Luke Combs Figured Out the &x27;Cheat Code&x27; to a Country Career, Touring and Raising 3 Boys (Exclusive) Mark GrayMon, March 23, 2026 at 11:15 PM UTC 0 Luke CombsCredit: Robby Klein Luke Combs released an album Friday, kicked off a tour Saturday and gave a tour of his new bar inbetween "It's a good storm, but a storm nonetheless," the country star says of raising three sons with wife Nicole Fittingly Category 10, which opens an outpost in Las Vegas this fall, is a reference to his 2016 debut single "Hurricane" Luke Combs knows where his priorities lie.
Luke Combs Figured Out the 'Cheat Code' to a Country Career, Touring and Raising 3 Boys (Exclusive)
Mark GrayMon, March 23, 2026 at 11:15 PM UTC
0
Luke CombsCredit: Robby Klein -
Luke Combs released an album Friday, kicked off a tour Saturday and gave a tour of his new bar in-between
"It's a good storm, but a storm nonetheless," the country star says of raising three sons with wife Nicole
Fittingly Category 10, which opens an outpost in Las Vegas this fall, is a reference to his 2016 debut single "Hurricane"
Luke Combs knows where his priorities lie. As he sets out on his newest round of tour dates, which kicked off Saturday in Las Vegas, the country superstar is ready to give his fans what they want, but family is his first priority.
"It is still really condensed, and it's that way by design," the "Back in the Saddle" singer, 36, tells PEOPLE exclusively of the tour. "It's almost this cheat code of being an at-home, really present dad — take your kids to school and pick them up and give them baths — but also on the weekends I just go and play stadiums instead of go and play golf."With three sons at home — Tex Lawrence, 3½, Beau Lee, 2½, and Chet Wiley, born in February — Combs is determined to be there for the "things that you can't get back." He also knows that his career doesn't stop just because he has a family. "It's like, okay, well, let's just survive this storm of life, and it's a good storm, but a storm nonetheless. It's like the entire foundation of your entire life changes. Our kids become the thing that your life revolves around," he says of his family with wife Nicole. Fittingly his bar, which opens in Las Vegas this fall, is called Category 10, a reference to his 2016 debut single "Hurricane" — a storm (he opened a bar of the same name in Nashville in 2024). On Friday, PEOPLE was invited for a hardhat tour of the three-story restaurant, bar, and live music venue in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip. "People who come here, they want to listen to country music and have somewhere to do it," Combs says. "I never would have imagined that we would ever get to this, that I would ever get to a spot like this."Although he has great partners in the Vegas and Nashville projects, he always consults Nicole for her input. "My biggest person I run stuff by is my wife because she's undeniably honest with me. I can show her renderings of places and go, 'Hey, what would you change about this?'" he says. "So it's nice to have that and to have that personal touch and be involved with a team that allows me to have a creative input."The tour and the bar groundbreaking also came as Combs released his sixth studio album, The Way I Am, which he admits was a "long time coming.""I have three boys under 4 years old at home, so that occupies 90+% of my time. The other 10% is occupied by work, and a little bit of sleep mixed in, very, very little bit of sleep," he says. "Some of these songs existed before Fathers and Sons even was thought up."
The Combs familyCredit: Leigh Ann Remke Photography @laremkephoto
Fathers and Sons, his album from 2024, was "something I did for myself," he tells PEOPLE. The Way I Am, on the other hand, is more commercial. While the album is 22 songs, Combs actually recorded 40 tracks for it, so he and his team whittled it down."The Fathers and Sons project was really something I did for myself. Obviously, I know people who love it and hear it, but it was just something I felt like I needed to do as I processed my new life of having two incredibly young sons at that time," he explains. "So it was chaos every second of every day."
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At the same time, Combs was "painfully aware" that he hadn't released a "commercial-facing project" in a bit, so he wanted to make sure his new album fit the bill, and he feels like he accomplished that. "I just always want people to know in anything that I do, I want anything that I do to be really authentic, and I want it to be something that people can trust that it's something that I care about," he says.
"The level of success that I've been lucky enough to have at this point — which again was never expected, but — it comes with a responsibility, and to me, that responsibility is being able to know that you are putting out something that you're proud of, whether it's partnering in this bar with these folks or putting out a record or putting on a show. I want people to, when they leave, they can go, 'Okay, well this guy really cared about this.'"
on People
Source: "AOL Entertainment"
Source: Entertainment
Published: March 24, 2026 at 01:36AM on Source: RED MAG
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