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Luke Bryan’s Dirt Road Diary

countdown | May 22, 2015

There’s a new exhibit opening this weekend at the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum in Nashville featuring personal items from the CMA Entertainer of the Year Luke Bryan. Visitors will be able to follow Luke’s career from a young boy in Leesburg, Georgia to the top of the country chart and national fame. We got the chance to speak with Luke about this very special exhibition and what it means to him:

It’s a huge deal. I’m very honored that the Hall of Fame asked me to be part of this, I’m not necessarily a conventional country artist, so I’m very flattered the Hall of Fame chose to do this exhibit with me, it means the world to me. To have such a large exhibit, it’s just a big deal for me. I’m so enamored of the city of Nashville, so any time I can be part of the staples of Nashville, meaning the Opry, Hall of Fame, or Music Row, I’m honored, and this is an amazing part of the city. I remember seeing Reba’s and Carrie’s exhibits, and I was totally a geek today. I saw the billboard with my face on it, and I remember ten years ago, seeing other artists on those billboards, so it’s very surreal, we’ve worked hard, and it’s neat to have this day.

Some of my first instruments were at my parent’s home. This forced us to go down there and get them. I was excited to seek out my old instruments. We found the very first song I wrote and performed for my church. Something spilled on the lyrics and you can’t see all of them. But we found them in my piano bench. It’s also a life piece, named Dirt Road Diary, to tell the whole story of me and my youth. It’ll be fun seeing the old pictures.

One thing people will see is my backpack. I haven’t seen it in years. I think it has my brother’s name on it. I was in second grade, and had left it in school, and one of the teachers came on the bus and said she had this backpack, but Chris’s name was on it, and I ran off the bus and got it, and wrote my name on it so it wouldn’t get lost any more.

Also there are a lot of guitars that had been in my room when I was a kid. There’s one guitar that’s my very first guitar. I was 14 years old, had been on a summer trip. My dad had a friend who was in Jennings Louisiana. My parents put me on a bus in Tallahassee, and went to Jennings. I had just bought a Walkman, and I had 3 albums: No Fences, Killin’ Time, and Too Cold At Home. I listened to them the whole way. When I got there, there was a kid playing a guitar, and I saw how popular he was, so that’s when I decided to buy a guitar. So I got back home, and a neighbor gave me one of his extra guitars. That’s my first guitar, and it’s in the exhibit.

There’s also a family friend’s piano. I had taken piano lessons in third or fourth grade. But it didn’t stick. The piano was in my room. When I started playing guitar, it made me get interested in piano again. But I learned chords, learned Ronnie Milsap songs, but never learned the theory. That piano was in my room enough where I played it a lot. It wound up at my mother’s house, so I played it there. The neat thing is there were so many things in the bench.

My first song was “He Turned Me Around,” it was a Christian song. I wrote it at 15, and performed it for my congregation. I remember my family being in the audience. You don’t realize at the time what you’re laying the groundwork for, but it’s neat to see that piece of paper.

I will get sentimental, they’ll hit me at inopportune times. A commercial will make me cry like a baby. Kids make me more sentimental. I’m the right kind of sentimental. It will be an emotional experience to see this exhibit. Our family has dealt with plenty of emotional things, but these days are to celebrate, and it’s fun celebrating positive things with my family.

So many of the people who’ve been inducted in the Hall of Fame, I just had the opportunity to play with Ronnie Milsap, but also Alabama, and Conway Twitty, and I remember seeing Garth at the Hall of Fame. We were a country music family. When I first moved here, I brought my family to the Opry and the Hall of Fame. I’ve been here quite a bit. I got here the year it was built. So it’s pretty cool to be in here, knowing that people will come to town and show people my exhibit.

Here’s a list of what you’ll see:

Little League baseball uniform and glove
Second grade school backpack and denim jacket
First guitar, which his parents gave him when he was fourteen
A script from his high school production of Annie Get Your Gun, in which he starred
Handwritten lyrics to his 2014 chart-topping single, “I See You”
Stage props from his Spring Break concerts
Tour posters
Stage clothes worn by Bryan at concerts and awards shows
Music awards, including trophies for his ACM and CMA Entertainer of the Year wins
Bow and arrows used by Bryan on the Outdoor Channel reality series Buck Commander: Protected by Under Armour.