Luke Bryan’s Song of Grief

Luke Bryan’s latest hit, “Drink A Beer,” is anything but a fun party song.  Luke talked about it with Country Countdown USA’s Lon Helton:

(Lon) I thought it was a poignant moment when you performed it on the CMA Awards and turned your back to the audience: (Luke) Awesome, it was an amazing moment for me.  My first feeling at the end of it is I was so happy I got through it.  My main thing is I felt it was the best I’ve ever performed on an awards show.  I’ve always done an uptempo on awards shows, and you’re dancing and amped up, you’re not going to sing your best.  So I was excited about that, and I was excited that Drink A Beer got to tell my story leading up to the awards.  When people saw the end of Drink A Beer, and saw I have lost two siblings, I think it’s important for people to know that I’ve dealt with tragic situations with my family, and pressed on, and got through tragic events, and the bright side of that is my career is doing so great.  It’s a nice thing to be able to tell.  If one fan goes, ‘I’m down and feel like the world’s against me, but I see the Drink a Beer video and know that I can get through the downs in life.'”

What did your family say to you after that CMA performance? “They were overwhelmed with emotion.  When I won the ACM Entertainer award, and we sobbed together tears of joy, we also sobbed together tears of loss.  We’ve had to sob that way more than we ever would have thought.  So when  we get together in a joyous occasion, we’re happy because that song is special to us, and it’ll be special to other people, and we can reflect on my brother and sister’s life in a positive way because of that song.

It’s interesting that “Drink A Beer” is the follow-up single to “That’s My Kind of Night.”  Talk about that range of music: “I love having that ability, and the fans have allowed me to get away with being silly and goofy, and then three songs later in my set, I can set on a pier, in front of 20,000 people, and turn it into a Drink A Beer moment in my show.  I always was amazed at Garth who was able to do that with “Unanswered Prayers” and then doing “Ain’t Goin’ Down Til The Sun Comes Up.”  It’s the whole range of emotions, if you can make your show and your body of work have those different aspects, it shows more depth and being well rounded.”

The thing that some folks may not know about Drink A Beer is that you didn’t write it.  It’s amazing that a song so personal to you wasn’t written by you: “I think a great situation is when you’re able to record a song you didn’t write, but it sounds like you did.  I didn’t write Drink A Beer, but the day I heard it for the first time, I remember that the song changed my life.  I knew I had to record it.  When I played it for my wife, she knew it was me.  Then I played it for my band, and my bus driver, and all my people.  That’s the beauty of Nashville, songs are written that apply to people.  So I thank Chris Stapleton and Jim Beavers for writing that song.  I think some other artists heard it and passed, that song was born for me, and that’s cool when that happens.”

Luke’s older brother Chris was killed in a car crash in 1996, the year Luke graduated high school.  Luke had planned on moving to Nashville after high school.  But with his family grieving the loss of their oldest son, he decided to enroll in the nearby Georgia Southern University.  Luke made the move in 2001, and immediately began pursuing a record contract.  He was starting to enjoy his first success in 2007 when his older sister Kelly died of a brain tumor.

 

Tags: luke

Category: Audio, VIDEO