3:21)

And when you first started doing it on Vine, we just doing it because it was just a thing that you could put your shit on. I mean, you obviously didn't think that it would take off the way it did.

Luke Combs (3:31)

It just made sense, right? It was like, it was like, OK, well, this is a tool. And all I was doing on there was, I mean, the content on that app was six seconds long.

Joe Rogan (3:40)

Right.

Luke Combs (3:40)

It was like, it was like TikTok, but six seconds.

Joe Rogan (3:43)