Artist Spotlight: Luke Bryan Appreciates His Fans

After scoring a pair of hits off of his debut album I'll Stay Me, Luke Bryan has moved his career up a notch with his sophomore Capitol Records release Doin' My Thing. Nominated for the fan-voted Best New Artist ACM, Luke discusses that and more here.

Luke Bryan arrived in 2007 with the party-ready “All My Friends Say” and scored a second hit with “Country Man” in 2008.  By 2009 Luke was moving on to his second album Doin’ My Thing. Lead single “Do I” Became his first chart-topping hit as a singer (his second as a songwriter after writing “Good Directions” for Billy Currington).  With “Rain is a Good Thing” rising the charts, we recently got the chance to speak to the Georgia-native about what’s happening in his career right now, in particular his winning the Best New Solo Artist award from the Academy of Country Music for 2010, an award voted on by fans.  He now is competing against Gloriana and Joey + Rory for The ACM’s Best New Artist award. 

Matt Bjorke: So you recently were awarded the Best New Solo Artist Award by the ACM and the fans who voted for you.  What does it mean to you to get that kind of support?

Luke Bryan: Well, it’s certainly the biggest award I’ve been given and for it to be given by fans it makes it even more special.  It lets me know that all the hard work and all the shows out here on the road day in and day out makes it a pretty rewarding experience.

Matt: What would you like to say to them about the Best New Artist award that you’re up for against Gloriana and Joey + Rory?

Luke: I certainly hope they come out in support again and lets pull it out, encourage them to go out and vote and see if we can make it happen in this final round.

Matt: How have the fans reacted to the Doin’ My Thing album as you play it on the road? 

Luke: It’s been a great experience and it’s fun doing the shows and seeing fans out there singing album cuts and that tells me that the album is selling well with fans going out and buying it.  It’s amazing watching songs get more popular, songs like my new single get more popular with fans as they start getting more familiar.

Matt: What made “Rain is A Good Thing” the right single?

Luke: Well, it seemed like the one we were all excited about and leaning to and all the people around Capitol were really getting a lot of good responses to it live so it seemed like to the one to go with.

Matt: Aside from the singles, what songs from the album do they react to the most?

That’s hard to say but “Welcome to the Farm” is getting a great a response and we open the shows with “Doin’ My Thing” and they’re singing along to it.  Obviously the singles get huge responses but it seems like all the other ones get the same response which is always a good thing.

Matt: If you had to choose, what is your favorite track on Doin’ My Thing?

Luke: It does change often but I really like “Drinkin’ Beer and Wasting Bullets” and it’s a song that is fun and certainly something you’ve never heard with a lot of originality to it.  So it’s up there and I also really a fan of “Do I” and it’s certainly been real big for my career.

Matt: how did you come to record “Apologize?”

Luke:  Well I liked the song and worked it up live acoustically and had a great response and we actually had a lot of fans going on our MySpace and other social media websites saying how much they liked it and how much they loved the performance of it so we ran it around to the label and then recorded it.  Even after recording it we weren’t 100% positive that it would make the album so the fact that after everybody heard it, they loved it and it made the album.

Matt: Well, that’s a great example of an artist listening to their fans and what they want…

Luke: Yeah, that’s what we want to do and that’s the fun part of playing new stuff live and being able to get the reaction from the fans from Twitter and MySpace and all of the other social media websites out there. 

Matt:  Thanks for talking with us today!

 Luke:  You’re welcome and thank you, too.

If you want to support Luke Bryan in his quest to become the Best New Artist at the ACM Awards, you can click the image below to go and vote for him.

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