For better or for worse, country music and alcohol kind of go hand in hand. And make no mistake, there are plenty of sober country music artists, probably more now than ever before, but the genre has a long history of drinkin’ songs. Whether you’re trying to mend a broken heart, drinking away a painful memory, or just having a good time, you’ll find a glass of whiskey or a cold beer on just about every country music playlist in America.
And we’ve all seen our fair share of artists have a few too many and then try to get up on stage and perform. Luke Bryan has been one of those artists, although lucky for him, he wasn’t exactly there to “perform” per se, and the stage was at his own house.
A while back, Bryan made an appearance on NELK’s Full Send podcast, and talked about everything from his career, to his wildest moments as a country singer. And at one point in the conversation, he revealed the drunkest he’s ever been on stage.
He admitted at the beginning of the video that he likes to drink a cup of grapefruit juice and vodka, but that’s all, so he just likes to get on stage with a little bit of a buzz. He also admitted that he generally has to have a little buzz going, because if he went on stage sober, he would start overthinking the lyrics and mess up.
However, there were a few occasions where Bryan got absolutely hammered before a concert, and he recalled a story from early on in his career, right before he had gotten signed to Capitol Records.
Performing in the middle of nowhere, AKA Centerville, Iowa, in what he described as a “hayfield” in front of 200 people, he recalled his first instance of being too messed up to perform (well, he performed, but it wasn’t very good):
“It was first day of football season, college football, I was on the bus and man we just got trashed. And I got on stage, and it was awful. Ya know there’s 200 people there so I didn’t really do too much damage to myself, but literally it felt like I couldn’t get it together.
And I never got it together… I got through it, I did the whole show and by the end of the show, I’d kinda sobered myself up but it was bad.”
He also added that his Spring Break shows got pretty rowdy, as does the final night of his Crash My Playa festival down in Mexico.
But nothing was worse than the time he crushed an entire bottle of Casamigos on stage at a charity concert… at his house.
“We had a charity event at my house and I drank a whole bottle… it was not the time to do it, and I drank a whole bottle of Casamigos on stage… it was bad. We had like 5 or 600 people at our house and we’re jamming… the people there weren’t pissed, it was the neighbors that were sitting on their back porch like a mile away.
They didn’t call the cops but I said f*** like a zillion times on the mic, and a million people heard it throughout the county. I woke up the next morning like, ‘God, I gotta make some phone calls.’”
OOF…
I mean, it’s your own house, right?
Ya know, Luke said it best in one of his songs:
“It’s time to take my drunk ass home”
On that same podcast, Bryan also admitted that he can tell if a “country singer” is truly country or not, after they spend one minute on his farm:
“Here’s what I can unequivocally say without a shadow of a doubt… If you sing about hunting and fishing and drinking and trucks and s***, and I get you on my farm… in one minute I can tell if you’re a poser… or if you’re not legit. I could just hand you a fishing rod.”
Unfortunately, he wouldn’t spill the details of who exactly he was talking about.