Luke Combs, wife Nicole expecting baby boy: 'Couldn't be more excited'

Luke Combs, wife Nicole expecting baby boy: ‘Couldn’t be more excited’

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Luke Combs (R) is expecting his first child, a son, with his wife, Nicole Combs. File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo

Jan. 21 (UPI) – Luke Combs is going to be a dad. The 31-year-old country music singer is expecting his first child, a son, with his wife, Nicole Combs. Advertisement

Combs shared the news Thursday on Instagram alongside photos of himself with Nicole Combs. One picture shows Combs cradling his wife’s baby bump as they hold up a sonogram.

“Here we go y’all! Lil dude Combs is coming this Spring! Couldn’t be more excited to start a family with this babe. It’s gonna be a hell of a ride @nicolejcombs,” he captioned the post.

Nicole Combs confirmed the news in a post on her own account.

“this may be the best year yet,” she wrote. “baby BOY combs coming spring 2022!! we are so incredibly excited & thankful.”

Singers Lindsay Ell, Drew Parker and Charles Godwin were among those to congratulate the couple in the comments.

“Congratulations you guys!!” Ell wrote.

“So stoked for y’all! It’s the best thing in the world!” Parker said.

Combs and Nicole Combs married at an intimate wedding in Florida in August 2020. Combs said on Jimmy Kimmel Live! that November that the wedding turned out “perfect” despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It ended up being really great. Everybody that we wanted – almost everybody that we wanted to be there – was there,” he said. “It was perfect, man. It’s really about me and her being there.”

Combs released his second studio album, What You See is What You Get, in 2019, and has since released the single “Doin’ This.”

Luke Combs Covers One Of Keith Urban’s Biggest Songs: ‘One Of My Favorites’

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Sometimes a country song is so good, other artists pay homage to their peers by putting their own spin on it. That’s what Luke Combs did in a recent TikTok, sharing his acoustic cover of “my buddy [Keith Urban’s] ‘Blue Ain’t Your Color!’” Combs dubbed the song “one of my favorites,” as he delivered his rendition in the black-and-white video.

“Blue Ain’t Your Color” is one of the biggest songs on Urban’s album Ripcord, which released in 2016. That album also includes “John Cougar, John Deere, John 3:16,” “Wasted Time,” “The Fighter” — a duet with Carrie Underwood — and others. “Blue Ain’t Your Color” is a soulful track that takes notice of a woman who’s unhappy in her relationship: “Blue looks good on the sky/ Looks good on that neon buzzin’ on the wall/ But darling, it don’t match your eyes/ I’m tellin’ you/ You don’t need that guy/ It’s so black and white/ He’s stealin’ your thunder/ Baby, blue ain’t your color”

It wouldn’t be the first time a fellow country artist has covered the popular track. Maren Morris once took to Instagram to put her own spin on “one of my favorite [Keith Urban] songs,” crediting him with helping to boost her career when she was starting out: “That guy brought me out on tour in 2016 when I literally had nothing going on yet.” Check out Combs’ version of the song here:

Luke Combs, Willie Nelson + Jimmy Buffett are headliners for the second week of New Orleans Jazz Fest 2022

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ABC

Luke Combs, Willie Nelson and Jimmy Buffett are among the long list of acts headed down to Louisiana for the multi-genre New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival this spring.

All three acts will perform during the second weekend of the event, which takes place May 5-8. The first half of the festival will take place April 29-May 1.

Also part of the lineup are acts like Lukas Nelson — Willie’s son — as well as Grammy-winning bluegrass upstart Billy Strings, and Americana act The War and Treaty, who performed with Dierks Bentley at last year’s ACM Awards show.

Non-country leaning acts on the bill include The Who, The Black Crowes, Lionel Richie and Foo Fighters.

The New Orleans Jazz Fest was canceled in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For a full lineup and ticketing information, visit the event’s website.

How singer Luke Combs took a chance and became a country superstar

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Luke Combs performs in Nashville.

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“I wanted to be a homicide detective,” Combs tells me in a voice as worn as Columbo’s raincoat. “I think it was the challenge of solving a puzzle that appealed to me. It’s a bit like writing a song, except that puzzle has no pieces – you make the pieces and put them together.

“I was majoring in criminal justice at Appalachian State University, but I was a pretty bad student.” Luke, 31, dropped out of college with just 21 grade hours to do before he graduated. He’d been doing two jobs to support himself through Uni, working as a bouncer at the Town Tavern – the bar in Boone, North Carolina, that he lived above – and folding shirts at an Izod clothes store. “I played my first show at the bar across the street, charging $1 a ticket and made $200 – more money than I made from both my jobs in a week,” he recalls. So Combs quit college to pursue his dream. Moving to Nashville was a gamble. “My parents weren’t able to support me, so if I’d failed, I’d have been back in my childhood bedroom,” he says with a smile. “It was tough but I played anywhere that’d let me play and it turned into my job pretty quickly.” Strong, original songs like Hurricane and his deep, rasping voice rapidly attracted fans. “It was a journey, but it was a lot faster than a lot of people’s,” says Luke who remains as down-to-earth as a moonshine still.

Combs backstage at the 53rd annual CMA Awards.

“There were a bunch of guys better than me, and a bunch of guys as good as me who haven’t had their chance. I put a lot of work into it and the stars aligned. I’m the lucky dude who got to be there. But I wasn’t a stereotypical artist, somebody had to take a chance on me.” He released two indie EPs in 2014, followed by his first single, Hurricane. Sony signed him, Hurricane was re-released by Columbia Nashville and topped the country airplay charts in May 2017, reaching 31 in the pop chart. His debut album, This One’s For You went triple platinum; the follow-up, 2019’s What You See Is What You Get topped the US charts. Multiple awards, Grammy nominations and around three billion streams ensued. In August, he won Entertainer Of The Year at the prestigious CMA Awards. Luke’s rise has been meteoric. He has sold out arenas in every state in the USA, and been inducted into the Grand Ole Opry. He even has his own customised camouflage crocs, with a beer bottle opener attached, and red elements to reflect his bushy russet-brown beard and hair.

Combs performs to a sold out audience.

But ever humble, he tells me “I just got lucky I guess – right place, right time, right songs. “The album’s success was beyond my wildest dreams. I put a lot of work in and a lot of great people worked on it, it was a group effort.” North Carolina-born Combs, who hadn’t stepped foot on an airplane until he was 25, has now done three tours in Europe and two in Australia. He was due to headline the UK’s C2C festival when the pandemic panic closed everything down in 2020. He will finally top the bill at the Glasgow Hydro on March 11, Dublin’s 3 Arena (12th) and London’s 02 (13th). “I can’t wait,” he says. “UK crowds are amazing. I hope you keep listening.” In lockdown, he live-streamed from his home in rural Tennessee, showcasing new songs and performing covers including Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car. “Live-streaming is good, man and it’s better than nothing, but it’s not like paying in front of a real crowd. I couldn’t wait to get back to live shows last Summer.”

Combs and his wife Nicole.

Combs used his unexpected lay-off to marry his Florida-born fiancée, country singer Nicole Hocking, 28. “We met through mutual friends. I’m so glad we did. Getting married was awesome. That was the upside of not working, we got to spend so much time together, doing normal things. “I cooked every day. We’ve got chickens, we planted a garden, we worked on different projects around the house. I went turkey hunting, played Call Of Duty…” He pauses and laughs, “I was living the redneck dream.” Luke also found time to write “close to forty” new songs. Their only marital problem is his disconcerting habit of chewing with his mouth open, which drives Nicole to distraction. “I’m working on it, making progress…” Combs says he’s been singing since he could talk, and fondly recalls “singing on the porch with my parents and uncles, then at high school, I sang in front of strangers at Carnegie Hall…singing was something I always did. “I had to get used to playing guitar in public, but after a year or so it was fine. I enjoyed the energy.”

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His mother Rhonda worked at bank; his father Chester was a maintenance man. Luke remembers singing Vince Gill songs with his mum when he was seven. In his teens, though, he listened to “lots of Nirvana, The Clash, Biggie Smalls…listening to everything really helped me get a different perspective.” Combs reconnected with country in his late teens. He rates Brooks & Dunn, aspires to have Garth Brooks and Eric Church’s “energy and presence on stage” and praises John Anderson’s latest album, Years. “My buddy Drew Parker just signed his deal,” he beams. “He’ll do some really great things. Ray Fulcher, who I work with, just got a deal, their time is coming.” Luke’s live shows pack in thirty-plus songs, and last up to two hours. At 5ft 8in and nearly fifteen and a half stone, Combs has wrestled with his weight and is open about the OCD that has dogged him since his teens, causing him to repeat thoughts over and over. “It could be something about my health,” he says. “Am I about to have a stroke, or whatever? It becomes obsessive, and you can never have an answer, but I’ve taught myself to be comfortable with that and it’s a lot better than it was. It was tough but it does get better.”

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Best Country Songs of 2021 – 24

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Best Country Songs of 2021

If 2020 was the year for country artists to hunker down and try to avoid the pandemic, 2021 was the year to recover. After taking advantage of time off the road to craft new songs and develop ambitious projects, they hit the bricks last year with renewed vigor.

Some artists mined social media to develop new fan bases and produced unlikely hits. The genre that made the twangy guitar famous continued to reach across the music spectrum to create new collaborations and generated more music than ever.

To determine the best country songs of last year, 24/7 Tempo reviewed data from Billboard’s Hot Country Songs Year-End Chart for 2021. Billboard’s rankings are based on radio airplay audience impressions, sales data, and streaming activity as compiled by Nielsen Music. Data on each song’s number of lifetime Spotify streams was collected on January 18, 2022.

It was a big year for the controversial Morgan Wallen, who placed five songs on the list. He also released a 30-track album titled “Dangerous: The Double Album” that became only the fourth country album to top the Billboard 200 for a year.

Luke Combs and Florida Georgia Line each landed three songs on the list as solo performers and in collaboration with other artists. The latter continued country music’s genre-crossing success by pairing with rapper Nelly on the song “Lil Bit.” Country stalwarts Thomas Rhett and Chris Stapleton (five Grammy wins), meanwhile, each placed two songs on the list. (These are the 50 most popular country stars right now.)

Some artists skillfully used social media to promote their music. Walker Hayes’ tune “Fancy Like” went viral on TikTok and soared to the top on both Billboard’s Country Airplay and Hot Country Songs charts. It became a crossover hit when it reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Click here to see all the best country songs of 2021

Lainey Wilson had a breakthrough year, with the No. 1 single “Things A Man Oughta Know” from her debut album “Sayin’ What I’m Thinkin’.” Gabby Barrett has leveraged her appearance on “American Idol” in 2018 to build her career. Her debut album “Goldmine” in 2020 featured the catchy and ubiquitous hit “The Good Ones.” Performers like Niko Moon, himself a successful songwriter, released the hip-hop-influenced album “Good Time,” containing the hit single of the same name. (Can you answer these real “Jeopardy!” clues about country music?)