Ep. 686: Gobblers, Fatherhood, and Steve’s Next Hit Song with Lukes Combs

Summary

The MeatEater Podcast - Episode 686: Gobblers, Fatherhood, and Steve’s Next Hit Song with Luke Combs

Release Date: April 7, 2025
Host: Chester McConnell
Guest: Luke Combs

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Introduction

In Episode 686 of The MeatEater Podcast, host Chester McConnell welcomes country music superstar Luke Combs. The episode blends discussions on turkey hunting regulations, the intricacies of songwriting in the streaming era, and deep dives into fatherhood and parenting within the spotlight of fame. Throughout the conversation, Chester and Luke navigate the balance between pursuing passions and nurturing a family, offering listeners a multifaceted look into both the wild outdoors and personal life philosophies.

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1. Turkey Hunting Regulations and Trends

The episode opens with an in-depth discussion on the evolving landscape of turkey hunting across the United States. Chester and Luke delve into the impact of recent regulatory changes in states like South Carolina, Tennessee, and Florida, analyzing how these shifts affect turkey populations and hunting practices.

• South Carolina's Stricter Regulations:
  Chester explains South Carolina’s recent tightening of turkey hunting laws, including the banning of shooting “Jakes” (young, non-breeding turkeys) and reducing the hunting season from 50 to 31 days. These measures aim to enhance breeding populations but have sparked controversy among hunters.

  “The statewide season now starts April 3rd... they lowered the bag limit from three turkeys to two turkeys.” ([16:16])

• Rise and Fall of Turkey Populations:
  The conversation touches on the “founder effect” in biology, describing how introducing new turkey populations can lead to initial surges followed by declines as predators adapt. Chester notes:

  “When you bring in a new population... predators over time are like, oh, I figured out how to kill these things.” ([14:46])

• Florida’s Bear Hunt Quota Mismanagement:
  Reflecting on Florida’s contentious bear hunt quota system, Chester recounts how mismanagement led to exceeding quotas and public backlash, emphasizing the delicate balance wildlife agencies must maintain.

  “Public sentiment was like that. They blew it. They ruined it.” ([31:54])

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2. Songwriting and the Streaming Era

Transitioning from hunting to music, Chester and Luke explore the strategies artists employ in the streaming age, particularly the trend of releasing albums with an extensive number of tracks to maximize streams.

• Impact of Streaming on Album Composition:
  Luke discusses how the absence of physical limitations allows artists to include more songs, enhancing their streaming numbers.

  “If I put out a record that has 12 songs on it... I'm gonna get a lot more listens.” ([107:56])

• Challenges of Managing Large Song Inventories:
  Managing a vast collection of songs poses challenges in selection and production, with Chester drawing parallels to wildlife management.

  “It's like the bear hunt. Everyone did the thing and we did it really good and we did it too good and oops.” ([109:43])

• Future of Album Structures:
  The dialogue anticipates potential industry standards emerging to curb the proliferation of overly lengthy albums, though Luke remains uncertain about their feasibility.

  “There has to be like, yeah, at some point there kind of would have to be.” ([107:37])

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3. Fatherhood and Parenting in the Spotlight

A significant portion of the episode centers on fatherhood, with Chester and Luke sharing personal experiences and philosophies on raising children while maintaining demanding careers.

• Balancing Career and Family:
  Luke reflects on his decision to prioritize family time over touring, striving to create a stable and involved presence for his young children.

  “This current calendar year is the first year I've done that... I want to be there for my kids.” ([52:22])

• Instilling Responsibility in Children:
  Both Chester and Luke emphasize the importance of teaching children responsibility through everyday tasks, fostering humility and presence.

  “We make them go and you know, he dabs the paper towel and it soaks a little bit of milk up and he throws it in the garbage.” ([72:14])

• Navigating Fame’s Impact on Kids:
  The guests discuss the challenges of ensuring their children don’t develop a sense of entitlement or exceptionalism due to their parents' fame.

  “I want my kids to see that the records don't just... it takes a year to make them.” ([74:31])

• Protecting Children from External Perceptions:
  Concerns are raised about how children perceive their parents' fame and the importance of maintaining normalcy to prevent feelings of isolation or unrealistic expectations.

  “I want to make sure... they don't have a sense of exceptionalism.” ([85:37])

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4. Personal Insights and Life Philosophies

Chester and Luke delve into broader life philosophies, discussing the significance of hard work, community, and personal growth both in the wild and the music industry.

• Value of Community and Teamwork:
  Luke highlights the importance of having a loyal team, likening it to a hunting trip where camaraderie enhances the experience.

  “I love being around people and interacting with them... you guys have that too.” ([101:01])

• Life Lessons from Parenting:
  Chester shares his approach to parenting, emphasizing humility and active participation in household duties to set a positive example.

  “I want them to see that... no one is above any of this.” ([70:16])

• Addressing Generational Shifts:
  The conversation touches on generational differences in work attitudes and the evolving nature of balancing personal passions with professional obligations.

  “It's part of growing, right. And evolving as a person.” ([54:59])

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Conclusion

Episode 686 of The MeatEater Podcast offers a rich tapestry of discussions ranging from the nuanced changes in turkey hunting regulations to the deeply personal aspects of fatherhood amidst a high-profile career. Chester McConnell and Luke Combs provide listeners with valuable insights into managing passions, responsibilities, and personal growth, all while navigating the complexities of modern life and the ever-evolving dynamics of their respective fields.

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Notable Quotes

• Luke Combs on Prioritizing Family:

  “I want my kids' childhood to feel as normal as it can given the very strange circumstances that it will ultimately become.” ([64:31])

• Chester on Responsibility:

  “You need to help us with this stuff. This is your job.” ([70:45])

• Luke Combs on Music and Legacy:

  “It takes a lot of work, but I want my kids to see me struggle... and struggle doing that.” ([54:26])

• Chester on Parenting Philosophy:

  “I want them to see that... you come in with a plan and you prepare dinner.” ([70:16])

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This comprehensive summary encapsulates the essence of Episode 686, providing an engaging and informative overview for those who haven't listened to the full episode.

Transcript

[Luke Combs]

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[Chester]

Here, and it's time to break out those calls Every serious turkey hunter knows every bird is a little different, and you never know what will get them going. You may need a trusty old box call, light purrs from a pot call, or maybe some sweet yelps from diaphragms to seal the deal on that old gobbler. But sometimes the hardest part isn't calling them in, it's finding them in the first place. That's where our locator calls come in. From curl calls to owl hooters, we've got everything you need to get those shot gobbles out of those old toms unwilling to give up their position. Get fully geared up this season with the best tricky calls in the game. Check out the full [e-mail] and make every call count. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwearless.

[Luke Combs]

We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast.

[Chester]

You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light.com f I r s t l I t e.com joined today by Luke Combs down in Way South Texas. Also here is Seth Morris, Chili's here and and our very own Chester the Divester, who hasn't been on the show as much lately since since relocation.

[Seth Morris]

Yep. Been in Wisconsin, bought a home, fixed it up, had a kid, another one Damn, Chester, we've been busy.

[Luke Combs]

Dang. Double dipping.

[Chester]

What we were talking about before we began was we were talking about the problem of Luke was saying that he's not there yet. On losing. On his old man losing his. I don't even have the vocabulary for this. Readers needing readers, needing cheaters needing readers.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah. Yep.

[Chester]

And I was. I wanted to share this. I wanted to share it for the audience in general. So I told Luke. Appreciate that.

[Luke Combs]

Appreciate that.

[Chester]

But, you know, it's the thing you're not there yet. Not there yet, but you were talking about. But you. Now and then, I find myself doing.

[Luke Combs]

The squinty thing where you're like. Or it, like, looks like you're, like, almost kind of trying to smell something.

[Chester]

Do you head bob? Do you do a little in, out?

[Luke Combs]

No, I don't do it. No, I haven't done that yet. Unless I haven't picked up on it.

[Chester]

When I first realized it was happening to me, I found that over your whole life. Okay, if you go to, like, pick a sliver out of your kid's foot or read something that someone's showing you, like a pamphlet, I don't know what the hell. Someone hands you something to read, your body knows right where to put that. Son of a.

[Luke Combs]

Interesting.

[Chester]

Because it's the same decade after decade, right? So your kid gets a sliver, you know, right where you want their foot, right.

[Luke Combs]

To see it.

[Chester]

All of a sudden, for me, it wound up being that I would go to my normal spot, and that wasn't.

[Luke Combs]

Working, and you couldn't see it.

[Chester]

Right. Like, you're. You're sort of. Your brain hasn't even adjusted to the fact that it happened yet. You'd go to your normal spot, and it wasn't right. And then you had to search for the right spot.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah, that's interesting. I haven't considered that. Does your body know now the spot.

[Chester]

It's better. It's better. But it. It changed it for a while there, like, 44 years old, whatever the hell it was. Changing so fast my brain couldn't adjust quick enough.

[Luke Combs]

Makes sense. Like, if I go to look at my watch, there's a certain, like, you.

[Chester]

Know, where you want spot that I go.

[Luke Combs]

But then, you know, if there's. You know, there's different stuff on this, on the dial that you can look at, and there's somewhere. I'm like, what is that? Like, if I want to, like, I got to kind of get it at a certain, like, spot. If I want to check out the little tiny words on There or whatever.

[Chester]

You know, nothing can do about it. Man, this is going to be like. Luke, you got to bear with us here. This is going to be probably. This is going to be a test case in how to lose listeners.

[Luke Combs]

Okay. Okay.

[Chester]

You know they tell you, don't talk about religion.

[Luke Combs]

Yep.

[Chester]

Politics.

[Luke Combs]

Yep. You fixing me both.

[Chester]

Well, no, you're going, like, you're going all those places. No. Religion, politics, and then the finer details of Wild Turkey management.

[Luke Combs]

I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that. I think there's. I think there's. I think there's a very. You think Very interested population.

[Chester]

Okay.

[Luke Combs]

I think it's. I think it's niche. I think it's a subculture, but I do think they're. The people that are interested are going to be super interested. Yeah, I do. I do think that.

[Chester]

Oh, you know what I was going to do. What I want to do to Luke later, when we turn the show over to our intense focus on you, Luke, is I wanted to bring up with you the other day. I was telling you yesterday, I was telling you I have to do. I'm not going to do it because it's secret, but I was telling you at some point I need to do the worst thing that could happen to a musician is to come to you and say, hey, I got a song idea.

[Luke Combs]

Yes, we did discuss this.

[Chester]

Yeah. And I didn't do it.

[Luke Combs]

You did.

[Chester]

And I can't do it now because then the whole world's going to write this song, and it's not my song.

[Luke Combs]

That's true. But now the pe. Now people are going to wonder, though.

[Chester]

Well, let me throw you a different tidbit right here.

[Luke Combs]

Okay.

[Chester]

You ready for this?

[Luke Combs]

I'm ready.

[Chester]

My buddy Pat Durkin was telling me how. My buddy Pat Durkin was telling me how at his age, when he takes on, like, he starts to think about if he's taking on a big writing project, he's like, you know, enters the back, your head is like, am I really going to be doing this?

[Luke Combs]

What do you mean?

[Chester]

Career wise? You know, I mean, like, at a certain point, like, if someone says, like, hey, do you want to take on a mo, Like a large project? You'd be like, I'm pretty old. I want to take that on how.

[Luke Combs]

It's pretty old, though, dude. What are we talking?

[Chester]

I don't think he's late 60s.

[Luke Combs]

I don't think he's pretty old.

[Chester]

He just made a comment.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

This is all build up to the song idea.

[Luke Combs]

Okay.

[Chester]

It's a different song.

[Luke Combs]

Okay, okay. Different song. I do multiple.

[Chester]

He was telling his friend, well, I can't tell you the one because it's. Mo.

[Luke Combs]

Got it.

[Chester]

I ran it by Chili. Chili. I mean my fur. When he said, I'm.

[Luke Combs]

Mo has an idea for Luke about a song.

[Chester]

No, no, no. Just like an idea. Yeah. When you first said that, like, that's how you started. I was like, I'm not a, you.

[Luke Combs]

Know, country music star, but I don't.

[Chester]

I was.

[Luke Combs]

I was skeptical about, you know, because you.

[Chester]

You. His viewing was. There was no words or music. Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

But that can present a massive challenge in the world of music for sure. And then he told. Told me the idea, and I was.

[Chester]

Like, I've heard a lot worse ideas.

[Luke Combs]

It's a great idea.

[Chester]

And.

[Luke Combs]

But I'll. I'll obviously let him. Usually if someone says private in private.

[Chester]

Usually if you tell.

[Luke Combs]

You run an idea past someone and they say, I've heard worse. That's good. That means it ain't good.

[Chester]

No. You think that's, like, way good.

[Luke Combs]

It. I've heard worse. It. I think it's how you say it.

[Chester]

I was telling my kid recently. I'm gonna get to this. But I was telling him recently, we're talking about, you know, he's getting of the age, you know, where there's like, boyfriends and girlfriends. I'm like, dude, when I was your. When I was a kid in high school, the worst thing they could say, like, the worst thing girls could say, he's nice.

[Luke Combs]

Oh, yeah.

[Chester]

Now, if they said. If they said he's funny, that was a good sign.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

Yeah, he's nice.

[Luke Combs]

Brutal.

[Chester]

Like, don't take me wrong. Yeah. But, like, at a time, it was like, if someone says, like, oh, I think you're nice, you're like, yeah, friend zone. I feel the same way. When someone calls me cute at 30.

[Luke Combs]

When a girl calls me cute.

[Chester]

No, that's a good sign. Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

I'm not. I don't know. I just feel. I could see that. I could see how that could be a mixed bag. Yeah. I could see how it's. You, like, could go either way. Yeah.

[Chester]

So here's this hit, this hit.

[Luke Combs]

Okay.

[Chester]

And listen, man, it's not like I haven't thought it through as much. In fact, I had it in my notes or something I thought was funny, and I don't even think about it. It being a great song right Till now.

[Luke Combs]

Great. So hit song. Great song, man.

[Chester]

Pat Durgan's talking about bringing up two friend. I don't know if I even want to take a big project on at my age, you know? And his friend said, some weeks, I wonder if I should be starting a new trash bag. Starting a new trash bag, meaning is he even going to be alive long enough to fill a trash bag?

[Luke Combs]

Oh, God, that's. That's real sad. That's not a lot of time. That's like half a day.

[Chester]

They scrap that song. Yeah, I don't want you to. I don't want that song. I did the color of the other song. Who in a pitch meeting. Who in a pitch meeting comes in and starts with the loser? You came.

[Luke Combs]

You kind of came to with, like, real excited. Like, you got into that. Like, I knew that when the idea was coming because your voice got, like, real pumped about it. You were like, yeah. So he was talking about this, you know, I don't want to do this. And then at my age, I didn't want to start a trash bag yet.

[Chester]

And it's like, oh, my God, I broke pitch meeting rule number one, man. Like, you always come in with the hot one.

[Luke Combs]

You come in with the gun.

[Chester]

And if you're like, if you find the audience is losing, you're losing the audience, then you start throwing wild out there, you know? But you come in with the refined one.

[Seth Morris]

Luke is saying you start a song with a title. So. And then, you know, Trash bag.

[Chester]

No, that's the other song.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah, Trash bags.

[Chester]

All the other songs has a title.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah, that's all that one does. That one doesn't even have a title, dude. The other one's at least farther down the line than that, you know.

[Chester]

Okay, now going to. We're going to talk about turkey regulations, and Luke, you've had some observations about turkey regulations, but we're going to get serious here for a minute because the reason these turkey regulation things are of interest is because I think that we're seeing anyone in the country is interested in turkey hunting. I think this is all relevant to your life because I think we're. There's a trend emerging, and we. We've touched on this before on the show. There's a trend emerging that.

[Luke Combs]

That.

[Chester]

That turkey numbers in America, like, when you get into the future, we're going to look at turkey numbers in America just in a general America sense as being like this precipitous. No, precipitous always means down. Or can it be a precipitous incline?

[Luke Combs]

Oh, dude, you're. That's. That's author stuff. Yeah, you're asking wrong folks, wrong crowd. Dude, wrong crowd.

[Chester]

A. If you look at, like, turkey trends, you're going to see the 90s come in. We're going to get to the 1990s.

[Luke Combs]

1990S. Right.

[Chester]

And you're going to see just like, turkey numbers. Just. We're talking in 100 years when they make a chart showing turkey numbers in this country, they're going to be like, in the 90s with all the reintroductions and introductions. Early 2000s. Right. It's just going to be like, boom, boom. That's the noise of climbing.

[Luke Combs]

Boom, boom, boom. The roller coaster going up.

[Chester]

And it's going to hit like the. The heyday of turkey hunting. And I have. I don't know, Clay Newcomb, maybe he'd be able to tell you where he. Like in Arkansas, where he's at. I think Dr. Mike Chamberlain would be able to tell you the official, like, peak moment. And then it's down.

[Luke Combs]

Sure.

[Chester]

And it'll go down. And I don't know that anyone knows where it's gonna end. Level.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah, I mean, we. We're talking about that yesterday. It's like you, like. We feel like it was like, man, a couple. I don't know, is it set like six or seven years ago? It was, like, smashing, dude. I mean, Tennessee, you could. You could kill four birds.

[Chester]

Yep.

[Luke Combs]

In Tennessee. Now, are you talking. This is nationwide.

[Chester]

Yeah. Because there's always outlier things. But I'm just saying, like, if you. Like, if you go to some of those areas that became. If you go to some of those states that became just like early famous turkey states, you know, like places that always had pretty good turkey hunting but just blew up, like Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa. Right. Where turkey numbers just went crazy.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

And then this whole. It's kind of appearing to be like death, a death by a thousand cuts kind of thing, and it's going to, like, lower turkey numbers. But there's actually terms for this and there's terms for this in biology. There's terms for this phenomenon. There's one thing called. One guy calls it founder effect. There's other names. But when you bring in a new population of animals and introduce them, they explode. They explode because they're. They're coming in and, like, they're occupying a niche that wasn't occupied on the landscape. That's really good for them. Predators aren't tuned into them yet. You might be moving in a group of animals that is disease free and they might contract local diseases or become impacted by diseases over time.

[Luke Combs]

Right.

[Chester]

So when you bring something in, it's just like the general truth of it is they take. They take dramatically and shoot up. And then predators over time are like, oh, I figured out how to kill these things. What you do, right. In, in, in April, I know to go look in that brushy and it's full of eggs, right. And it takes them a while to figure out how to do that. And then all this stuff happens and you lose. So what. What you're seeing right now is. And again, this is just generally what you're seeing right now across the country is like generally game management agencies, generally speaking, tightening way up.

[Luke Combs]

Way up. Yeah.

[Chester]

On turkey harvest. So we, we talked about. I gotta put on my spectacles.

[Seth Morris]

Doesn't seem like it down here, though.

[Chester]

I gotta, I got a thing on my phone of song ideas. I gotta pull it up.

[Luke Combs]

It's gonna find that right spot. Yeah.

[Chester]

Okay, let me put, Let me find this thing here. We talked about South Carolina on a recent podcast episode during our turkey week. And let me see here. And got a guy real mad at us. Here it is. We're talking about South Carolina, how they have done. And this is another thing that happens in South Carolina. They used to be able to shoot Jake's. Okay.

[Luke Combs]

Yep. Now you can't.

[Chester]

And all in South Carolina says, no more Jakes. And on the show we kind of laughed about. I observed on the show, I was like, if you really want to save like breeding age birds, you'd make it illegal to shoot long beards. But of course you can't do that because that, that's not what anybody. That piss everybody off. No one wants that. So you're like being like, yeah, no one's, you know, that excited about shooting Jake's. Maybe we'll make that. You can't shoot Jake's and it'll help. And we handle well. Well, a guy wrote in who is livid about our handling of this, okay. Says the media podcast came out. They brought up our new turkey laws and completely up the explanation. They harp on the Jake ban and say our purpose of the Jake ban is to increase breeding and beat on us. That. That makes no sense. But here's, here's some other things that's happened in South Carolina. They already did change the season dates. They made the season start later and they made it shorter. They lowered the bag limit. Okay. In addition to this, Tennessee's done this as well. So South Carolina first went in. So the statewide season now starts April 3rd. Previously, half the state started March 22nd and half started April 1st. So in part of the State and half the state, they move the season to 12 days later because the thinking is states are killing turkeys too early and it's impacting breeding. And there's like the kind of. We mentioned there's this kind of emerging idea in turkey management. It'd be like hunt him as long as you want on the other end of the season or hunt them longer on the other end of the season and stop hitting them right at the beginning. Right at the beginning.

[Luke Combs]

Right.

[Chester]

So he said they not only did that, there was a recommendation that the entire state should be April 10th, but the legislature didn't go for it before April 10th. Where it is open early, you're only allowed one bird. They used to run two staggered 40 day seasons. So they used to have 50 total days of turkey hunting season because the. They managed the state in two chunks. So they used to have a 50 total days of season. They dropped it to 31 days of season. Lowered the, lowered the overall bag limit from three turkeys to two turkeys. So point being, I'm still dying. You know, I was dying when we talked about this originally from, from a cough. Point being they've done a ton in South Carolina to like suppress turkey harvest.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah. And that's, I think that's happening in a lot of places.

[Chester]

You know, another one we talked about that we didn't get right. This is like the correction section we were talking about in Florida. You know, every state, every. No matter where you're from, in every state, you always hate non out of staters.

[Luke Combs]

It's generally true.

[Chester]

Yeah. Like no, no one wants, you know.

[Luke Combs]

Right.

[Chester]

No one driving around hunt wants to see an out of state plate. You hate them.

[Luke Combs]

True.

[Chester]

Yeah. You just hate them.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah. Maybe that's more of a Montana thing. Sounds more Montana.

[Chester]

Well, it's Florida big time. No explain.

[Luke Combs]

Really Florida, they hate them.

[Chester]

So Richard Martinez, who I've hunted with in Florida wrote into correction they were. Florida was considering a. Florida was considering this new thing where on certain wildlife management areas, so per certain public land areas, residents get first cracks. So you wind up having two seasons resident turkey season, non resident turkey season. Which again, that's their call, man. Like I don't even think a non resident even has a place to complain about it because wildlife's managed at the state level.

[Luke Combs]

Right.

[Chester]

So he says here, here's what he says. He says, I want to clarify that the rule banning non residents actually landed at nine days because public feedback said bone and non residents by three days isn't boning them enough. They wanted to bone them more. Three times worse.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

However, it only applies to five management areas. Those management areas being over the counter management areas.

[Luke Combs]

That makes sense.

[Chester]

Yep. If it's a draw management area. This was saying where you really start losing listeners.

[Luke Combs]

This is public.

[Chester]

Public management areas. You could see some dude driving along with his. With his wife, right? And he's like, hey, I want to check out meteor podcast, you know, and it's getting. And then now he's like, hoping something good happens. His wife's gonna, like, settle in, you know?

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

And then she's sitting there, you know, we're like, well, it was gonna be nine days. You know, it's three days, and it's actually nine days.

[Luke Combs]

And she's like, oh, man. He's like, well, now, hold on. That's only in the over the counter WMAs, right?

[Chester]

It's like. And now he's like, dude, I might as well just change down to something.

[Luke Combs]

The limited draw WMAs are a totally different story. We're gonna get into that in hour. Yeah.

[Seth Morris]

It's like, no, no, no, keep. We'll keep listening.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

He's like, just. Just hang in a minute, you know.

[Luke Combs]

Because this is gonna get good.

[Chester]

They're gonna start talking to Luke. Luke's gonna be like, I'd like to offer a few finer points on.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

So he goes on, it's not over yet. This. This new staggered turkey hunting season thing. And again, I'm only bringing this up because this is stuff. This is like wildlife management stuff that will, wherever you live, will wind up impacting you. Because states learn from each other, right? Like, states try stuff and it's effective, and other states pick it up. Like, they don't live in little vacuums. And so in figuring out how do you allocate resources and how do you do things? These are all, like, little playbooks. And this idea of having everyone's familiar with looking at a regs and being like, oh, I'm a non resident. I got to buy extra. That's extra expensive. Or I'm a non resident. I can, you know, have a lower bag limit than a resident. Like, I'm only allowed one turkey, but a resident can kill five. What's up with that? But to enter this new thing, if it's emerging is, oh, I'm a resident. I start hunting on this day, my dear. Opening date.

[Luke Combs]

Right.

[Chester]

Is this day. And I got 10 days. And then the non residents show up. It's like a. This will become, you know, if it's effective, it'll become.

[Luke Combs]

Where is it in. In Montana. I'd rather have it go the other way.

[Chester]

Yeah. That they got to quit that like.

[Luke Combs]

Non residents get like the first two weeks of the season.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

I hear for just for turkeys or for deer. Everything. Yeah.

[Chester]

No, for turkeys I'd want the top end.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah. I would want top end of turkeys. But I'm speaking mostly now we're picking it now we're picking and choosing.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

You know.

[Chester]

Well, here's here. I'll tell you a little something. This, this will give you a little insight into my inner psychology is whenever another state bones non residents, I get a little agitated.

[Luke Combs]

But when your state does my psychic. Do you think. Do you know this all speculative stuff but like do you think there's ever a point where states are just like Nah man. No, no, no turkey wise or any, any species wise that they'll do what to where they could. They could potentially just go. We don't. We don't want any non resident hunters at all.

[Chester]

The what? What?

[Luke Combs]

Unless you're. Unless you maybe were own your own land or something.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

If you went for a non resident.

[Chester]

If you went to the. If you went to the hunters that'd be widespread but from the agency's perspective they can't because the money.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah right.

[Chester]

All their cuz they. They Most. Most states like this is something that. That isn't as widely. It's definitely not widely known in the public right. At all. Like hunters know this but in the public it's not widely known is state game agencies in most states the handle everything like. Like law enforcement, disease prevention, habitat improvement, all this stuff. Like their money comes from that licenses and stamps. So when they can. When they can go and. And like you get your turkey license for 30 bucks or something but then you get all these dudes that are paying hundreds to hunt turkeys. And then hunters are like no more non residents. The. The agency is like easy, dude.

[Luke Combs]

You're like well we kind of want those guys.

[Chester]

Like we lose like we'll lose the. You know, we have no funding if we can't sell non resident tags.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

I'm telling you man, there's nothing quite like. It gives me chubby just thinking about it. You hit the call and way off in the distance a tom fires back. You work him in, watching his body language shift from cautious to committed. Then that moment, the one every turkey hunter dreams about all winter. Zach Gobbler locks eyes on your decoy and comes running in. And if you're using the right decoy, you don't need to then settle for a 40 yard nervous shot. Because with the right decoy, you can get that bird in your lap putting on a wild, aggressive turkey show. I mean, I'm talking where he's fighting the decoy. I've had him sitting there trying to mate with the decoy. It's the best thing in the world. But to pull it off, you need realism like you need decoys that don't just fool turkeys at a distance. You want a decoy that fools him when he's up there at point blank range beating the snot out of it. That is why die hard turkey hunters insist on Dave Smith decoys. Their unmatched realism fools even the wariest of toms into thinking they're staring and fighting a real bird. And unlike inflatable decoys that crumble when shot, DSDs are built tough. They last season after season, even if you screw up and put a little tss into one of them. To top it all off, every DSD turkey decoy is made right here in the good old US of A. Made in America. Check out the full lineup@davesmith decoys.com and take your turkey hunts to the next level. So what he's saying here that goes on is there's this place called Big Cypress National National Preserve. I've been down there. Not hunt. I was down there with a turkey hunter, but I didn't know how turkeys there. Excuse me, fellas. Opening weekend, twice as many non residents as residents. Partly because it's because you hunt Osceola so damn early. I think dudes are like, I can go hunt Florida.

[Luke Combs]

Yep.

[Chester]

Seth did this. Son of a. Yep. He's like part of the problem. Part of the problem. So I can hunt Florida and still get home for my own opening day.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah. Why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you go take someone else's resources, dude. Florida, Texas, Montana's not even open yet.

[Chester]

Yep. So in that one, in that unit where they got twice as many non residents. This is a little hot tip alert. If you live in Florida.

[Luke Combs]

Don'T let Seth come on.

[Chester]

No.

[Luke Combs]

That'S not a hot tip.

[Chester]

If you live in South Florida next spring, when you go down to Big Cypress on opening day, you can expect to see a 2/3 reduction in pressure.

[Luke Combs]

Wow.

[Chester]

2/3 reduction in pressure.

[Luke Combs]

I'd be excited if I was a resident.

[Chester]

Now here's another one. I think this is it for turkey rules. Is there one more turkey rule? Oh, no, there's one more Turk. There's. This is turkey Dark. We're covering turkey dark spots, like bad turkey stuff or, you know, and then we're going to get positive and light. It's like a, it's like a gospel sermon.

[Luke Combs]

You, you break them down to build them up.

[Chester]

You go down, you know, you get in the dark and then you.

[Luke Combs]

Yep.

[Chester]

You come out out of the darkness. Where was I? Oh, this. We're coming out of the darkness now. Sorry.

[Luke Combs]

Okay.

[Chester]

Do you guys remember when Florida had their bear hunt and just got beat.

[Seth Morris]

Up by people now wanting a bear season?

[Chester]

Well, what happened in Florida is. This is, it's a great story. We talked about the past, but like, Florida had no bear hunting for a long time. Their numbers got real low. And also it's got like many places going to this kind of general trend right now. And I was talking about turkeys down, black bears up. Yeah, up, up, up, up, up, Y.

[Luke Combs]

Up everywhere for the most part.

[Chester]

So Florida does this quota hunt. Seth, can you mind pulling up real quick what year Florida did their bear hunt? It was some years ago now. Very contentious. All the animal rights people just, just been out of shape about Florida doing this bear hunt. They decided to do a quota hunt. Not a limited draw hunt. Not a, not a limited tag draw.

[Luke Combs]

Right. It's just like a cap. Everybody go out and once this many have been tagged, it's over. Right.

[Chester]

And they. And because they hadn't had a bear season in so long, they had no idea about what efficacy rates would be like. And they put in that as they approach the cap, there's a 24 hour lag. Meaning it's like, let's say you're like drawing down on a bear at, at, you know, let's say the cap gets hit at 7:50am on the second day, 7:52, a bear walks out and you shoot the bear. Is it like, did you just break the law? Because you.

[Luke Combs]

There's no way you could have known. Yeah, right. So it was open from 1930 to 1994. It closed until 2015 for one season and then it closed again.

[Chester]

And can you pull up what the quarter was?

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

The story is they way overshot the quota.

[Luke Combs]

Well, like, how much, like he'll pull it up.

[Chester]

The quota got hit and then people had like 24 or 48 hours, whatever, just. And by the time it was done stuff.

[Luke Combs]

Right.

[Chester]

So half, like, I shouldn't say half. People that know a lot about wildlife management looked at this and they're like, man, a lot more bears than we thought. Must be a lot of bears. Everybody else looked at it like they killed all the bears.

[Luke Combs]

Right.

[Chester]

And it was just done. Public sentiment was like that. They blew it. They ruined it. They had no idea what they're doing. They killed way more bears than the quota. Yeah. And they haven't hunted bears since 2015. What are you finding?

[Seth Morris]

I'm pretty sure that happened with wolves in Wisconsin.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

So it. We were talking about that last night. It's broken into four different management units. East Panhandle, north, central and south. And then there's harvest objectives, which is East Panhandle 40, North 100, Central 100, South 80.

[Chester]

And what they wind up with six something or so.

[Luke Combs]

East Panhandle was 40 actual, was 114. But North. North was 100 actual 25. Oh, Central 100 actual 143.

[Chester]

Okay.

[Luke Combs]

And then South 80 actual 22.

[Chester]

Oh.

[Luke Combs]

So they didn't really go over then.

[Chester]

Wasn't even that bad. Well, in some spot they went over and it pissed everybody off anyhow. You know, I was sitting there one time with a guy. I don't want to name his name, but I'm sitting there in Florida, and I wind up in a house of a commissioner.

[Luke Combs]

Okay.

[Chester]

Who grew up all kind, did all kinds of hunting. And the commissioner was telling me he voted against that bear hunt. I'm like, why? Just worried about public opinion, right?

[Luke Combs]

Exactly.

[Chester]

That was. He, like laid it out, sitting, talking to me face to face that he voted against it because he's worried about public backlash. Not nothing to do with bears. Worry about public opinion on him. Right now Florida is getting ready to take another shot. Florida's getting ready for another shot at a bear hunt. This is from Richard Martinez. You know, he does for a living. Take a guess.

[Luke Combs]

I don't know.

[Chester]

Throw something out there.

[Luke Combs]

I mean, I'm guessing. I'm guessing that it's. I'm not gonna guess it. Probably just musician.

[Chester]

No, no. He's an art mover.

[Luke Combs]

So close. I'm closer than I thought, really.

[Chester]

Like, if you buy a really expensive piece of art and you need it shipped from the. From the. Where you bought it from to you, Richard Martinez.

[Luke Combs]

So he's like. Like he's runs a niche shipping business.

[Chester]

Another way to put it. Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah, I like that. That's cool. Yeah, it's interesting business. You know, it is.

[Chester]

You get to see art, you get to handle it.

[Luke Combs]

I think about that a lot. I'm like, there's so many niche jobs that exist that you don't even. You wouldn't even think of, like, as a drive into places sometimes. I'M going, like, look at all the people that live here. Like, what? All these people are doing some kind of job. Like, there's. It's not. Like, when you think of, like. Think of all the jobs, you know, in your head.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

Off the top of your head.

[Chester]

My kids.

[Luke Combs]

There's so many more than those. You're like, astronaut, detective, firefighter, police officer, restaurant person. And then that's, like, done. Yeah, that's it, dude. I don't think about, like, the guy that's, like, manufacturing, like, the insulated foam inside of a airplane liner, but, like, that's the thing that's happening, dude.

[Chester]

Exactly. And then he's got the kind of people that have jobs that they didn't know that was a job until they applied for it.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

They're like, oh, that's a thing. I'll do that.

[Luke Combs]

They're like, yeah, I could pull that off.

[Chester]

You know what I did immediately. Yeah, that's right. Chilling.

[Luke Combs]

I just applied. Yeah.

[Chester]

At the December commission meeting the commission requested. I'm back to Florida.

[Luke Combs]

Okay.

[Chester]

This is Richard Martinez telling me about what's going on in Florida. He's a very. Richard Martinez is the. Is the kind of. The kind of guy that if every hunter or angler in every state was like Richard Martinez, we wouldn't have any problems. Extremely dedicated, very successful, but also very involved in all this kind of stuff.

[Luke Combs]

Right. Interesting.

[Chester]

Very involved in policy and, like, making his statements and having his voice be heard and talking to other hunters and, like, what are people's concerns? How do we address the concerns? What's. How do we, you know, prove the resource? He's got a job. He's got a family, wife, whatever. But at the same time, he, like. He is. Demonstrates, like, an exceptional level of curiosity and involvement with his area. And he's not one of those they, you know, blaming everybody for everything all the time. They took our jobs.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

He's not sitting all bitter, you know, like, he's not sitting all bitter.

[Luke Combs]

Right. They took our toms, dude. You know. Yeah.

[Chester]

At the December Florida Game Commission meeting, the commission requested staff to put together a proposal for a hunt next season. Staff will present their proposal at the May 21 meeting in Okala. Is that a place?

[Luke Combs]

Okala?

[Chester]

Yeah. We're encouraging everyone in support of the hunt to attend.

[Luke Combs]

That's a good way to like, make the protesters kind of, like you kind of swell the numbers, you know, like, the people that come to protest. You're like, well, these guys showed up. They must love. They must want the bear hunt. To go on. Oh, you know, everyone that's in support.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

The thing is going to attend.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

Like, you're like, look how many people showed up for this. For this bear hunt, dude.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

If you're there, no signs.

[Chester]

If you're there for the bear hunt, stand right next to and act like you're with someone that's there against it and yell real loud.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

They'll be like, those two fellas right there are excited.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah, man, look at those guys. Those guys are pumped about it, that whole little group. Yeah. Everyone there supports bears in one way or another. If you're in support of bears, doesn't matter which side you stand on. Show up to the event. Yeah. You know, come support the bears.

[Chester]

Damn it. Last thing I mentioned, Dr. Michael Chamberlain, he. He's. He's a wild turkey expert.

[Luke Combs]

The wild turkey dog. I met him.

[Chester]

Yeah. Wild turkey dogs.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

He's awesome.

[Chester]

Fantastic guy. He. If you go way back in the archives, Chamberlain's been on the show once or twice. He did one of my favorite episodes ever. And he explained when they were doing a turkey predation study in this area, where they went in and they wanted to see the whole inner workings of the complex of wildlife. Right. So they would put collars on everything they went into this area to do. Like they had all these collared turkeys or some kind of track. I think they glue a tracking mechanism on a turkey. They glue it to its back feathers. And they went in and they put collars on, like raccoons, coyotes, whatever. They wanted everybody in town to be wearing a thing to see how they're all interacting. And then when a turkey gets killed, when you get a mortality signal from your turkey, you can go in and try to figure out what happened to the turkey. But also, you also know where your other collared stuff has been hanging around. My. One of the favorite wildlife studies that I like to cite, and I brought it up thousand times. I'll bring it up again now. They did one of these in Alaska one time where they tried to come into town and basically collar everybody. They had a collared moose fall into a crevasse in a glacier. One of the grizzlies that was wearing one of their collars climbed in there to eat on it, got stuck and died in there with the moose. One of their wolverines that had a collar on it, got in there and ate on the carcass and lived. So they had this whole collar interaction that you can watch. Well, Chamberlain was talking about when they did. If you go back and listen to this episode. He tells it in great detail. They did one of these and they had a breeding pair of great horned owls come into their area. And he said, you couldn't keep a collar alive on anything. When those owls showed up, they killed everybody.

[Luke Combs]

Really.

[Chester]

You know, they killed everybody. And they'd smoke those turkeys like when spring gobblers, when a gobbler gets up. And the kind of half light goblin up in his roost tree, he's got a bullseye on him.

[Luke Combs]

I wonder.

[Chester]

Two gray horned owl.

[Seth Morris]

I wonder why, though, because they're not like eating the turkeys, are they?

[Chester]

Are they? Oh, yeah.

[Luke Combs]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Chester]

No, he said they'll blast them so hard.

[Seth Morris]

The only reason I say that is because my parents had a bunch of chickens killed by the owls and they weren't even eating them.

[Chester]

Oh, just kill him for the hell of it.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Chester]

Anyways, well, she didn't like them. You know what? Maybe they, if I remember, I could be screwing it up. I could be screwing up. But what he talked about, the thing that tickled me about it is he said that great horned owl smokes that turkey so hard out of a tree. When you go out there, the turkey's laying way off from the tree, but it's feathers running from the tree because he, he's hits them like full speed, like knocks him out, blasts them out of that tree. Mike Chamberlain. They are doing a. So they're getting ready to work on this project, a DNA project with wild turkeys. All right. We had a researcher on the podcast one time who's working on a duck DNA program and the duck DNA program to refresh people's memories. The duck DNA program is looking at these kind of like fake ducks that game farms put out in certain areas. I didn't really know this was a thing, but like in the east in certain. It's a thing. Like guys that want, that have like these little duck hunting spots and they take clients out, they're just raising mallards.

[Luke Combs]

I had no idea this. I haven't heard of this.

[Chester]

You know, like doing that with pheasants.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's pretty common.

[Chester]

It's a thing with ducks. I had. I didn't even know this was a thing. Someone told me once, but I didn't really.

[Luke Combs]

And where is it? Where's it happening?

[Chester]

Like, I know it happens a lot in Chesapeake Bay.

[Luke Combs]

Interesting.

[Chester]

I think they're doing it a bunch. In Ontario, you raise ducks in a pen, right? And then you just kind of get them set up in your little area. And then guys come out, like, pretend to hunt the ducks.

[Luke Combs]

We even pretend.

[Chester]

Well, they hunt them, but.

[Luke Combs]

But they're. Yeah, it's just like they're just kind of like they're just around pet ducks almost.

[Chester]

What happened was in. In one time, I was down hunting sika deer in Maryland, and we're going.

[Luke Combs]

Over a bridge bucket list hunt for me.

[Chester]

Oh, really?

[Luke Combs]

Oh, yeah. Oh, well, I had plans to do it. I had. We actually had. We were go. I had a trip planned to go do it. And this was probably in 20. It's probably right at the end of 2020 going into. I think it was going to be in January of 21.

[Chester]

Yep.

[Luke Combs]

And ended up. I think I ended up, like, getting Covid or something.

[Chester]

You should take this up with me in a little while. And we have had just a fantastic time doing that. And I have someone I would like to introduce you to.

[Luke Combs]

We got.

[Chester]

I.

[Luke Combs]

We got hooked up through my bus driver. Grew up. Grew up there.

[Chester]

Oh, yeah.

[Luke Combs]

In Maryland. So I think it was actually.

[Chester]

You still got the same bus driver?

[Luke Combs]

Yeah, still got him. Yep. Larry. Larry, yeah, yeah, Larry guy. He's. Man, he's a good dude. He's a great guy. And yeah, so he. He knew some. He knew some folks that. That had access from. From where he grew up and stuff. So. But I think. I think it would have been. When you guys went and did that hunt on meat eater was the first time that I had seen that.

[Chester]

Okay.

[Luke Combs]

And I was like, I got it this before we had. Before I had been on the show, we. We knew each other. And I reached out, I asked Larry, I was like, hey, man, you know anything about these? And he was like, oh, yeah, man. He said those. We got those things all over the place.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

I was like, oh, how do I do that? He's like, just. I just call my buddies from high school and you go up there and do it. I'm like, oh, cool.

[Chester]

It is a. It is one of the easiest eaten deer in the world, man.

[Luke Combs]

Really?

[Chester]

Oh, my God, they're good. You can just take the front legs. Like, you can't do this with any kind of thing. You take the front legs and put it in a smoker and pick it apart.

[Luke Combs]

Really?

[Chester]

Yeah. Anyways, we're down there hunting. We're down there hunting. Seek a deer. And it was the fall, right. I remember going over a bridge on this little slough or whatever, and there's just mallards everywhere under the bridge. And they weren't like, laid out like, how Mad it just something was weird about it. And I even said to my buddy, I'm like, I can't believe all these mallards. And he goes, oh no, those are release birds. Because they were just like arranged in the, like odd. Under the bridge and like arranged in a way that just didn't look like what ducks would do.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

So this duck DNA program is. Is these ducks that these guys are putting out are breeding with wild mallards and their offspring acto weird. Their offspring don't know when to migrate, don't know where to migrate. They don't behave right. They get predated on at a way high rate. They're stupid. And so there's. They're doing this DNA project to find out, well, these guys that are dumping these birds out that they're then breeding with wild mallards and impacting all kinds of things about mallard biology.

[Seth Morris]

It doesn't seem like that would be legal.

[Chester]

The whole thing surprised the hell out of me. It's a big thing for these guys. They big thing for them to be able to want to do it. So they did this, this DNA project. Well, they're doing. They're launching a new DNA project on turkeys where they're going to be nationwide. Hunters are going to have a chance to submit. We'll keep you informed on how this works. They're going to have a chance to submit turkey DNA. And here's what, here's what is of interest to them. You know, when you're looking on social media, whatever, during turkey season, everybody's got all their crazy turkeys and you're seeing dudes that got like wild colored turkeys. Or this has happened to me. You're like, there's a flock of turkeys going by. There's a white one in it. Or people that will say, oh, I like hunting in Kansas because you can kill an eastern Anna Rio together. And you're kind of. What the hell does that mean? Well, doing a big. Doing a big turkey DNA project where hunters all over can send in a sample and then they can map out. Because one of the things they're looking at is like all these weird color phases. Where are they coming from? And probably like hair. Like not probably, there's. Is it like heritage breeds of turkeys? Is it farm turkeys? But the thing you gotta. That makes this interesting to think about is like if you're sitting there picturing what is the original. Like you take a cow, okay, like cattle. What did cattle come from? Cattle came from a thing called a wild animal called the oryx, or sheep. Domestic sheep came from. I think they came from mufons. Horses came from Siberian step horse. So now when you see like a horse standing in someone's pasture, you're watching like the Indianapolis. No. What do they call that thing? Big horse race.

[Luke Combs]

Kentucky Derby.

[Chester]

Kentucky Derby. Indianapolis, you know, Kentucky Derby. And you're like, what is this animal? Like, I've looked at horses my whole life. You ever ask yourself, well, what did it come from?

[Luke Combs]

Sure.

[Chester]

All right. It's an animal. Like the Eurasian step was like that animal. When you look at cows and all the breeds of cows, you're like, what the hell they come from? It came from a wild animal called oryx. All pigs. Like all pigs. A big pink farm pig. They're all called suess scraffa. S U S S C R O F A Sue Scraffa is like the, like the, the, the. Why the ancestral wild pig. All pigs came from the ancestral wild pig. They're all still called susgrafa. It's all one species. What's cool about turkeys is turkeys is a rare thing, is a rare domestic that if you went to Poland, just pulling that out of thin air, if you went to Poland and there's some white turkey standing there, that turkey is a descendant of our wild turkey. Like when the Spanish came and, you know, quote, discovered America, they got wild turkeys which had been domesticated by indigenous people, brought wild turkeys back to Europe, turned them into all these crazy turkey breeds, and then brought them back here again. Right, right. So like all turkeys on the whole planet come from here turkeys. Right. So they're trying to, you know, maybe puts together some map of how this all went down.

[Luke Combs]

That'd be cool. Yeah, that'd be neat.

[Chester]

So we'll keep people, keep people focused.

[Seth Morris]

You might be on the meat eater live soon. Right. The turkey doc, I think, coming on.

[Chester]

Maybe he's going to talk about this.

[Seth Morris]

Yeah.

[Chester]

This show is sponsored in part by BetterHelp. Now let's talk numbers. Traditional in person therapy can cost anywhere from 100 to $250 per session, which adds up fast. But with BetterHelp online therapy, you can save on average up to 50% per session. With BetterHelp, you pay a flat fee for weekly sessions, saving you big on cost and time. Therapy should feel accessible, not like a luxury. With online therapy, you get quality care at a price that makes sense and can help you with anything from anxiety to everyday stress. Your mental health is worth it, and now it is within reach. There's a ton of ways in which therapy can be helpful to a person. It can help you learn positive coping skills. It can help you set boundaries in your relationships. It can help empower you to be the best version of yourself. And it can help you also to learn how to think before you talk and think before you act. Make sure you're making the right move. Your well being is worth it. Visit betterhelp.com meater to get 10 off your first month. That's betterhelp H-E-L-P.com meater Luke, you know how in like, I don't know, certain disciplines, we're talking about having all kinds of jobs before, in certain disciplines, work will interfere with one's ability to do their hunting and fishing?

[Luke Combs]

Yes.

[Chester]

Like a friend of mine, he's a MLB baseball player, right? And there's this thing that happens, like, if they don't make the playoffs, it's game on for deer. And if you make the playoffs, you're screwed. But hope you don't make the playoffs so you can deer hunt. And he says, no, that's not a thing that I hope. Yeah, like, you don't, you don't. It's like a, it's sort of a, it's not what you want to happen. But if, when your season ends, you do start deer hunting, but you never hope your season ends to go deer hunting because that would mean you weren't. Right, probably an MLB player.

[Luke Combs]

Right, Right, Right, right.

[Chester]

You were something different. How, in your, in your world, how do you, do you, do you try to line up to like, are you aware? Are you like, man, I can't tour during deer season? Or do you just do work first and then pick up where you pick up?

[Luke Combs]

This, this, this current calendar year is the first year I've done that. I was supposed to do a set of shows, I won't say which, a set of shows in November that have now already been completed. Because I was like, I don't want to do that in November.

[Chester]

Really?

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

Did you tell people what you were thinking?

[Luke Combs]

Oh, yeah. I mean, I just literally told him. I was like, no, that's the middle of deer season. I'm not, I'm not gonna do that because I haven't had a really great deer season in, I mean, six or seven years. Because, because we're always, because we're always touring heavily. So it, it hasn't, it hasn't been as bad the last couple years because, you know, we've been playing NFL stadiums and obviously you can only really do that during the off season. And obviously NFL is really kicked up in the fall, so you can't play those venues in the fall because they're not. They don't do anything other than. Than their stuff in the fall, usually barring some weird scenario or something. But. So, yeah, we hadn't had to worry about it. And this year it was like, hey, do you want to go do this international stuff? So it's not only, oh, it would be different if it was like, hey, man, do you want to go do like, you know, three weekends in November and do shows on Friday and Saturday? It'd be like, sure, that'd be fine. Because, you know, I could go, you know, I could hunt at home or I could go hunt somewhere for a few days and then go back on the road or something. But it was going to be, you know, it was going to be overseas, so just like, miss the whole, the whole deal.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

And I was like, at this point, I'm just not willing to do that now. The shows have already been done. We did the shows. We just moved them to a different time.

[Chester]

Got it.

[Luke Combs]

And so it was. It's not really like, I've never cancelled any shows to hunt. No. And I never would.

[Chester]

So do you look at it? If you, if you start to, if you, if you start to manipulate your. If you start to, like, manage your music career around your desire to be outside, is that a sign that, like, is that a sign where you're like, man, I've like, arrived that I can actually start to manipulate my thing? Or is it that, man, I'm just getting of the age where I'm starting to recognize what my limits are and what's important.

[Luke Combs]

I think there's a. I think there's a bit of both in there. I mean, I think obviously it's a super luxury to be able to do stuff like that. And it's not. It's not something that I have ever. It's never even been in the conversation until a year or two ago. It's like, well, how do we, you know, because it felt like every year we'd get the season and it was like, oh, boy, like, we're not gonna get, you know, we're not gonna get to get to do the thing. I think the difference was, you know, before, it's like, now I kind of have some of my own spots too, to go do some of these hunts that I want to do, you know, because that's something that's been in my, my grander plan for, you know, Spending time with my kids, too, right, is to hopefully, you know, hopefully they fall in love with it as well. So I wanted to have spots where I could take them and not have to be dependent upon somebody else to invite me somewhere or, you know, let me go somewhere, have access to their, you know, resources or whatever it may be. So I have my own places now, so I wanted to work that in. Into my plan of, like, okay, well, eventually, this is something that I want to prioritize because it's something that I enjoy, and it's an activity that I want to, you know, do with. With my kids. So. Yeah, I mean, I think it's just. It's just part of growing, right. And evolving as a person. And the phase that I'm in at life now is completely different than it was five or six years ago. You know, five or six years ago, you know, my career was, you know, really, really on the insane roller coaster to the absolute top. And just now it's more like now you're kind of at cruising altitude, right? And all your. And all your work is to, like, maintain where you are. But it's the same amount of work, but there's not really much like. There's not really anywhere else to go. There is no more like. It's like an airplane can only go so far. Yeah. You know, it's like I kind of reach the max altitude, and then it's like it can't really. Yeah, you can't really climb anymore. You just have to maintain. Right. So it takes the same amount of work that it did to get there as it does to just stay where you're at now. You know what I mean? And so you have to kind of evaluate. We were talking about this last night. Sitting in the chairs is like, you know, when you. When you have kids, right. Like, you only have so much bandwidth to deal with things in your life, with everything that's on your plate that you want to achieve or things that you want to do, hobbies, career. And then you, you know, you throw your kid. Once you have kids, you throw that in the mix. You know, that. That, to me, occupies a ton of space in a good way, Right. It's like, you want. I want to be there for my kids. I want to be involved parent. I want to be around and help take care of them and be their dad. And so that eliminates a lot of other stuff from that. You don't have the bandwidth for now because all the space that you had before is now almost cut apart, man. You know, so now everything else has to fit into the half slot, you know, and that's your job, and that's hobbies and things that you want to do, priorities that you have. Like, you have to kind of reprioritize where everything else sits. Because the kids and the family come first. They have to come first, you know, and then job, for me, it has to come second, you know, so I have to just. And that might be 40 to 50. 40, 45% of the. Of the 100%. And family's 50. So you're left with 5%, you know, and you're like, man, what do I. You know what I mean?

[Chester]

Like, how my pie out quite so carefully.

[Luke Combs]

That's.

[Chester]

But that's a good way to look at it.

[Luke Combs]

But you're going like, well, so then I begin to think, you know, with the hunting stuff as well, how, you know, it's something that I love and, you know, something I hope that my kids love and I hope to get them involved into. But we talked about it last night. Like, is it this inherently, like, selfish practice to win to get your kids involved into the things that you love?

[Chester]

Yes, it is, but it's. But.

[Luke Combs]

But it's. It's done.

[Chester]

But it's good, though.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah, for sure.

[Chester]

It's. It's dual purpose.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah, it's dual purpose. Right. It gives you then. Then some of your bandwidth for family time and time spent with your kids can also be. You know, it doesn't have to necessarily come out of the 5% that's left for you. It goes into the. You're kind of. You're getting two birds stoned at once, as I like to say. And it's.

[Chester]

Do you remember what PETA. PETA, like, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. They're trying to, like, get people to stop using expressions like kill two birds with one stone.

[Luke Combs]

That wasn't a real thing.

[Chester]

No, it was. And it was like, they're offering up alternatives, but they would love that one.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah. Get two birds stoned at once.

[Chester]

Yeah. They're, like, trying to put a. Instead of like, oh, you got your card ahead of your horse, you know. Well, that implies the horse has the. Pull a cart, which is mean.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

So you should change it to like, whatever.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

Hell, you did a better job than they did just sitting there right now. I'll just take that one.

[Luke Combs]

Yep.

[Chester]

You know. You know what? You know what? I. When you thought about, is it selfish to.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

You know, like, is it selfish to want to get your kids into hunting and fishing if you that's what you like to do. And I've thought about that a great deal. And I don't think that. I don't think I'm like, overdoing it. Right. I'm having a hard time talking right now. Like, picture that you're trying to rationalize buying some stupid vehicle.

[Luke Combs]

Oh, I don't have to picture that.

[Chester]

No.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

And you're like, you come up with crazy. Crazy.

[Luke Combs]

Right.

[Chester]

You come up with crazy. You're like, wow, Neo. Really, what I need it for is picture that there was a lava flow, you know, and.

[Luke Combs]

And.

[Chester]

And like we got blocked in by a terrible lava flow.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

Well, now I, you know, this vehicle would. Right. And you come up with insane. To try to justify impulses you have.

[Luke Combs]

Yep.

[Chester]

I don't think that when you go, like, well, I want to get my kids in the hunting and fishing, is that selfish? Because that's what I want to do.

[Seth Morris]

But it's also super, like, healthy.

[Chester]

Yes, yes.

[Seth Morris]

It's like that.

[Chester]

Sing it.

[Luke Combs]

It.

[Seth Morris]

It's so. There's so many things in this world that people are into themselves that getting your kids into it probably wouldn't be as healthy as getting your kids outside in nature.

[Luke Combs]

No. No doubt.

[Seth Morris]

Away from screens.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

Like, selfish didn't mean necessarily bad.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

Oh, no. Inherently, like.

[Seth Morris]

Right.

[Luke Combs]

There's some. There's it's really like self serving. Like, if all your kids got way into hunting, if it's like all of them.

[Chester]

Be the greatest thing in the world.

[Luke Combs]

Exactly.

[Seth Morris]

You're being a good.

[Luke Combs]

But that would be mission accomplished, dude. It doesn't mean you're not being a good parent. Means you're still being a good parent. Yeah.

[Chester]

You're doing all that. And like, those things are. There's even another. When I try to make the list of all things, like physical activity outside all this. Right. Like learning about your environment, learning about seasons, like being exposed to, you know, life and death on the farm. Right. All these positives. I also thought of this where I was thinking, whatever is your. Whatever your passion is, I think it's productive to expose your kids to, like, intense enthusiasm.

[Luke Combs]

That's a good way to look at it.

[Chester]

Like, to expose your kids to, like, what is it? Like, demonstrate to them what it's like to just like, love something. Well and not just have it be the world is just this sort of.

[Luke Combs]

Well, me and my. Me and my wife were discussing this one night. You know. You know, being a musician is such a, like, fickle business, you know? And, you know, eventually everything that goes up Comes down in the music business, right? Whether it's just the constraints of time or it's like, you know, a new generation of listeners is coming in, and they're like, oh, well, that guy's old or whatever. We don't listen to that guy anymore. You know what I mean? Like, you eventually, you know, you become like, kind of a. Like. Like, legacy act is kind of the term that's used, Right? Sure. So me and. Me and my wife always discuss. And I'm like, you know, sometimes if I'm having a tough day, I'll be coming through the house. I'm like. I'm just. I'll just be done, you know, Like, I'm stomping around like, you know, like, I burned my egg in the skillet, and I'm like, why don't I just quit music? And she's like, what are you talking about? You know, And I was, like, joking about it, you know, and we're. We're sitting down talking kind of about it in a more serious way. One night, after we had put the kids to bed and had dinner, and, you know, as. I was almost like. She was almost just kind of letting me vent, you know, and I was talking to her, and I realized, I'm like, man, like, you know, like, one. Like, what would I do if I didn't, you know, what would I be doing anyways if I didn't do music? You know, I'd still be just. I'd be doing music. I should be doing it at home.

[Chester]

Okay.

[Luke Combs]

Instead of, you know, I would still be doing it in some ways. One, but two, it's like a song about that. True. I do have a song about that. And my kids are like, yeah, my sons are two and a half. And one and a half, you know, as at the date of this recording, you know, and it's like, they've never seen me do my thing ever, dude. Like, they don't know. They don't even know, dude. You know what I mean? Like, they don't even.

[Chester]

Yeah, that's a good point. So I, like, they have no idea.

[Luke Combs]

Because, like, I don't want that. I don't want, you know, their dad, which is me, right? Like, I don't want their dad, like, for them to know me is like, essentially like a retired guy that's like, no. What does your dad do growing up? Oh, but he didn't do anything. And, like, what do you mean? Well, like, I don't know. He had a job before. Like, before. We can, like, remember and stuff. But he doesn't, doesn't work now.

[Chester]

Yeah. He doesn't fried a good egg, though. Gosh.

[Luke Combs]

Not even really that, you know, he can't even really do that very well, you know. Mess him up every once in a while. Yeah. He gets it stuck on the cast iron. And when he doesn't, when he gets too impatient to preheat it. Right. You know what I mean? He doesn't let it heat up slow enough. But it's. I, I. And so that ultimately was my conclusion, you know, to my own kind of mental conflict was like, well, I don't want to, like, I don't want my kids to know, like me is like a lazy guy who doesn't do anything. Like, I want my kids to see me do things at a really high level.

[Chester]

Yep.

[Luke Combs]

And pursue the things that I set out to achieve. And I want them to see me enjoying doing that. I want them to see me struggle doing that, you know, Like, I want to expose them to all the gambit of emotions, you know, and because, you know, I watch, I watched my parents go through that stuff. My parents just weren't successful musicians, you know, My dad was a maintenance man and my men, and my mom worked at the bank. And so it was like they, you know, they worked so hard at a, at a job that they didn't even love, you know, and that taught me so much about, you know, that led me to where I am, you know, because my parents always pushed me to have a job that. Have a job that you love because we did it, you know, and like, you can, it's such a, such a life hack to have a job that you love, you know what I mean? I think it's one of the biggest life hacks out there, man. You don't have to hate your job. And I think as a kid, a little bit, I thought that a little bit because my parents didn't love their job, you know, they'd hate it. But it wasn't like, you know, mom didn't wake up and go, God, can't.

[Chester]

Wait to, you know, get down to the bank.

[Luke Combs]

Get down to the bank today and sit at the desk all day and deal with people's mortgage paperwork, you know.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

That just wasn't something she was excited about.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

And so I remember thinking, even went in to go into college, I'm like, well, I better get into business, because I hate that. You know what I mean? It's like, you know, it's like, I just think there's kind of this, like, little falsehood where no one really tells you, like, hey, man, you don't have to, like, hate work. It's not something they tell you in school. Or at least from my perspective, it was just like, yeah, man, like, parents just, you know, parents come home and they. About work and work sucks and you're gonna have to work one day, so get ready. Yeah. Enjoy your free time while you have it. Enjoy your freedom before you get in the suck of, like, having a job every day. Like, you don't have to have a job you hate. You know? I wish people would have told me that earlier on, but I learned that by. By watching my parents.

[Chester]

I wonder if that was like a.

[Luke Combs]

Sort of like a generational thing too. Like, I feel like a lot of, like my parents.

[Chester]

Friends have all these jobs that, you.

[Luke Combs]

Know, they don't necessarily love doing, but they just did it because they had a family. And, like, maybe it wasn't as easy.

[Chester]

To go do something you love back in the day.

[Luke Combs]

No. So, I mean, I think a lot of the. A lot of the reason that people do it is because they have to. Yeah, they do it for their kids. You know what I mean? Like, my dad didn't want to strap up or my mom didn't want to strap up and go in, like, but they had to because, like, you know, they gotta, like, buy groceries and, you know, they're doing it. I mean, it's a. It's a thing, I think a lot of times, you know, at least if you're. If you're trying to. Trying to be a good parent or raise your kids right, you do it out of love. Right?

[Chester]

Did your parents have a lot for you? Did your parents have a lot of. Did they like, explicitly express love for you a lot when you were little?

[Luke Combs]

Yeah, for sure. My mom did. For sure. You know, I mean, my dad was a little more tough exterior guy. Like, he wasn't like big cuddly. Like, he wasn't like. It wasn't like best friend vibes, you know, My dad wasn't like, come on, little buddy, let's go down to the fishing hole. And, you know, he's Boston throw baseball. He was like, I work and on the weekends I work at home because we, you know, we gotta mow the grass and we gotta weed eat and we gotta keep the house nice. And like, he was like, you know, mama. I mean, he was a. He always told me he, you know, loved me and was proud of me and stuff. He did. So there was never any question about that. But it was very, like, it was Just kind of stern, like, you know, you needed to do your stuff. You need to, you know, make sure your room's clean and make sure. Help your mom with whatever she needs in the house. And then, you know, mow the front. I'll do the ride and mower. And, you know, there's stuff to be done, there's things to be accomplished. You know what I mean? And. But yeah, dude, it was very. It was very kind of like, healthy and normal in that sense of.

[Chester]

Do you have a thing where. Well, I'll tell you that I do not be curious to get your thoughts on it just because on parenting, I. I've tried hard to, like, it's kind of hard to explain. I've tried hard to demonstrate, like, a level of humility to my kids and a level of presence to my kids by. By making sure that they see me all the time doing, like, the mundane that needs to happen and running a household. Yeah, right. That, like, no one's above it.

[Luke Combs]

No.

[Chester]

Do you know what I mean?

[Luke Combs]

Yep. Exactly.

[Chester]

And so I want them to, like. Especially when they're little, man, I was like, I. It neat. Like, someone needed to do it. It needed to happen. But I was like, I want them to see that. That you come in with a plan at a time and, like, you prepare dinner.

[Luke Combs]

Yep.

[Chester]

And that, like, they set the table, they help clean up. It's like, no one is above any of this.

[Luke Combs]

No, definitely. And we have. I mean, we're even doing it, you know, obviously, you know, two and a half and one and a half. You're limited with what you can do. But I mean, we. Even now, like, the kids, you know, we. We live in a 2,000 square foot house, man. It's me. It was two bedrooms. Me and my wife have a room, and then the kids. The boys share a room. So it's not like you're never. We're always close together. We're always tied in there, you know, with the. The living room is the playroom, so all the kids toys are in there. And so. And, you know, they got all kinds of stuff that grandma and grandpa's bought them and, you know, aunts and uncles and friends and stuff like that, and they play in there and just. I mean, we let them just, I mean, destroy it, but it's like every night it's like, all right, we're all cleaning up now.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

And mom and dad are cleaning up. But y'all. But y'all are like. To the extent that a one and a half year old, you know, he'll he'll get a block and bring it over and you know, he might only pick up two things, but my two and a half year old now, like, he can actually make, he can make a 5% dent in the cleanup and he unders. But he understands, dude. Like that's, but we, we make it a point to go, hey man, like, you need to help us with this stuff. This is, this is your job. You make a mess, you got to clean it up. You know, if he spills his milk, we give him a paper towel. He can't really do anything. He just smears it around.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

And you know, we go back behind him and actually clean it up. But, you know, we make him go and you know, he dabs the paper towel and it soaks a little bit of milk up and he throws it in the garbage.

[Seth Morris]

And at that age, they don't even realize it's a chore kind of.

[Luke Combs]

Right. They're just like, oh yeah, I get to help. That's, that's pretty cool. But like, yeah, reinforcing those things all the time. You know, I think we, we're also discussing this at some point yesterday, the three of us. But my life is so, like, is so normal outside of like when I'm playing shows. Like, I really don't do a whole lot of anything other than I go play my shows and I come home and I spend time with my wife and my kids and I do whatever work stuff I have to do when I'm home, whether that's writing songs, which most of the time I'm doing at my house, you know, with my friends and stuff. And I'm just there, dude. Like, I'm just, I'm basically like in some ways like a, like an, another form of a stay at home parent. When I'm, when I'm not, when I'm not on the road and even at, you know, when we're touring the stadiums, I'm only gone three days a week, so I'm home four days a week, every week, like full time. Like sun up, sundown most days. Like getting the kids up, changing diapers, doing baths, cooking dinners, cooking lunches, cooking breakfasts. It's like, but I want. And I. And that's, that occupies a lot of my time. But that's what I want. I want my kids childhood to feel as normal as it can given the very strange circumstances that it will ultimately become.

[Seth Morris]

That's pretty cool that you can, you know, get where you've been at and are at and can still do that.

[Luke Combs]

That's awesome. But you have to. You know, that's a. That's a choice you have to make, and you lose a lot of things with that in the sense of, like, there's so many cool opportunities that I have that maybe, you know, would be really. Not really beneficial, but cool experiences are beneficial to my career that I. I pass on to do that for my kids and my kids. Stuff that my kids will probably really never even know outside of maybe if they see this one day. It's not something I'm bragging, like, I'm such a good dad, you know? Like, it's not that. It's just that I. I say this all the time, but, like, my kids didn't ask to be born. I made the choice to, like, it was my choice to bring them into the world. Right. So it's. To me, it's a lot of dudes.

[Chester]

A lot of dudes don't put that together.

[Luke Combs]

Right.

[Chester]

Like, I would want it. Like, I want to sit here. My. My impulse here is to sit here and, like, talk about how commendable it is that you have the philosophy you have. And one time, I was. My brother Danny, we were talking about someone saying. Him saying how weird it was that people would routinely express almost in a surprising way, he's such a good dad. He's like.

[Luke Combs]

Like. Like, that's an exception.

[Chester]

How did we land in a spot where it's, like, worth pointing out, like, people, like, are pointing out good dads?

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

He's like, wait, you mean, like. You mean I'm not sociopathic? That's great, dude.

[Luke Combs]

You're saying we're. We're having a dad crisis right now? We're in the midst of a dad crisis.

[Chester]

Well, that's what he was. He was like. He just was kind of. Just in this moment of, like, somewhat levity, was kind of saying that it's funny that the bar seems to be rather low to become celebrated as.

[Luke Combs]

As just a dad who does what.

[Chester]

He'S supposed to do because people aren't.

[Seth Morris]

Getting married early enough.

[Chester]

Yeah. Yeah. Before we begin the show, we were talking about a dear friend of mine who sends me articles all the time pointing out that people are waiting till later putting off getting married, you know? And, like, it's distressing to him. He has four kids. It's distressing.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

It's like those sons of. They're getting away with something. I had him young, by God.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

You know, that's the way it ought.

[Luke Combs]

To be.

[Chester]

But it is, man. It's like, it Is it is cool. They do that. And I think that it'll be an interesting trip for your kids to. It'll be an interesting trip when your kids start putting together this other world that they think of you as like some dude. Like, no. And then he's gone. But he's always, you know, he's here. He's just whatever. And I remember with my own kids. I remember with my own kids, they were not that old, man. It used to really bother them maybe like at 5, 6, 7 years of age when they started putting together that we'd be in the airport or something and someone would come up to me, right. And. And they didn't like it, really. They were, like, defensive. They're like. They were territorial now. They're like, totally cool. But they don't.

[Luke Combs]

Right.

[Chester]

You know, when it happens on. You know, when it does happen, and if we go somewhere as a family, you know, we're like. To have a layover. Whatever.

[Luke Combs]

They're used to it.

[Chester]

It'll be a little bit. And it doesn't. They just. They. It doesn't even register with them.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah. They're just like, oh, it's part of the thing.

[Chester]

Yeah. But at a time I remember they were like, there's like a. Like, as this was coming, clear to them that there would be people that would like. Like the sh. Like that their dad made something or wrote something and people liked it.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

And would come up unannounced. It brought out in them, like, a territorial instinct.

[Luke Combs]

That's interesting.

[Chester]

Yeah. To be like, don't. Their kind of tendency was like, like, like, yeah, get away. Do you know what I mean? They didn't like that.

[Luke Combs]

Sure.

[Chester]

They wouldn't even have been able to articulate it. But just how they physically responded.

[Luke Combs]

Right. I often wonder, like, you know, I. I've discussed with some other artist buddies that have kids, you know, and that some. That whose kids are a bit older than mine, you know, and I'm like, when do you. When do you, like. Is there a definitive moment where you have to, like, have the conversation with them? Like, hey, let me explain this to you. And so. But, like, let me explain to you what's going on. And the reason I say that is because I've had a few artist buddies, like, well, you got to tell them as soon as they're able to understand, or someone else is going to. Oh, they're going to learn it from someone else. And you want to learn it from you. You want them to learn it from you. Kind of like, you don't you don't want them showing up at home one day and going, well, what is. Why do all my friends think it's cool that you're my dad?

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

Why are you different than everyone else's dad? You know what I mean? It's like, it's an interesting. I mean, it's obviously a niche problem, right. Like there's not, there's not any books written on, you know, how to, how to tell your kids that you're a famous musician or whatever it may be. You know, there might.

[Chester]

There maybe should be one, but I don't. The audience would be small, but I think that it's what winds up being. What winds up being hard on them. And, and this, like, for me to be talking about this issue. We're talking about like a, like a, like a, like a D list, whatever. Like whatever. The lowest level of celebrity a person can have is like where I'm at. Right. And then you're like, way, like you're like way up the ladder. But there's a thing that, that even no matter what, what winds up having the kids is there. There's a thing where it's like among peers or people around, there's this kind of like a little bit of like, you ain't all that, meaning they'll encounter.

[Luke Combs]

Right. Resistance from other people.

[Chester]

They'll encounter like a. You ain't, you know, you think you're all that or like you ain't just because your dad.

[Luke Combs]

Right. And they may not think that at all, but the other people interpret it.

[Chester]

It'll be there. And, and Right. The point I'm making about, if you sit down and we're talk to them, they're seeing things and forming impressions such a fast from like ambient things. Ambient clues and cues.

[Luke Combs]

Yep.

[Chester]

That is way faster than would be their ability that, that that happens. That influx of inputs about what's going on in the world happens earlier than then would be the ability for them to understand what you were trying to explain to them. Meaning if you waited till they were, let's say something happened to you in the past and you were able to like. And you lived a reality that, that was totally outside of your past. And at some point you need to say, hey, there's something I need to tell you about a thing that happened to me a long time ago. Right. Like a long time ago, this crazy thing happened. At some point you might become aware of this and I want to explain it to you. In that case, you might be able to wait until you could have a rational Conversation with your kids.

[Luke Combs]

Right.

[Chester]

But if something's actively ongoing now.

[Luke Combs]

They'Re.

[Chester]

Already on it before you'd be able to explain it to them.

[Luke Combs]

Yep.

[Chester]

Meaning all their buddies like travel a certain way and it'd be like, well, I get the feeling we can't really travel that way. Like it's kind of risky and so we travel this very different way.

[Luke Combs]

Right.

[Chester]

You know, they're on it, man. Like no, for sure they're on it way ahead of their ability to, for you to sit down and talk to them about it. They've already like put together in their head that like there's something different when we go somewhere.

[Luke Combs]

Oh for sure. And I think that like why don't.

[Chester]

We go Chuck E. Cheeses?

[Luke Combs]

Yeah. Well, there's also like this inherent like innocence though, or like the situation that they're in is like their normal. And they almost think that everyone's situation is, is that too in some ways. Like I've, I, I had an artist buddy who I'm pretty close with and he was telling me about one of his kids being at school and they're younger, you know, like you were talking like kindergarten, like first grade or whatever, you know, and someone was, they were talking to another kid and this is like a conversation that the teacher had I guess with him or something. And I don't remember those exact specifics of, of how he heard about it, but it's like someone was talking. One of the kids was talking to his kid about something and his kid was like, oh, what song does your daddy have on the radio? You know, and it was like. And the teacher kind of thought that maybe the child was like trying to slight the other child or something. Like it was really just like she just thought that everyone's dad was like sung on the radio cuz like her dad does. And my kids like they'll see me on or they'll see me and my wife, you know, like on an award show or something. Like, you know, like, cuz when we go like to the CMA Awards or to the Grammys or something like, you know, my parents or whoever will let the kids stay up and like watch because they know, you know, dad's going to be singing on tv, you know, awards.

[Seth Morris]

Does your dad have. We got employee of the month, right? Yeah, Ace Hardware less.

[Luke Combs]

And I had another buddy who's a songwriter and, and he was like, he said, you know, I had been over and, and like met his kids and stuff. We ate or whatever at their house and remember him telling me this. We're on a writing trip. And he was like, dude, my kids, like, they know that like me and you are like, are friends that I, that I know you and stuff. And I was like, yeah, it's like. And he said, so the other night we're having dinner and like it's like his daughter. So I was like, well, dad, can we have Justin Bieber over for dinner? And he was like, like, she just thought I knew every famous musician that I could just call any of them and just have them over at any time. Because I know you like, so it's such an interesting. So they also like, they only understand the world in kind of this like tunnel visiony, like whatever their surroundings are, is how they kind of perceive everything at that age. So it's interesting too, like how that factors into the way things will become. And I'm worried was like, you really gotta steer. You really. It's like it's my job to kind of open the. That worldview up to like, hey, this, this thing isn't normal, you know, but it doesn't, it doesn't make you better than anyone else.

[Chester]

Yeah, you're doing a way better job of explaining what I was trying to get at when I said that there's. There's no Aha. Moment. No, there's no moment when you come in and go like, hey, you know, before you find out, I wanted to explain that I'm kind of like a music. Like a famous music.

[Luke Combs]

There's no big bang of.

[Chester]

Yeah, because they're already, they're already doing a thing and they're already doing like they, there's going to be no, no, there's not like a no moment for them because they're just assembling it all. And I think that what I was trying to get at when I mentioned exposing your kids to just doing all the mundane stuff is later if they'd be like later if they'd come to some realization that there is something weird, you know, that their dad like makes TV shows or that their dad, you know, writes books and other people read the books or whatever does. Does these kind of like seemingly unusual things. I just kind of want them to be. To think like, moment. The guy that like unplugs the toilets in the house.

[Luke Combs]

Right, right.

[Chester]

And like no one else will do it, but he has like the, like the guy like, mom's not gonna do that and she'll wait and dad's gonna do that. Like that guy.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

That's the feeling I want them to have later is to be like, yeah, the guy crawling around under the sink trying to figure out what's going on with something.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah, that dude. Yeah. You guys want a picture of that guy?

[Chester]

Yeah, that. It's just, like, That's a thing I'm. And maybe it's just only a problem I've created only in my head, but I just don't want there to be any sense of. I don't want, like. I hate to have to think that your kids would develop a sense of exceptionalism.

[Luke Combs]

Yes. That. That worries. That worries me and my wife a lot, too. You know, we want to make sure, like, it's really, like, you know, we don't want. We don't want them to be a product of their circumstances in a negative way.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

You know what I mean? You worry about. You see that all the time.

[Chester]

You know, we'll make it. When we eat out, we'll make our kids. I'm not kidding you, man. We'll make them get down under the table and pick up if they've, like, dropped a bunch of French fries and stuff.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

Or like, they police the area and, like, getting off a plane. They police the area.

[Luke Combs]

Oh, dude, we do the same thing.

[Chester]

And it'd be like, you. This is not someone's responsibility, dude.

[Luke Combs]

Right.

[Chester]

Like, they're gonna. They'll come and pick up the plates and stuff. You are not leaving that on that booth.

[Seth Morris]

I mean, all the things you guys are talking about, too, though, like, even for just Joe Schmo dad, you know, it's like everyone's responsibility.

[Luke Combs]

Any.

[Seth Morris]

Anybody, no matter who you are. Like, for sure, it's. No, I'm trying to articulate.

[Chester]

No, you're right. Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

Like, why is, like, everyone should be doing.

[Chester]

Like, why wouldn't you do all this?

[Luke Combs]

Right. But. Exactly. Yeah.

[Chester]

I don't know. It becomes. It's like a. I guess it takes on, like, a sub.

[Luke Combs]

I guess it's probably. We, like, someone in. In our particular situation would worry that it would be easier for them to fall into just being a complete dirt bag.

[Chester]

Yes.

[Luke Combs]

If left unchecked, I guess that would be easier for them to be like, oh, well, this is. Someone will come and get my coffee when I'm done. Someone will pick that up. You know, that would be easier for them to. To end up at. Than it would be for, like, if your dad worked at a factory. You know, you're closer to that finish line of being, you know, a scumbag pretty much. Like, you know. Yeah.

[Chester]

If you start off, there's a way you could. Maybe there's a way. You know what it is? And dude, you're mate. Chester, you're making a great point. Like, why would what we're talking. Like, that should apply to everybody. It should apply to every kid. And every kid in America should, like, tighten up their spot when they leave a restaurant and not be like, well, they'll get it. No kid in America should do it. I guess what I worry about is. What I would worry about is there's probably a way it would for people of like, people in a certain level of like, financial stability, a certain level of connections, a certain level of a really good Rolodex, a certain level of like, parental support. Like, oh, you want to do an internship at such and such place. Let me make some calls, right?

[Luke Combs]

Nepotism.

[Chester]

Yeah, nepotism. That you'd be like, there's a pathway for your kids to think. To realize one day that they probably could get away with that.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah. Cheat code.

[Chester]

Yeah. They're like, you know what? I cannot clean up my area. I cannot show up to work at 7am I cannot mow lawns, and I can skip all that junk. And I'll probably be able to pull it together because my old man knows a lot of people. He's gonna, he'll. He'll. He'll figure. My parents will figure it out.

[Luke Combs]

They'll bail me out. Right?

[Chester]

They'll figure it out. The college, like, I'll get. I'll get letters of recommendation. Right.

[Luke Combs]

Or, or dad could, you know, donate enough money to the, you know, scholarship fund or whatever it is, you know.

[Chester]

So you have a fear that they're going to be like, yeah, you know.

[Luke Combs]

They'Re going to expect those things.

[Chester]

Expect you to do things.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

Cleaning up my boo.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah. But, yeah, that is where it starts, though. You know, that stuff leads into, you know, like, privilege. Right. Like, you're, you know, you think that you're, you know, you're almost entitled to. Well, I should. Dad should just call and figure this out for me, you know, I expect that to happen. Is it like kind of like a constant battle though? Like. Because, like, obviously with guys, like, in.

[Chester]

Your position, like, you guys are exposed to some things that are not normal whatsoever.

[Luke Combs]

So, like, is there like a, like.

[Chester]

A inkling to like, expose your kids in a way? Like, this is really cool, but, like.

[Luke Combs]

You don't want to like, overdo it kind of thing.

[Chester]

Does that make sense? Like, do you guys think about that?

[Luke Combs]

Like, yeah.

[Chester]

Like, you guys are.

[Luke Combs]

Have some like, really cool opportunities. I think there's, I think there's unavoidably some of the stuff. Some of that stuff you have to do. Like, I think about it every time. Like, you know, like, my kids haven't, you know, they haven't been through, like, the regular airport. You know what I mean? And obviously they wouldn't even remember it if they did anyways. But, like. And they haven't flown a bunch, you know, but we've gone down, you know, we've, you know, chartered a plane to go down to Florida or something, you know.

[Chester]

Yep.

[Luke Combs]

And it's like that. That to them is normal. So it's my job to explain to them that, hey, man, this is not a normal thing. And it's a. It's super privilege to get to do this, but it's not something that you are necessarily entitled to. It's not something that you should feel like this is the standard. And it's, you know, it's beneath me to go to the airport or, you know, so you have to, like, inherently, your kids would be exposed to those things sometimes not by choice. Right. But the cool opportunities, too. It's like, I do ride the line. And I was thinking about this before you said it. It was like when you were talking about, well, Dad's got this cool Rolodex and, you know, he can call this guy or that guy. You get to the. You get to the line, too, where, like, you try everything you can to make sure that your kids turn out to be decent, you know, humble people. That's the goal for me and my wife with our boys, you know, is to make them respectful and. And we want them to just ultimately be good people. Right. But as the dad. Your dad instinct comes in, too, and you're like, well, you know, I really. I want to give him every advantage that I can because that's also a fatherly instinct as well.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

So I think there's a trap built in a little bit, too, where you could go, well, I've got to, you know, I've got to call that school and see if I can pull some strings to get my kid in because I really. Because I'm their dad.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

So that's like. It's like you ride that razor's edge, too, of like, you don't want to. You don't want it to turn into a nepotism thing. But just your fatherly instinct is to just to do everything you can for your kids. And would everyone else not do that as well? Would everyone else not go, well, if I had. If I thought my kid was Right on the line of getting into Stanford or wherever it is, some Ivy League school. Obviously they're, you know, they're not gonna. If they got a 2.0 grade point average, they're not gonna get in or. But if they're right on the line anyways, due to their own achievements, do you, as a dad call and go, hey, what can I do to help my child? Is there something I can do?

[Chester]

Is there a chance I could pardon them for federal tax evasion and weapons charges?

[Luke Combs]

But then I. Right. But then I. But then I wonder too. Like, what if you, what if your kid found out later on down the line? Like, let's say you, you decide as a parent. I'm not going to help them at all with this. Which I can understand. I can understand you going, no, dude, you. It needs to be a merit based thing. And I get that. And it should be, I think. And then they don't get it and they're crushed, dude. And that, like, that's the, that's the meteorite that, like, knocks the ship off course.

[Chester]

It'd be bitterness.

[Luke Combs]

And then they go, I. My dad could have called and done something for me, and he didn't.

[Chester]

Yeah, do that.

[Luke Combs]

But then we're getting back to. Do they expect things that they shouldn't expect?

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

So it's like you're. It's kind of like, yeah, it's tough that. But that's just being a parent, dude. Being a parent is just. You're making the best decisions that you think you are making for your kids, and that's all you can do.

[Seth Morris]

You know, it's real easy to worry about all that stuff, man.

[Luke Combs]

It is.

[Seth Morris]

It's just like, yeah. Just try to do the best you can, you know?

[Luke Combs]

Yeah. We're now into the Turkey regulations of parenting.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

We dive very deep.

[Chester]

Chili, I want to answer the question you asked about, like, presenting with opportunities.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

And I, I catch myself doing a. A combo deal. Like a definite combo deal.

[Luke Combs]

You keep track.

[Chester]

No, no. Meaning this. Like, I'll just. Let me give you a scenario that hasn't happened. Let's say I met someone and they're like, hey, man, you know, my cousin owns an island in the Seychelles and no one's ever there. You guys should go spring break on this private island and Seychelles. And in fact, his cousin has a little charter business and they'll fly y'all out there. Okay. Do you go like, damn it, I'm not taking my kids that island, Seychelles, because I don't, I don't want Them to like, you know, that's not available to anyone. Right? So I'm not, I wouldn't do that. I would have that in my mind. I'd be like, man, you know what we should do? I'd go say to my wife, like, it's gonna sound crazy, but we, we can go to this like island and Seychelles where this dude has his place and no one's there. And he said we could go hang out there. So we would go. But when we're there, I would be, we'd be like eating that we caught out of the rocks. Do you know what I mean? Or if there was like a lime tree or you know what I mean? We'd be like, man, we're gonna go out, we're gonna get those limes, we're gonna squeeze all lime juice out of them, we're gonna catch some crabs down there and we're gonna do you know what I mean? Yeah, we're gonna like make stuff and, and do hands on stuff and, and you're gonna see the process of going from nothing just like what's here. So we're gonna have like a little meal and so it doesn't. Meaning there's like practical skill and element to it and, and like getting a little bit uncomfortable. But I wouldn't be able to turn down totally the thing. And so when I say like a combo deal, it would be that like we, we every spring break, you know, we go down to the beach and Baja every spring break for, for when we make lunch, we're making fish that we shot because we climb in the water and go spearfishing. It's look, it's very luxurious, but it's like there is a little bit of element of scrappiness. Yeah, we, we build a little scrappiness into it.

[Luke Combs]

Build some adverse, built in adversity.

[Chester]

Yeah, you build in a little, like a little something that kind of needs to be paid attention to and it's a little dicey. Right. And you, you know, whatever. And so, but I, I can't, I, I can't say that I turned down, I, I can't say that I turned down sort of opportunities that would show them whole parts of the world or parts of global experience.

[Luke Combs]

Right.

[Chester]

I don't go like, I'm not going to show that to you.

[Luke Combs]

Gotcha.

[Chester]

I don't want you to feel like you got a leg up.

[Luke Combs]

Right.

[Chester]

You know, But I'll take them there. And when I take them there, I try to, I don't know, man, like, like I, I try to keep the experience grounded and. And respectful and real. And also try to point out that this is exceptional.

[Seth Morris]

And hopefully they realize, though, how they got on that vacation in the first place, because you guys got. You guys worked hard, very hard, to get into the positions you're at. And I think kids might realize that. You know what I'm saying?

[Chester]

Like, I would never, ever. Like, I would. That they got to pick up on. I would never say that.

[Seth Morris]

Right. But I think they do pick up on that.

[Chester]

Yeah. That for. I think, to say it, to articulate it. You know, I worked hard for this.

[Seth Morris]

Right.

[Chester]

Like, to articulate it. I think it's too. There's too much chance of backfire. It's like they. I. I kind of trust they have to just see it.

[Seth Morris]

Right.

[Chester]

I hope that they notice.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

I can't picture how you bring it.

[Luke Combs]

Up, but you're also trying to, like, you know, we talked about this, touched on a little bit earlier. It's like you want them to see you working hard. You know what I mean? Like, I want, you know, like, I want my kids to, you know, come to the studio and see. It's like, oh, well, the records don't just. It doesn't take five minutes to make the records. You know, it takes a year to make them. And there's a lot of other people that do a lot of hard work, too. It's not just. It's not. It's not me, me, me, like mine faces on the cd, but there's an army of people that make this possible. You know, there's a lot of people with a lot of skills that are a part of everything that I do, whether it's on the road or in the writing room or in the studio. Like, I am just a small part of the thing. There are so many more incredibly talented people involved in what I do, other than just me. I want my kids to see that, too. You know what I mean? Because you know that you hear the whole it takes a village thing. I think life takes a village, too. Do right. Like your own life. Not just raising your kids, but your own life, too. Like, appreciating the people that you have in the journey with you and how much they contribute to your success as well. Yeah. And you have a great team around you, man. I think that's what I love about being out here. It's like, you know, it's always the same guys, and that says a lot about what it is. There's not a lot of turnover. I've been out and done a Lot of stuff with you guys, man. And it's like, it's always the same guys. And that's the way my thing is, you know, for the most part, I mean, I would say there's very, very low turnover in. In my world, and that's very rare in the music business.

[Chester]

One of the earliest things that struck me when I met you is that you. I was like, man, this guy has a lot of loyalty to his bus driver.

[Luke Combs]

Love. Love.

[Chester]

Like, he's like your best friend.

[Luke Combs]

He's the man, dude. Yeah, but I mean, he drives me. I mean, my life is in his hands while I'm asleep, dude. You know what I mean?

[Chester]

No, you respect. Yeah, yeah, I can tell it. You appreciate for the dude, you know.

[Luke Combs]

Appreciate what he does. And, you know, I. I think that's the cool thing about, you know, being in, you know, the position that. That I'm lucky to be in is, you know, you can impact so many people in a positive way, man. You know, like, you can bring everybody along for the ride, you know, like, you can improve. Improve so many people's lives. If you give a enough to do that, you can easily do that, you know? And I mean, you know, a lot of my friends, man, like, we're. We're long. We're in this thing together, man. And now a lot of my buddies are really successful. Not. Not just with my thing, but with other things now because we all, we all went through the door together, man. Like, the success door opened for all of us.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

When I got, you know, when I got my deal and my thing took off, like, I wanted to help my buddies. Like, let's all get in here and do the thing, man. You know what I mean? Like, I don't want to just go through myself. Like, imagine having all the success and nobody to share it with.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

What fun would there be in that? I can't imagine going on the road and not caring about the guys in my band. But that happens. There's guys that are like, oh, well, yes, this guy. Yeah, whatever. Play the guitar great. I don't hang out with him. I don't. I don't know him. Don't really care too. That much. Yeah, but that, that's the thing that happens, which is baffling to me. You know, I can't imagine because I'm such a. I'm such a people person. I'm such a friends guy. I love being around people and interacting with them and, you know, obviously I want it to be, you know, people that I like, genuine folks. You know, I would say. But that's so much fun, dude. I mean, you guys have fun on these trips, man. They're work trips. And there's times to you that I'm sure it feels like work coming out here and doing these things, but ultimately you go, man, if this is the worst day, if you had the worst day you could have on a meat eater trip, it's better than the best day for a lot of people.

[Chester]

Oh, yeah.

[Luke Combs]

And that's. And it's mostly because of the people. Imagine if you were stuck here all day, it's raining all day on the turkey hunt like it is today, and you couldn't do anything. And you hated everyone that was out here too. At least here you could sit around and joke and laugh and, you know, eat food together and tell stories and just enjoy each other's company. But there's guys on the road who. Maybe they have a bad day on the road and they don't even have any friends out there at all, dude. They just have people that work for them that are around and they're just out there by their lonesome just being miserable. I couldn't imagine what that's like. Because when I have tough days, I at least have people that I can turn to, you know, and. And talk to about it, that understand and that actually care.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

To listen to. And they care about how I'm feeling or I care about how they're feeling. You know, that. That atmosphere, I think is. Is so important, you know, and you guys have that. So that's why I like. That's why I like being around you guys. You guys have that too. At least from the outside perspective it seems like you do, you know, which is neat.

[Chester]

Thanks, man.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah, appreciate it. Yeah.

[Chester]

You ready to wrap up? Oh, go ahead.

[Seth Morris]

You got any new records or anything that you can talk about that you're.

[Luke Combs]

I don't. No, I don't. I really don't, man. Where.

[Chester]

Just tell. Where are you at in the cycle? Where are you at in the cycle?

[Luke Combs]

I'm at the site. I'm at the point now, like, we're. I'm about to go in the studio for the first. First session on cutting my next record. So we'll try to cut probably anywhere from like, you know, in a Worst case scenario, 4. Best case, 6.

[Chester]

And how many do you have? How many do you have the seed for like, you know, like some weeks I wonder if I should start a new trash bag, like at least that far along.

[Luke Combs]

Oh, like how, like how, like how many. How Full is the trash bag. Right. I would say right now, I mean, songs that are in serious contention to make the record. I mean, 40 to 50 that are like, really. And you gotta whittle that down to. You gotta whittle it down. And then you're get.

[Chester]

And then you're making a calendar and.

[Luke Combs]

Then you're getting in like heavyweight. Like you're getting. It's like heavyweight fights. Because all the songs, like, you really.

[Chester]

Like all of them when you're sitting on a pile of 40 to 50.

[Luke Combs]

Oh, damn it.

[Chester]

Listen, I thought you'd say 15, 20.

[Luke Combs]

I don't know, 15 would be finished. We're done. Well, no, it doesn't.

[Chester]

I thought you, like. You gotta get rid of a few, maybe, you know.

[Luke Combs]

Well, I think, you know, I think now people are putting out bigger and bigger records. That's been a trend, you know, as. As the streaming. Yeah. Economy has taken off.

[Chester]

Oh, that's driven bigger.

[Luke Combs]

It's. Oh, for sure.

[Chester]

That drives more tunes.

[Luke Combs]

What's driving, you know, now because you're. Instead of selling a physical cd, Right. Like back in the day, you were limited by how many songs could be on a cd.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

And so then, you know, you're. If you start putting out a double CD back then you got to start charging people double because now there's two discs in there that you've purchased and packaging and special cases and all that stuff. So you don't want. You feel like that will impact sales because the consumer goes, well, I don't want to pay twice as much for this album.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

So that limited people from putting too many songs on their record because they didn't want to risk not selling as many by having too many songs because then people had to pay twice as more for it.

[Chester]

Yeah. Like now you could use. Use your illusion one and two.

[Luke Combs]

Right now you've got. And I think, think country is the first genre that has really started putting out these big hit records where there's a bunch of songs on them, you know, like 30 Morgan's records have been. Yeah. His next record, seven, I think 37 songs.

[Chester]

How many?

[Luke Combs]

37. And then Zach Bryan, I think did 36, you know, and those guys are. That they. And it's. I mean, it's a brilliant strategy. Right. Because your album sales are, you know, it's based off of extreme equivalence.

[Chester]

Yeah, I guess. Yeah. That's a great point that I never thought about, man, is you're talking about like, because you strip away the physical component.

[Luke Combs]

You strip away the physical components. Another stream. Equivalency Right. So I, I, I think someone's probably going to crush me for this statistic. But I believe it's a hundred thousand streams to account for one physical sale of the album.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

So a songs over the aggregate of the entire album. Every hundred thousand streams equates for you paying 12.99 for the CD.

[Chester]

So it went from 1212 listens used to rack up a sale. Now it's.

[Luke Combs]

Right.

[Seth Morris]

I've got a long way to go.

[Luke Combs]

But I think the wild thing is.

[Chester]

You haven't sold a record yet, Chester.

[Luke Combs]

Here's where you get to, here's where you get to, you know, the question of. Okay, so now when you think about it that way, if every hundred thousand spins is a record sale. Right. Well, if I put out a record that has 12 songs on it and it still takes a hundred thousand spins to get a sale, or if I put a record out with 39 or 40 songs on it, I'm gonna get a lot more, I'm gonna get a lot more listens.

[Chester]

Yeah, I understand.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah, it makes sense. And I'm going to sell more, more albums. You know, there may be the same amount of hits on the 40 song record as there is the 12 song record, but the 40 song record is going to sell more just because more streams are, people are consuming all 40 songs as opposed to 12. Casting a wider net. Casting a wider net. Right. So it's a, it's a brilliant strategy, you know, but it's a strategy, dude.

[Chester]

I'm somehow like, I'm like oblivious of this man. And it's like, it kind of demonstrates my age because I remember like you said, like, I just like came of age during the time when you came of age during the time when you just bought like when people like operated that way, you know, So I always tell people so funny, man. I remember being in speech and debate in college. Like my third year of college, I was in a speech and debate class and I'm not you. This is like, I remember a kid doing his, he had to do a persuasive speech. You know what his persuasive speech was?

[Luke Combs]

What?

[Chester]

That you should give up on cassette tapes and switch to CDs.

[Luke Combs]

He was right. That bastard was right.

[Chester]

For me to be like how many songs around an album you could kind of tell that you got to date me? Because like, yeah, I just think of it as being, you know, like an album's like 10, 12 songs.

[Luke Combs]

Well, I wondered too. Like I, and I'm again, I'll probably get Roasted on this one too. But I'm not, not certain at least that there wasn't previously to my knowledge of really a cap on it. Like there isn't a cap on it. And to some extent that will become an issue because what if I put out a song with a, a record with 100 songs on it? Is that still one album?

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

Like, where does it end? Like there has to be like, yeah.

[Chester]

Because you'll hit the most streamed album. Someone be like, dude. Because there's 200 songs on somebody.

[Luke Combs]

Exactly, exactly. Right. But. And it's like you can't slide anyone that's doing it because it's, you're, you're just, you figured out how to play the game the best. Right. It's no different with, than like the wildlife regulations to some extent.

[Chester]

Yep.

[Luke Combs]

It's like you're talking about the bear hunt. Right. It's like everybody did the. We just did the thing and we did it really good and we did it too good and oops.

[Chester]

Yep.

[Luke Combs]

But like right now we're just kind of in such a, like it's such like international waters with like the streaming thing because all the litigation and policies are like super outdated from payouts to streams to converting those to sales. Like they just haven't figured out how to like.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

Quite make it line up yet because it's all still so new to everyone, you know, and so now people are doing, you know, are doing. They're playing the version of the game that's best suited for where we stand right now. Because nobody's like, hey, you shouldn't do that. No one said you can only have 24 songs on an album, so why not put 40?

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

Or why not put 45? Or why not put 50? Or why not put 75? I. I don't know. I mean, I don't know. That's the thing is like, will there ever be an end to it or won't there be? I don't know if we'll ever know the answer to that, but I would think at some point there kind of would have to be. You know, there's a point where you're going to burn out the consumer too. Like if you put out 100 song record, people are going to be like, how do I even listen to this? Who makes that decision though? I mean, the artist usually like, no. Like if there was to be a cap put on it, I mean, sometimes it's the government, I mean, sometimes it's the streaming services, sometimes it's the labels. I mean, there's all sorts of, of, you know, there's lobbyists like there is for anything else. Right. You know, people getting together and going, well, I think there should only be, you know, should only be 12 songs on the record. That should be it.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

And I don't know, I, you know, I'm not, I'm not smart enough to know that stuff. I don't, I don't claim to.

[Chester]

But you know what winds up being a governing function now we're losing another extreme of the listeners. Now we're going down the guys way. The guys that were way into Turkey. You know, the, the publishing and record business is not interesting to me.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

But remember I was. You were talking about the. You were talking about this like what Grammys mean.

[Luke Combs]

Right, right.

[Chester]

How that system works. And I was telling you another system that's just not the way people think it is is the New York Times bestseller list.

[Luke Combs]

Right.

[Chester]

And I've like benefited from it. I've been screwed by it. But it's sure it is not a count up of what soul. It is not a representation of what sold best.

[Luke Combs]

Right? Correct.

[Chester]

There's all these value judgments based in.

[Luke Combs]

Weighted, like weighted scoring and stuff.

[Chester]

Weighted scoring, directional value judgments. Vengeance on the part of like traditional media, vengeance against new media. Right, Right. Like levels of hate, levels of animosity between, you know, one world and then. And then like online booksellers.

[Luke Combs]

Right. It's like pseudo politics. It is like really like it's its own political thing. It's very intricate.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

You know, but unless you're in that business, you know, from the outside looking in, you just have no clue, you know?

[Chester]

Yeah. And when you talk about a governing, like who would govern it? Or Seth asking like, well, who would ever say what's okay or not okay? The list still mat, like the New York Times bestseller list still matters. And you can have it be like, well, why, why not just do whatever you want? When it comes to publishing, you need to approach certain projects if you want to make that list and benefit from being on that list. You need to approach projects in a certain way to hit like, so is a, is a book, is an audiobook what they regard to be an audiobook? Or is it something different?

[Luke Combs]

Right.

[Chester]

So you go like, well, why would you ever need to conform to a certain protocol is you can get too far outside of the lines and then, and then these, these independent parties that legally, obviously they can do whatever they want is that they, they invented the list. You can do things that put you not able to be captured by the list. And it's good to be on the list because if you get on the list, people. Other bookstores order the book.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah, right.

[Chester]

It gets traction.

[Luke Combs]

Sure.

[Chester]

And so you could go too far out there in some direction like format wise, or how you sell it, how you distribute it, and you get it where you're no longer relevant to that thing and that thing matters. So it winds up being like a little bit of a gravitational pull.

[Luke Combs]

Right.

[Chester]

To be like, to conform to some set, you know, industry standard. And you're saying, like, if you made an album that has 200 songs on it, somebody like that might say, that's not an album. I don't know what that is. But that's not an album.

[Luke Combs]

Right.

[Chester]

And you're not. That's not eligible to win album of the year, because it's not.

[Luke Combs]

I guess what I'm saying is that set of rules doesn't exist currently.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

Is what I'm saying. There is no right now. So you've got people like kind of forming the rules and, you know, and I mean, ultimately, it's up to the fans, dude. I mean, ultimately, whatever resonates with them is what people are going to listen to. You know what I mean? So it's really. It's really interesting, you know, it's like. It's. It's interesting how all that stuff works, you know, and the record business is wild. You know, music business is wild. There's so many intricacies. Sure. Like, the publishing world is just. There's so many things that you would never think of, you know, from outside perspectives. You write a good book and then put it out, and that's the. Then it's a good book and people like it. But it's not that.

[Chester]

It's not that simple.

[Luke Combs]

And record business is like that as well. You know what I mean? Like that. I think the record.

[Chester]

I haven't found that you can get around that, but there's just a lot of other stuff laid on top of it, right?

[Luke Combs]

Yes, exactly. Record business is the same way. You know, great records will. You know, ultimately people will discover and listen to them.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

You know what I mean? A great record's a great record. And, you know, that's. It's also. It's all subjective too. Right. Like what. What do people like? Right. A great record, great country record. Some people are gonna hate it because they just don't like country music. You know, great records, a great record. And you can just tell, you know, and I'm sure books are.

[Chester]

Are no different would be an interesting number. Set of numbers. Two numbers would be like, what percent of great records aren't recognized? And what percent of shitty records are over recognized?

[Luke Combs]

Sure, there's some of. I'm sure there's some of that, for sure.

[Chester]

Yeah.

[Luke Combs]

But then it's like those. If those. If those quote unquote, shitty records are huge. Are they just shitty records to you?

[Chester]

Yeah, exactly.

[Luke Combs]

Someone else. They're great records. It's highly subjective. Same with books. Right. Like, I'm sure there's all these incredibly underappreciated books out there that, you know, if you're. You know, if you're a literary guy that you're like, well, you have to. How do you not know that book? You know, I'm sure there's those. Right.

[Chester]

You know, there was someone. We gotta. We gotta wrap this up and get serious about getting outside. But do you remember. Do you remember the musician? He's from a while ago, but do you remember the musician? Elvis Costello?

[Luke Combs]

Yep.

[Chester]

Okay, I remember. I think I was. I swear it was like David Lee Roth or someone that said this, but he was like. Like Elvis Costello was always, like a critical favorite. Like, critics always loved his albums, and David Lee Roth was observing that. But rock critics all look like Elvis Costello, so the level of bias, right? Yeah, they all got the same style, you know?

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

Like Elvis Costello, like, had those big, like, glasses and stuff. He's like, yeah, but they like him because they look at him like that. Some looks like me.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah, yeah. It's like. It's like. It's an album, like, made for those kind of guys, right? Exactly. Exactly.

[Chester]

Yeah. Like, made for the dudes that write articles about albums.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

There's a lot of dudes. Just listen to them.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah, 100. 100.

[Chester]

You know. All right, well, Luke, thanks for coming on the show, as usual, man.

[Luke Combs]

Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

[Chester]

I appreciate all that, but I especially appreciate what you. What you shared about. What you shared about raising kids.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

I'll tell you, this thing, this dude I know in New York, he's a. He had spent his career working in family law. Like the kind of family law of families breaking up.

[Luke Combs]

Sure. That's tough business.

[Chester]

And he probably doesn't remember telling me this. It was so long ago. And when he told me this, I didn't even have kids, but it stuck in my head. He was just talking about all the awful things that he's encountered in his career, you know, of, like, dissolving families.

[Luke Combs]

Sure.

[Chester]

Custody battles and stuff. And we were somehow talking about things that screw kids up. And he said, so speaking from a level of expertise, he said, I'll tell you, the one thing that screws them up is the day they figure out that no one gives a about him.

[Luke Combs]

Oh.

[Chester]

And he's like, that is the thing.

[Luke Combs]

Oh, man.

[Chester]

More than any other thing.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

You know, and what better to bring that out than a right. Splitting up parents who are not trying to suck them in, but splitting up parents who are trying to get the other. Get clear.

[Luke Combs]

Take them. Yeah.

[Chester]

It's like, oh, yeah. Get like parent. Imagine that when you put together like talking about how perceptive kids are when you put together like home that way a minute.

[Luke Combs]

They're both trying to give me another.

[Chester]

Trying to pull away.

[Luke Combs]

Right.

[Chester]

And not come in.

[Luke Combs]

Right.

[Chester]

You know, you'd picture you'd want to be in there, your parents throwing punches, trying to get you.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah.

[Chester]

It's probably not great either.

[Luke Combs]

Yeah, probably not. Probably not healthy. But legal punches, dude. Throwing legal punches. Yeah.

[Chester]

Well, thanks for coming on, man.

[Luke Combs]

Again, absolutely.

[Chester]

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