Luke Combs, an unreleased demo and Tony Castricone's passion for songwriting
How a country music star once put his voice to a song co-written by Washington's play-by-play man.
It wasn’t a bucket-list item, but it was a first.
Last weekend, I joined thousands of others in the beer and bathroom lines at BC Place for a country music concert. My wife is a big fan of Luke Combs, so I bought her tickets to his show for Christmas. We drove up to Vancouver and made a weekend of it.
Combs doesn’t necessarily sing my kind of music, but that’s OK. He’s a big dude with an untamed beard who looks like he catches the fish, shoots the deer and then guts both himself. I appreciate his authenticity. And he really can sing, especially live, which isn’t always the case with popular artists. My wife plays enough of his music that I even know all the words to some of his songs (has ice-cold beer ever broken anyone’s heart?), and was happy to sing along inside a packed stadium.
(As an aside, the Kingdome during the 1995 playoffs might be the only venue I’ve ever heard louder than BC Place when Combs shotgunned a Miller Lite near the end of his show.)
He played his newer songs. He played his hits. There was one song, though, that I would have loved to hear him perform, even though I knew it wasn’t coming. It’s a song you’ve almost certainly never heard, but it was co-written by somebody you almost certainly have heard, even if not in a music setting, and Combs did put his voice to it, once upon a time.