Luke Combs Was In Australia When His Wife Went Into Labor & Gave Birth To Their Son, Beau, Last Year
Luke Combs and his wife, Nicole, share two sons: Tex (age two) and Beau (10 months). The boys inspired Luke to write several new songs about being a parent, which led to the creation of his latest album, Fathers & Sons.
Speaking about the album in a statement on social media, Luke said:
“I just had to do this project…being a dad to my boys has been the main thing on my mind lately.”
He added, “…being a dad is where life has taken me, and this album is a reflection of that in song form.“
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Luke Combs recently sat down with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe to speak about Fathers & Sons. For the first time, Luke revealed that he missed the birth of his second son, Beau, in August 2023.
The “Where the Wild Things Are” singer booked and announced his 2023 World Tour dates before he and Nicole learned they were expecting. His tour took him to New Zealand and Australia in August, and Nicole was due to give birth in September.
Fans asked Nicole if Luke would leave Australia and cancel his shows if she went into labor early. She said:
“It’s around 20 hours to get back from Aus if he got on a plane immediately lol. So no.”
Nicole added, “I’m not due until after he gets back, so I’m trying really hard not to go into early labor.”
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Luke Says “It’s Really Hard” For Him To Accept The Fact He Missed Beau’s Birth
But Nicole did go into labor early, two and a half weeks early, to be exact.
“I’ll never forget the craziest day, probably, in my life, close to it. 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,” Luke told Zane Lowe.
He went into more detail:
“So it’s August 16th. 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 8:00 AM. 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.”
Luke cried as he seemingly referenced how he got to watch Beau be born over a video call:
“It sucked because he was born on August 15th in the States. I got to see him be born, which was awesome. 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,” Luke said. “I didn’t cover that too much in this album because it’s really hard for me to deal with.”
Luke Says He & Nicole Had “A Really Great Support System”
Luke remained in Australia to finish out his run of shows there. He leaned on his friends and crewmates during that time, remarking how “lucky” he was to have them by his side.
As for Nicole, she had her mom and sister to help her out back home in the States:
“Luckily, my mother-in-law came up for the month while I was gone…thank goodness she was there.” Luke said, adding, “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.”
Now, looking back on Beau’s birth, Luke knows that day is “a defining moment” in his life.
“It sums up, in a lot of ways, some of the bad parts of the music business — 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.”
You can tell that being a dad means everything to Luke. Listen to one of his songs about fatherhood in the video below.