NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) – Country star Luke Combs has apologized for showing up with Confederate flags and says he is now aware of how embarrassing that flag is.
Combs addressed the images on Wednesday during a conversation with singer Maren Morris during a panel for radio broadcasters about accountability in country music. It came weeks after another top country star Morgan Wallen was removed from radio stations and banned by his label after being caught on video with a racist slur.
Panel moderator and NPR music critic Ann Powers asked Combs about those images during a Q&A for the Country Radio Seminar, an annual nationwide radio broadcasting conference, held online this year.
“There’s no excuse for those images,” said Combs, a 30-year-old North Carolina singer-songwriter who has had two multi-platinum albums and several country hits.
Combs said the images were from seven or eight years ago and as a younger man he didn’t understand what that flag meant.
“And as I have grown in my time as an artist and as the world has changed dramatically over the past five to seven years, I am now aware of how painful that image can be to someone else,” said Combs. “I would never want to be associated with something that hurts someone else so much.”
He said he was now tackling the old footage because as a highly visible country artist he wanted to show that people can change and learn from their mistakes. He also wanted to encourage more people in the country music industry to have those hard conversations.
The genre has had a racial payoff even before the actions of Wallen, but top artists often talk cautiously about race, both in the present and in the past of the genre.
“I’m trying to learn. I’m trying to get better,” said Combs.
Morris also spoke of the Confederate flag, saying that, as a native Texan, she also did not fully understand the history and context of the flag, other than just “Confederate pride,” until she was a teenager.
She said seeing that flag at country music festivals keeps her from wanting to play at those festivals and urged country artists to demand that those flags be removed.
She is also one of the few country artists publicly criticize Wallen’s actions on social media and said she had had some backlash, but it was minimal compared to what black people encounter on a regular basis.
“I appreciate Morgan telling his fans ‘stop defending me’ because it’s indefensible. He knows that. We know that, ”said Morris. “All we can do so that there isn’t an elephant in the room is say that out loud, call our colleagues to account. I don’t care if it is difficult to sit behind you at the next awards ceremony. “