Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks as

always for clicking and listening along. I've got a truly special conversation for you this week

with one of the biggest stars in all of music, Luke Combs. And I say truly special, not just because it is

extraordinary to get a star that big to sit and spend an hour with you, but it is the latest

of our Sunday sit-down live events. And this time we've taken our show on the road to Nashville.

You remember over the last year or so, we've invited the viewers into the room

at City Winery, New York, first for a conversation with Nate Bargettsey, later one with

Ina Garten, and then with Jim Gaffigan. Great nights. People having a cocktail as they listen to

us. We've got audience questions involved, all of it. And so now we've taken it to Nashville.

I will say out of the gate, I went to school in Nashville.

I went to Vanderbilt University.

It's a second home for me.

So I was thrilled to be back there, had dear friends in the crowd, alongside so many Sunday

today viewers, who, again, I was floored to hear, traveled from all over the country

and made a date of this to sit and listen to me and Luke.

So if you're not familiar with Luke Combs, he's just one of the biggest stars on the planet, sells out football stadiums all over the world.

He's got a tour coming up in March on the back of a new album that comes out on March 20th called The Way I Am.

He sells out the football stadiums in the United States before going abroad and selling out stadiums in Paris and Amsterdam and Sweden. And then, yes, three nights at Wembley. He's sold out three nights at Wembley Stadium in the UK. They wanted to do a fourth, but the place was booked. That's how big he is. If you don't know, Luke Combs grew up in North Carolina, he'll hear all about his upbringing, how he got where he is, didn't start playing guitar until he was 21 years old and a student in Appalachian State University in North Carolina. It's been 14 years. In fact, to the day that he and I sat down, and you'll hear him refer to a picture that we show up that he had posted that day.

14 years to the day since his first gig, now he's effectively on Nashville's mountaintop.

He worked his way there.

He's, as he says in the interview, there's no packaging.

There's no marketing to it.

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