On Friday, Combs returned to Southern California for the first of two nights at SoFi Stadium on his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour, playing 26 songs over an hour and 45 minutes to the delight of fans who seldom stopped singing along with Combs’s well-drafted celebrations of ordinary people living regular lives.
Combs is an unlikely superstar in many ways. When he walked on stage Friday, he looked like he might have just come from a cookout, a kid’s birthday party, or his own backyard. He wore a short-sleeved blue shirt, tan pants, and in a nod to the field on which he sang, a Los Angeles Chargers ballcap. No frills, nothing fancy.
Then he started singing, opening the show with “Must’ve Never Met You” and “She Got the Best of Me,” a pair of hymns to heartbreak, and it’s quickly clear how strong the connections are between this bearded, burly 34-year-old North Carolinian and the tens of thousands of Southern California country fans of all ages who showed up to hear him here.
Country music artist Luke Combs performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 during the first of his two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Country music artist Luke Combs performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 during the first of his two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Country music artist Luke Combs performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 during the first of his two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Country music artist Luke Combs performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 during the first of his two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Country music artist Luke Combs performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 during the first of his two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Country music artist Luke Combs performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 during the first of his two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Country music artist Luke Combs performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 during the first of his two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Country music artist Luke Combs performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 during the first of his two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Country music artist Luke Combs performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 during the first of his two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Hailey Whitters performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 prior to headliner Luke Combs first of two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Charles Wesley Godwin performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 prior to headliner Luke Combs first of two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Country music fans react as Luke Combs performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 during the first of his two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Country music artist Luke Combs performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 during the first of his two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Country music artist Luke Combs performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 during the first of his two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Charles Wesley Godwin performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 prior to headliner Luke Combs first of two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Charles Wesley Godwin performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 prior to headliner Luke Combs first of two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
The Avett Brothers Seth Avett plays guitar at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 prior to headliner Luke Combs first of two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Country music artist Luke Combs performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 during the first of his two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Country music fans watch and react as artist Luke Combs performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 during the first of his two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
The Avett Brothers, Scott Avett, left, and Seth Avett, right, perform at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 prior to headliner Luke Combs first of two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
The moon is seen through the roof of SoFi Stadium prior to headliner Luke Combs taking the stage in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024. Combs performed the first of two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
The Avett Brothers, Scott Avett, left, and Seth Avett, right, perform at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 prior to headliner Luke Combs first of two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Marie Fidanza, left, and Marissa Collins, right, both from Lake Forest, dance together in the pit prior to Luke Combs taking the stage at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Country music artist Luke Combs performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 during the first of his two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Country music artist Luke Combs performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 during the first of his two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Country music artist Luke Combs performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 during the first of his two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Country music artist Luke Combs performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 during the first of his two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Country music artist Luke Combs performs at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 during the first of his two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Country music artist Luke Combs greets fans as he takes the stage at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on Friday night June 14, 2024 during the first of his two sold out shows during his Growin’ Up and Gettin’ Old Tour. (Photo by Will Lester, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
Combs writes or cowrites all of his songs, and he has a knack for hitting that sweet spot between the traditional and the modern in country music. Early highlights such as “My Kinda Folk” or “One Number Away” touch on themes that country music has celebrated for decades, celebrating the joys of community and the loneliness of wondering what your ex is doing now. It’s classic country stuff including “This One’s For You,” which is sung solo with just his own accompaniment on guitar.
His modern side was on display later in the night when Combs and his sharp band shifted into a bigger, rockin’ kind of country for the pair of drinkin’ songs, “1, 2 Many” and “Beer Never Broke My Heart,” that closed the main set.
A midshow mini-suite of covers did a little bit of both. This interlude served as a chance to introduce and spotlight the players alongside Combs on stage while shifting between pop and rock – Ed Sheeran’s “Dive,” Train’s “Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me)” – and honkytonks – Shania Twain’s “Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under?” and Dierks Bentley’s “What Was I Thinkin’.”
At different points, Combs paused to talk with the crowd, which in the muffled, echoey stadium was often almost impossible to understand. (Here’s my brainstorm during one such moment: Live closed-captioning on the video screens for stadium shows so we can know what’s actually being said. You’re welcome.)
But bits and pieces made it through the murk. He thanked his wife for her support, which helped his career skyrocket in the past five years – consecutive years as the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year, a Stagecoach headliner in 2022 along the way.
He thanked the audience for the support that’s allowed his career to flourish, noting as he introduced the new single, “The Man He Sees In Me,” from his new album, “Fathers and Sons,” that had been released that day.
And in an equally heartfelt moment, he told an anecdote about the first song he really fell in love with, how he learned to play it on guitar, and how Tracy Chapman and his cover of her “Fast Car,” in many ways changed his life over the past year. That song became one of the biggest of 2024, reaching No. 1 on the country chart, and No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. His performance of it with Chapman on the Grammys this year was one of the show’s most moving moments, Combs’s joy at singing it with her in public for the first time almost overwhelming him at times.
“Fast Car,” of course, prompted a massive sing-along at SoFi on Friday, but in the broader context of the night, that was the norm. Seldom have I been to a show where the crowd – or maybe we should call ’em, the congregation – sang so loudly, so constantly, and so word-perfectly to each and every song. (Yes, the fans at Taylor Swift’s SoFi shows last summer sang along with her, but the accompanying screams usually drowned out their words.)
Opening for Combs on Friday were the Avett Brothers, whose 40 minutes preceding him on stage sounded great as the band played songs that included “I and Love and You” and “Kick Drum Heart.” Before the Avett Brothers, Charles Wesley Godwin, Hailey Whitters and The Wilder Blue also played as the fans made their way through the Friday evening traffic to the stadium.
Combs’ tour has him playing back-to-back nights at stadiums across the country, and he returns to SoFi on Saturday, June 15, mixing up his setlist to swap in eight or nine different songs, and performing the whole in a different order. Opening acts on Saturday are Jordan Davis, Mitchell Tenpenny, Drew Parker and Colby Acuff.
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