Luke Bryan is spending a lot more time at home this year than he planned. The Georgia native was forced to postpone both his Proud to Be Right Here Tour as well as his highly-anticipated performance at the Pepsi Gulf Coast Jam in Panama City Beach, Florida, and also had to cancel his annual Farm Tour, all because of COVID-19. While some artists, like Chase Rice and Granger Smith, have been finding ways to get back in front of the fans, Luke is ready to wait as long as he needs to, if only to make sure that everyone is safe.
“You don’t want to be the sacrificial lamb,” Luke told the Los Angeles Times. “If I’ve made decisions on not doing shows, it’s because let’s see what we’re truly dealing with. We’re still learning what this virus is every day.”
Luke admits he toyed with ways he could safely return to a live show, but still faced too many obstacles to move forward with any concrete plans.
“It’s all out of whack,” Luke conceded. “I’ve got these Farm Tour shows, where say you got a 10-by-10-square-mile field, and you put a huge stage in it and you tell everybody to stay six feet apart and wear a mask. I’m like, ‘We could make this happen where if somebody called bull— on us, we could technically go spray-paint six-foot circumferences.’ But I just can’t imagine that germs aren’t getting spread.”
Luke just released his Born Here, Live Here, Die Here album, which he delayed from its original release date of April 24 until August 7, mostly because he wasn’t sure he wanted to release new music while much of the world was struggling. But he didn’t hesitate to release “One Margarita,” which became his third No. 1 hit off of his latest record, even if some thought the release of the uptempo tune was in poor taste.
“Listen, I’ve been doing this a long time, and you just gotta go with your gut,” said the singer. “I don’t second-guess the timing. I chose to just put out a fun song, and I look forward to when I can perform it live. If you’re a fan of mine and you don’t like the song, don’t write me off for the rest of your life. Wait around till I put something out that’s more what you want to hear from me.
“That’s what I used to do with all my heroes,” he added. “When George Strait put out a song that I didn’t care for, I didn’t have a platform to tell the world. I just chose not to freak out about that particular song.”