Luke Combs turned his music video for “Doin’ This” over to his good friend Adam Church, but the lesser-known country singer didn’t have any idea what was planned until the last second.
Talking to Taste of Country, Church reflected on his college days with Combs and explained how his path to country stardom has been a series of starts and stops.
“Doin’ This” was the song Combs chose to perform at the 2021 CMA Awards. He’d win Entertainer of the Year an hour later and drop this new music video that very night. The answer to a question about what he’d be doing if he wasn’t a country star is told through Church, a married father with an ordinary 9 to 5 kind of job who also fills up bars in western Carolina. He’s a pretty big deal in Boone, N.C. That’s our words, not his.
Church is a mix of humility and boundless enthusiasm. He gave Nashville a try once several years ago and was playing gigs on Lower Broadway as he arranged songwriting meetings and sat down for writer’s rounds. Combs had a few hits by this point, but even though they were tight, Church wasn’t asking for a freebie from his old Appalachian State bandmate.
“It was the grind of the first year,” Church says. “Even having Luke as my buddy, we were never the type where, ‘I’m gonna let you do this.’ We are always proving yourself with the songs and just really grinding it out like everybody else is.”
One night while attending an Avenged Sevenfold concert at Bridgestone Arena, Church fell and broke his leg. The recovery sent him back home to his parents’ house. His daughter came a year or two later, and he made some difficult choices. But if there’s any regret, he hides it well. There’s certainly no give-up.
Church says he plans to move back to Nashville in the fall or winter of 2022, hoping to pick up where he left off. The boost from starring in the “Doin’ This” video should help. Actually, it has already helped. The weekend after the video dropped, his shows filled up with Luke Combs fans from across the state.
TA Films in Charlotte, N.C., created the music video for “Doin’ This.” Much of the older footage culled for a nearly five-minute-long video is from Combs and Church’s days as a duo, and then as bandmates. Some clips are from the “Let the Moonshine” video, released in 2014.
Church says he visited Combs in Tennessee a month or two ago and talked about their careers and music, including the song “Doin’ This,” written early on in the pandemic. He left with no idea what was coming his way, until a week later, when TA Films called him, asking if he could block out time to shoot some home footage. Combs’ record label and management team had signed off on the idea, and by extension, him.
What’s next for Church is still unclear, although he insinuated that plans are taking shape. There’s little doubt that come fall 2022, Adam Church will still be “Doin’ This” on some stage.
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