It’s hard to believe. Luke Combs is of course now a global country music superstar, who racks up #1 single after #1 single, sells out venues all over the world, right up there with Morgan Wallen and Zach Bryan, he’s the biggest thing in the business. But he got his start in the college town of Boone, North Carolina, when he was in college at Appalachian State University back around 2011-ish. The rest, as they say, is history, but it was the summer before his last year of college when he first picked up a guitar and started considering some sort of music career. During an interview with Clint Black for Circle Country, Combs recalled how working two jobs and failing out of college while playing local gigs first inspired him to leave his hometown and move to Nashville. But before that, he had been playing shows in North Carolina for 200 people a night, three or four nights a week, so unlike most, he didn’t move to Music City with nothing. He actually had a small following already. It was actually Luke’s mom who first told him to pick up the guitar only 11 years ago when he was in college, and because he was starting to realize he had no post-grad plans, he started picking on the porch that summer: “I didn’t move to Nashville with nothing. It was like, I had already been playing shows in North Carolina for 200 people a night, 3 or 4 nights a week and working two jobs, and failing out of college at the same time. Not easy to do. But I didn’t realize that was how everything worked. I didn’t know anything at all… I think that can be a really great thing, and I think that can be a really damning thing for a lot of people too. I didn’t start playing guitar until 11 years ago. I had been singing my whole life just as a casual thing I enjoy to do, it made me happy, other people liked when I did it, kind of thing. Girls thought it was cool, which didn’t happen a lot for me. So I sang a lot and and then I picked the guitar up, and I was in college, and college was coming to an end. It’s like, you’re 22, it’s like time to time to get out of here, you’re the old creepy guy now. I was like man, what am I gonna do? I was sitting at home, I was 21, and I remember sitting on the patio because I was working a job at a go kart track. It was my first job that I had when I was 16. And I moved home for the summer, and I had a ton of friends from high school, but that summer, I was the only guy that moved back home. Everybody stayed in their college town for the summer, and so I didn’t have any friends in town, I’m living with my parents, I’m 21 years old working with a bunch of 15-year-olds at a go kart track. Just bummed out, like, what am I doing? And I remember my parents had bought me a $50 Ivanez guitar in like seventh grade. I took like one guitar lesson, and I was like, my parents want me to do this so I’m not doing it because it’s not cool.” He still had that guitar in his closet, and his mom told him that Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw didn’t star playing until they were 21, so it was the perfect time… though Combs admits he has no idea if that’s even true, or if his mom was desperate to get him out of this funk and doing something productive: “So I still had that guitar in the closet, and my mom came out, and she was like, ‘I don’t understand why you’re sitting around sulking. You know Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw, they didn’t start playing guitar until they were 21.’ And I was 21, and I was like, ‘Oh man, I’m way better than those guys.’ I don’t even know if that is true or not. I don’t know if they actually learned [then], or my mom was just like, please, she would say anything to get me out of doing something. So I started playing… I didn’t know anything about guitar, I taught myself, I spent all summer playing on my porch, and by the next year I mean within 12 months, I had started writing songs and playing stuff, and starting to try to book any anywhere that would let me play.” He eventually moved to Charlotte to live with his grandma, where he played all sorts of open mics and coffee shop gigs, and even though he was still very much in the learning process with his guitar playing, he hoped that his singing would be enough to distract people from how clunky he was on the strings: “I moved in with my grandmother the next summer because she lived in Charlotte, which was the big city for me. And so I’d play any coffee shop, open mic night, anywhere that would let me play I would just go play by myself. I was never nervous, because I was always so confident in my singing. You know, I didn’t think I’m the best singer in the in the world, but I knew that people had always like to hear me sing, even back to when I was five years old. And I knew if I could go into somewhere, I was so self-conscious about my guitar playing because it was so new and it was so clunky. But I was like, man, if I sing great, no one will ever even notice my guitar playing. And that’s what got me through the awkward phase. It takes like two or three years to get through the awkward phase, but I was able to somehow be progressing. Unbeknown to myself, progressing my career while still teaching myself how to play and how to write songs. I was already working towards a goal, even though I couldn’t even play a bar chord for a year and a half.” Clearly, his plan worked, but it’s really incredible to think about how relatively recently he actually started his journey as a professional musician and artist, and how he’s become one of the biggest and most successful artists in the world. I know he’s had a ton of practice since then, but he’s clearly an incredible talented individual that was destined for country music stardom. And shoutout to his mom for that little tidbit about McGraw and Chesney… I think it is true that both of them started picking up guitar in their late teens and early 20’s, but either way, she knew what she was doing, and I think a mother’s intuition is always right. She knew her son had what it takes, and it paid off BIG time in every single way possible. Combs has remained that humble, down-to-earth guy through all of his wild success, and it’s what makes all of his interviews so fun to listen to. The full conversation is available below. The post Luke Combs Started Playing Guitar At 21 Because His Mom Told Him Kenny Chesney & Tim McGraw Started At That Age: “I Don’t Even Know If That’s True” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.