Luke Combs Recalls Missing Son’s Birth: Watch

Luke Combs is opening up about what he calls “one of the best and one of the worst days in my life” during an interview with Zane Lowe of Apple Music 1 that aired Thursday (June 20).

In August 2023, Combs and his wife Nicole celebrated the birth of their second son, Beau (the couple are also parents to 2-year-old son Tex), but the two-time CMA entertainer of the year winner wasn’t able to be present for the birth of his second child due to being on tour in Australia.

“I’ll never forget the craziest day, probably, in my life, close to it,” Combs told Lowe. “One of the best and one of the worst days in my life at the same time was, interestingly enough, and it’s so hard to wrap my mind around it,” Combs said, before detailing the day his son Beau was born.

“So it’s Aug. 16. I wake up in the morning, I’m in Sydney, Australia, in a hotel room, and we’re on tour in Australia. I probably woke up at around 8 a.m. or something like that — Australia time — and I had a text from my wife and it said, ‘I’m so sorry, I really tried to not have the baby while you’re gone.’ And God, dude, it sucked.”

Combs grew emotional as he added, “It sucked because he was born on Aug. 15 in the States. I got to see him be born, which was awesome,” presumably implying that he watched via a video call. “He wasn’t born yet, but my wife went, she texted me on the way to the hospital, and he was two and a half weeks early and I was supposed to be home and I wasn’t. That was real hard to do and I haven’t really told anybody that.”

He added that two of his close friends also work as his guitar tech and personal assistant, so he had a support system. “God, it was a hard day, but I was so lucky that a lot of my closest friends now work for me. And so I had a really great support system. “I was able to be with them through that whole thing.”

Though Combs couldn’t be there in person, he said his wife also had “a really great support system” by her side at home in the States.

“Luckily, my mother-in-law came up for the month while I was gone, because, obviously, we have a 1-year-old [Tex turned 2 on June 19] and my wife is essentially nine months pregnant at the time, so thank goodness she was there. My sister-in-law lives in Nashville as well. So my wife had a really great support system with her for that experience, which I’m very thankful for. That made it a lot easier. I had people with me, everything went great. No hiccups in the process or anything.”

He called the day “a defining moment in my life, for sure,” and said that the day highlights some of the less-than-rosy parts of being in the music industry. “The leaving, and your schedule’s crazy and you’re traveling all over the place. It’s not like I can drop everything I’m doing and fly 18 hours home.”

While his newly released album Fathers & Sons includes songs looking at fatherhood from different perspectives, he said, “I didn’t cover that too much in this album because it’s really hard for me to deal with.”

The dozen-song project includes the songs “The Man He Sees in Me” and “Remember Him That Way.”