EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,018 words- 0:00 – 15:00
(drum roll) Joe Rogan podcast,…
- NANarrator
(drum roll) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.
- JRJoe Rogan
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music) Cheers, sir.
- LCLuke Combs
Thank you, cheers.
- JRJoe Rogan
Pleasure to meet ya.
- LCLuke Combs
Yeah, and likewise, man. (liquid slurping)
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm. Ah. I love your shit, dude.
- LCLuke Combs
Thanks, man. Appreciate that.
- JRJoe Rogan
You got a great voice and great songwriting.
- LCLuke Combs
(slurping) I try my best. I really do.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's great shit. S- solid country.
- LCLuke Combs
Yeah, I try, man. I really do, you know? It's ... You never know. A lot of, a lot of, uh ... I don't know. You al- ... I guess you always have doubts, something that comes with ... You know, at least I do. You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- LCLuke Combs
Constantly, like, is this good enough or is it country enough or is it ... I don't know, it just always... I'd be lying if I said I didn't have-
- JRJoe Rogan
I think that's what makes you great. I think you have to have those doubts to e- m- ... You're- ... You have to ... I think every artist is always, like, s- self-analyzing and-
- LCLuke Combs
Always.
- JRJoe Rogan
You have to be.
- LCLuke Combs
Yeah, you have to, I mean, or else you're just ... You know, my biggest fear is, like, making the same record 100 times, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
(inhaling through the nose) Yeah-
- LCLuke Combs
'Cause we-
- JRJoe Rogan
... 'cause we all know people who've done that before.
- LCLuke Combs
Mm-hmm. And stuff.
- JRJoe Rogan
And when you're a fan of someone and they do that.
- LCLuke Combs
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's one of the things I love about Sturgill, is like every album, it's like he's a new artist.
- LCLuke Combs
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's like, "Who are you?"
- LCLuke Combs
It's very different. Yeah, everything's way different with him, man. I-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- LCLuke Combs
I remember Turtles All The Way Down coming out and I was like, "Man, this is just such a departure from the last thing."
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- 15:00 – 30:00
Yeah, it's hard when…
- LCLuke Combs
... I don't know. It's a w- ... It's tough, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, it's hard when you have roots in a place.
- LCLuke Combs
Yeah, my f- ... My dad, you know ... My dad's 69, and his two best friends live in, in Asheville. And you know, they drank beer every Friday and ... For 25 years, you know? And it's like, he moved to, to Nashville and it's like he doesn't know anybody, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh.
- LCLuke Combs
And it's like ... So I think he struggles with that a lot, which I ... You know, it's tough for me too 'cause I don't want him to, like, not be living-
- JRJoe Rogan
Right.
- LCLuke Combs
... his best life either. You know what I mean? It's like I'm ... I love that he's close to, you know, my son, and my son's close with his grandparents, but I also want them to, like, enjoy their, enjoy their life too, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Tell his friends to move.
- LCLuke Combs
I know, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
That's what you gotta do.
- LCLuke Combs
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- LCLuke Combs
Get them to move to Nashville.
- JRJoe Rogan
Tell 'em to move.
- LCLuke Combs
All right. All right.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah, you just gotta talk everybody into moving. Get that mass exodus going.
- LCLuke Combs
Yeah. It's a ... Dude, Nashville's like ... It's a, it's a hot, hot market too, man.
- JRJoe Rogan
It is.
- LCLuke Combs
It's-
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, it's like in Aust- ... It's like Austin in a lot of ways, where the, the pandemic opened it up.
- LCLuke Combs
Mm-hmm. Really did.
- JRJoe Rogan
A lot of people are like, "I'm getting the fuck out of wherever I am."
- LCLuke Combs
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
"It sucks and I'm-"
- LCLuke Combs
You know?
- JRJoe Rogan
"... I'm gonna go somewhere that's a little freer and-"
- LCLuke Combs
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- LCLuke Combs
That's a little less stringent, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah. Yeah.
- 30:00 – 45:00
Mm. …
- LCLuke Combs
it doesn't, doesn't make sense to me, like to my brain. Like I get it, like if I sit there and like plink it out really, really slow, I mean, I could figure it out, right? But it just doesn't... It's just such, to me, it's such an instinctual thing.
- NANarrator
Mm.
- LCLuke Combs
You know? (clears throat) And so, I was in an acapella group my freshman year at college for a year. Um, I en- I enjoyed that, but again, it was just like an after school kind of activity thing with other people in college, you know? (clears throat) Excuse to have people to drink with really, you know? People with common ground or whatever. And gave that up...... my beginning of my sophomore year, really, um, and then didn't do music. I played rugby. I got into playing rugby in college. I did that, loved that. And I was just the guy that would, like, sing at parties or whatever. Like, my buddies that I played rugby with knew I sang. They'd be like, "Dude, sing for these chicks," or whatever, you know? It was kind of like, I was like party trick guy.
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- LCLuke Combs
You know? And then after my junior year, I move home to Asheville. And I, we, I'd always moved home every summer up to that point. And then my mom goes... 'Cause I was sulking, because all my buddies that year, they all stayed in their college town for the summer. I was the only guy that moved back. So all my friends are gone. They're in Raleigh, they're in Charlotte, they're in Chapel Hill, they're in Boone, they're in, you know, Cullowhee at all these different schools. So I'm working at the same job I had when I was 16, at a go-kart place, with a bunch of high school kids. I'm 21 years old. I got nobody to hang out with, I'm living at my parents' house. I'm not doing well in school. I don't know what I want to do with my life, at all. And I'm sitting on the porch, I remember sitting on my parents' carport, and it was like, my mom come out. And she was like, "What's wrong with you?" Like, "What's, what's..." I'm an only child too, so she's like, "What's, what's going on?" And I was like, "Well, I don't know, Mom." I was like, "I don't have any friends here." Like, "I'm working at fucking go-karts," you know? Like, "What am I doing?" And she's like, "Well, you know, you know what, Luke? Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw, they didn't even learn to play guitar til they were 21 years old." And I was 21, right? And so my parents had bought me a guitar in 7th grade that I never played. I did two guitar lessons and hated it, 'cause my parents wanted me to do it. You know what I mean?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- LCLuke Combs
Like anything your parents want you to do, you don't want to do, really. And so I went in the closet and I got this old, it was like a Ibanez, like $50 acoustic guitar, you know? Just d- horrendous condition. But I didn't know that. Didn't know anything about guitar. Didn't know what a good guitar was. Didn't know nice guitars even existed. So I taught myself all summer. I just sat on the porch when I wasn't at work, playing, playing, playing. 'Cause I knew I loved to sing, and I was like, "Well, I'll just learn how to play, and then I can sing at like parties for my buddies or whatever," and taught myself all year, and then just kind of became obsessed with like learning how to play. And by the time I was 22, I'm back in school, I'm in Boone, hanging out with my buddies. I'm starting to dabble around with like writing my own songs, 'cause I was like, "Well, I could... You know, this would be cool. I like this." And then I wrote my first two or three songs, and I booked a gig down the street, just like at this bar my rugby team always hung out at. 'Cause I figured that guy would, you know... He was like the coke head, like wild card, like he'd give me a show or whatever, you know?
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- LCLuke Combs
That guy was awesome, you know? I was like, "This guy will give me a show if I want to do a show." So I borrowed my neighbor's guitar, 'cause mine wasn't even acoustic-electric, it was just a straight up acoustic, and sat on a stool. My other buddy let me borrow his PA speakers, and 200 of my friends came out and paid a dollar to see me. I made 200 bucks that night.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- LCLuke Combs
That was more than I made at both my jobs that week. And I was hooked, man. I was like, "Dude, this is awesome." Like, "I love doing this-"
- JRJoe Rogan
One show.
- LCLuke Combs
... "first off." Yeah. I'm like, "I love doing this anyways, and I'm having a great time." I'm like having drinks with my friends. Everybody's psyched to see me here and stuff. And I was like, it just made sense, man. It wasn't, it wasn't one ounce of hard work in my mind after that point. It was just always fun, man, and I always loved it.
- JRJoe Rogan
Wow.
- LCLuke Combs
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
So it's like a door opened up, you walked through it.
- LCLuke Combs
Yup.
- JRJoe Rogan
And your life changed forever.
- LCLuke Combs
It just made sense, dude. Yeah, it was like a true, like, aha moment, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Mm-hmm.
- LCLuke Combs
Like you hear about those from people... Oh, I think I might have forgot to flip the top.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- LCLuke Combs
Yeah. And you hear about those things, but it truly was that. It was truly an aha moment, man. And it was life, it was life changing, man. I don't know what I'd be doing if I hadn't done that.
- JRJoe Rogan
That's so awesome. I love those kind of stories. I really do. I love those stories because it gives other people hope too. Like y-
- LCLuke Combs
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I guarantee there's someone listening out there that's in that same state that you were in when you were 21. They're like, "What the fuck am I doing?"
- LCLuke Combs
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
And everybody has that feeling.
- LCLuke Combs
I feel like most people, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yes. Yeah.
- 45:00 – 1:00:00
Yeah. …
- LCLuke Combs
So I watched it and then there's this mega intelligent cat on there and he's cooking dude and he's ta- and he's like a wealth of knowledge, right?
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- LCLuke Combs
And that's the thing that like, that gets me, like my dad's a big like thinker, you know? Um, and he's always been interested in just learning about new stuff, like he's always just taken in information and learning things. And so I think I kind of inherited that from him. And so then I became kind of obsessed with like this show, this Meat Eater show, so I started watching it on Outdoor Channel. And then it comes on Netflix, this new, the new kind of version that comes on Netflix and I'm like, "Dude, this is, this is like earth-shattering for me." This is like it's marrying the intelligence of what this is and it's exposing people to, in my opinion, what's the right side of hunting to be on.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- LCLuke Combs
Or the thing that I love about it so much. And I just for y- so then my career's starting to go and go and go. I saw you on there. You know, I was like, "Man, that's cool. He's having guests on, you know? That's pretty sick," You know? And all his buddies were like wicked smart and like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- LCLuke Combs
... knew everything and they do all this, go to Alaska-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- LCLuke Combs
... and they go on these incredible places, dude. And so I just had my PR team and I was like, "Just reach out to this guy." Like, "Please get me, like how do I get on this show?" Like, "I wanna be on this. I wanna meet this guy and like be buddies with him and stuff." And it took like two years to finally get like, "Okay. We got a time, he wants to do it." And what was it like when you first met?
- JRJoe Rogan
Well, I met-
- LCLuke Combs
Him.
- JRJoe Rogan
... him when he didn't have Meat Eater. I met him when he was doing a show called The Wild Within. There was a show that was on, I r- I forget what network it was on, but it was a show where he was kinda recreating how, um, like the, the people that traveled across the West for the first time, the, the early settlers-
- LCLuke Combs
(clears throat) Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
How they hunted and, you know-
- LCLuke Combs
Mm-hmm.
- JRJoe Rogan
... he, like he shot a moose with a musket and-
- LCLuke Combs
Right.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and turned its, its, uh, cape into, uh, like a raft and-
- LCLuke Combs
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... and was drifting with it.
- LCLuke Combs
Yep.
- JRJoe Rogan
And, and I was like, "What an interesting guy." Like really the, the whole thing behind it, he was... You could tell, uh, his, his integrity and his, his true, uh, appreciation for the outdoors and for-
- LCLuke Combs
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
... wild animals and conservation-
- LCLuke Combs
It feels pure.
- JRJoe Rogan
It feels very pure.
- LCLuke Combs
Very pure.
- JRJoe Rogan
And he's so well read. I'm like, "This is different than every other hunting show that I'd ever seen."
- LCLuke Combs
Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
The same thing-
- 1:00:00 – 1:12:38
(sighs) …
- LCLuke Combs
where Dan was sitting at. There's kind of a, another ag fence into a cut. It's like a cut cotton field. So it's not even, like, even though it's cut, there's not even food in it, right? There's not beans in it or corn in it. It's a cut cotton field. So really, in theory, nothing that these deer would be eating in this field, really. So Dan's hunting somewhere else. So I call our guy. I see all these deer and I'm, I'm glassing, probably, like I said, 500-ish yards out. I'm glassing and I see all these does, all these does, and I see him, dude, just... I mean, you can see from 500 yards he's a giant without binoculars. You know what I mean? Like, just no doubt that this is the same deer and he's cruising and there's like, if you can imagine, there's this wheat grass on the fence row right there that's grown up probably four foot, five foot maybe. And there's a g- there's a gap in it where there's a fence and probably six feet there's another gap where there's a fence. So it's all grass the whole way around, except for where those two fences are. So I watch every doe pile pass the first fence, pass the second fence. He's behind them. He comes past the first fence, never goes past the second fence.
- NANarrator
(sighs)
- LCLuke Combs
And I go, I call my guy. I said, "Dude, come get me. This deer's bedded in this little tiny spot. I know exactly where he is." And he goes, "All right." He said, "We're going back tonight 'cause this deer's not gonna move." He said, "We're gonna do spot and stalk up to this spot 'cause I know he's laying right there." Stalk up, get probably 75 yards from that spot and we, we, pretty good feeling he's gonna jump this fence and come right across this field to where we're at and we're just gonna be right there, you know? I'm sitting criss-cross applesauce, like, ready.... he goes, "If we got 15 minutes of light left," he's like, "we're gonna creep up there and see if we can spook him up," kind of thing. We get up there. Dude, my heart is going a million miles an hour. It probably is right now just from being fat-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- LCLuke Combs
... but it was really going at that time, dude. You know what I mean? Like, I'm like-
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- LCLuke Combs
... I'm, I'm w- one blood pressure point away from a stroke at this point.
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
- LCLuke Combs
Like, hiking up this thing. We get up there and we're like, "No, he's not there." I'm like, "How can he not be there?" So we're looking, we look down the fence, and this property line right there is like... So it's like this fence. We have access to this fence here. There's an adjacent fence right here that's not, that they don't have access on. So we hop. Look, he's 100 yards in the cut cotton field just standing out in the cotton field.
- JRJoe Rogan
(sighs)
- LCLuke Combs
This is our last night. We're going to the plane after the hunt. And it was over, man. 230-inch deer. Never- I'll never see him again. Never seen anything like it. Wow, this is not a high fence. This is not a pen, pay to play, like, pick your deer thing. Like, I was hope- being excited to shoot a 145 on this trip. You know what I mean? Biggest deer I've ever killed is 155, you know. And so I'm like... I got pictures of him-
- JRJoe Rogan
Oh, let me see.
- LCLuke Combs
... somewhere (clears throat) . Yeah.
- JRJoe Rogan
I wanna see it.
- LCLuke Combs
He's nuts. Let me see if I can find him on here.
- JRJoe Rogan
It's fascinating how the, the appeal of those old, mature bucks-
- LCLuke Combs
(whistles)
- JRJoe Rogan
... 'cause you know they're so smart. They don't get to be that big.
- LCLuke Combs
Dude.
- JRJoe Rogan
Unless they make all the right moves for five or six years.
- LCLuke Combs
Forever, dude. Forever.
- JRJoe Rogan
Yeah.
- LCLuke Combs
They make it forever, dude, and it's just... Let me see if I can find this thing.
- JRJoe Rogan
But that's how they get to be that big, by just doing weird shit.
- LCLuke Combs
Just being smart, dude.
- JRJoe Rogan
Not being predictable.
- LCLuke Combs
Where is this guy at, man? I got him in my text messages if I don't have him here. Yeah, I got him in my text messages. Dead air. You ever watch Always Sunny?
- JRJoe Rogan
I don't worry about dead air. (laughs)
- LCLuke Combs
(laughs) I remember this scene in Always Sunny where they, they're trying to do a podcast and nobody's saying anything-
- JRJoe Rogan
(laughs)
Episode duration: 3:02:55
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