Ashley McBryde is a big Luke Combs fan. In a GQ feature on Combs, McBryde was effusive in her praise for the “Fast Car” singer.
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“He’s a touchstone we can count on,” she told the outlet of the country music community. “We’ve got Eric Church. We’ve always had voices like George Strait and Alan Jackson, that we can count on. Luke is one of those guys that when we drift too far out, as we sometimes do in country music, there’s always Luke.”
“I think if we took a vote right now of people you would nominate to represent country music in other countries, Luke would make everybody’s short list,” she added.
Charlie Worsham, a frequent Combs collaborator, echoed McBryde’s sentiment.
“Luke Combs is a freaking country man,” he said. “He can sing ‘Fast Car’ and it comes out country. He’s giving us evolved, thoughtful, and also pretty traditional country music, and by doing so and being himself, he’s kicked so many doors down for those to come in after him.”
Luke Combs on the Importance of Country Music
Staying firmly in the country lane is important to Combs.
“So many people have a tendency to say, ‘I just don’t like it,’ when it comes to country music,” he said. “But they’ve never even listened to it.”
“Country music is so vastly different now, though. You can love Sierra Ferrell, or you can love Post Malone, and there are thousands of artists in between and something for everybody, whether or not you like to admit it,” Combs continued. “It’s more diverse than ever, and that was ultimately the goal of last summer: Don’t just give me a chance, but give country music a chance.”
Combs is hoping people will do just that with his latest album, The Way I Am, which is due out March 20.
“There are probably a lot of people who will encounter this album that have never encountered any of my albums, and the performance with Tracy [Chapman] brought in a whole new contingency,” Combs said. “But I don’t think there’s anything too outside of what I would normally do. There are some things sonically we haven’t done previously, but it’s not…it’s not a pop album.”
As for what fans can expect from the LP, Combs previously told Today‘s Willie Geist, “This album is just fastballs. To just kind of be like, ‘I still got it.’”
Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images for ACM
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