Luke Combs and Eric Church look utterly exhausted. Beginning at 6:30 a.m. this morning, the North Carolina natives and country music stars have been sitting side-by-side in the Nashville office of Church’s management company doing a string of live TV hits, from CNN to Fox & Friends, to promote “Concert for Carolina.” The Oct. 26 benefit show at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, will feature performances by Combs, Church, Billy Strings, and James Taylor in an effort to raise funds for those affected by the flooding from Hurricane Helene, especially in Western North Carolina.
The tragic irony is that while Combs and Church are talking live on CNN about the devastation from one storm, the news network’s crawl directly beneath them is warning of another even larger hurricane, Milton, projected to smash the Gulf Coast of Florida within 48 hours.
Combs’ wife Nicole is from Florida. Something she said earlier this week during a conversation about Helene’s destruction of Asheville, North Carolina — where Combs was raised — stopped him in his tracks.
“I’d been on the phone all day, every day, trying to get this concert done,” Combs says, “and she said, ‘It’s different when it happens where you come from, isn’t it?’”
“Wow,” Church whispers. “Good line.”
“She went to school in Fort Myers and that’s going to be real close for Milton,” Combs says. “They just got a direct hit by Helene as well, so it’s still awful there from the last storm.”
With Milton bearing down, Combs and Church talked with Rolling Stone about their fear of the Western North Carolina disaster being forgotten, how they put “Concert for Carolina” together, and what song Combs just won’t sing on Oct. 26.
First and foremost, both of your parents are from the Asheville region. Where are they now?
Church: They’re in Western North Carolina. They’re okay, but living there is not okay. Where we spend the summers, where I’ve made the last three or four of my albums, is decimated. It’s biblically not something you can imagine. I see the pictures and my brain does not comprehend what it is.
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Combs: You told me about a river there, that’s really more of a creek?
Church: The Elk River, which I sing about in “Carolina,” is about two to three feet deep across the main part of it. They estimate it got up to about 35 feet deep when this happened, and maybe a half mile across. Nobody alive has ever seen anything like that or heard of anything like that.
Where are you folks, Luke?
Combs: My parents moved [to Nashville] a year and a half ago. But the road that went to my childhood home in Asheville is impassable. It runs by this creek, and there are three or four houses in the road. Whole homes are in the road. It doesn’t even make sense.
Church: You don’t think about being in the mountains of Western North Carolina and having a hurricane.
Combs: They’re not as prepared there for that. Growing up, I remember my parents saying they moved there because there’s no natural disasters there — no tornadoes, no hurricanes, no blizzards.
NOAA stores all of their climate data in Asheville for that very reason.
Combs: ‘Cause it’s so safe all the time.
Church: The problem up there now is it’s a bunch of tight-knit small communities, especially in the western mountains. The infrastructure is gone. No roads, no power, no water, no sewage. Those people are not going to be able to stay there as we rebuild. We’re going to have to relocate a lot of those people. A lot of those schools won’t go the rest of the year.
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So, do you fear that when Hurricane Milton strikes this week, the folks in Western North Carolina will be forgotten about?
Church: Yes. The answer is yes. The thing people need to realize is we’re raising money and everybody is focusing on it right now. But two months from now, when people move on to what’s next, those people in those communities still need a ton of help — beyond two months, six months, beyond one year. We do a concert, raise money, and that’s great. But that is not anywhere near what is going to be needed long term. Not even close.
With regard to the benefit concert, who called who first?
Church: He called me the day after. With our community there, Banner Elk [North Carolina] just decimated, we were still in that process [of trying to help] and Luke called early in the morning.
Combs: I said, “Hey man, this is still a concept at this time, but just be open to this, because I’m going to try to do something.”
Church: When Luke called, we both got on our phones and started calling artists.
Combs: I quickly realized he knew a lot cooler people than I did…
Who got James Taylor?
Church: I did. And it was not easy. I texted Joe Walsh and said, “This is gonna be weird, but I need James Taylor’s cell number.” Later on, I got connected with his day-to-day person and I said to her, “Somebody is going to play ‘Carolina in My Mind,’ either he is or I am — but I would rather it be him.” It was critical to what this concert is, to get James.
And, Luke, you have ties with Billy Strings.
Combs: Yeah, we talk. Not every day, but a decent amount for artist buddies. He had just left his Renewal shows to go have his child [Strings had to abandon his annual festival in Colorado when his wife went into labor] and I had just reached out to him about that. I said, “Hey man, I know it’s hard to cancel shows and you feel bad, but you made the right decision. I missed my second child being born, because I was in Australia and he came two and a half weeks early, so I’ve been through that.” Then a few days later, this all happened…
Church: And [Billy] has a lot of ties to that area with bluegrass. Asheville is such a big musicians community.
Combs: Marry bluegrass and jam bands and you’re gonna have a lot of musicians from that area.
Serious question, Luke: Your breakout Number One hit was titled “Hurricane.” Will you play it at the benefit?
Combs: No. It came up a couple days ago and we were talking about. You just can’t do it.
Eric, you helped relaunch Field & Stream, a magazine that’s steeped in nature conservation and the idea of preserving our hunting grounds, fishing grounds, preserving the planet. Have you thought about how climate change is responsible for what we’re seeing with these storms?
Church: Luke’s thing hit me really hard, when Nicole said, “It’s different when it happens where you’re from.” You forget about the people in Florida, Louisiana, or the coastal regions that deal with this all the time. When Luke said that, it stung me. It is different when it is where you’re from, and that’s happening more and more often. That’s reality, right? We’re a week later…
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Combs: …and we already got another one. Cat 5.
Church: It’s the kind of the world we live in now. We both have kids who are younger and it’s natural for you to think about, “What’s the world going to be like for them?” Because it is more prevalent now than when I was younger, and I can say that factually.
