NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) – Country star Luke Combs has apologized for appearing with the Confederate flags and said he is now aware of how painful the flag is.
Combs addressed the images Wednesday during a conversation with singer Maren Morris during a panel for radio broadcasters on liability in country music. It came weeks after another country star Morgan Wallen was removed of radio stations and suspended by his label after being caught on video by a racial slur.
Panel moderator and NPR music critic Ann Powers asked Combs about these images during a Q&A for the Country Radio Seminar, an annual conference for radio broadcasters, held online this year.
“There’s no excuse for the images,” says Combs, a 30-year-old North Carolina singer-songwriter who has had two multiplatinum albums and a number of country songs.
Combs said the images were from seven or eight years ago, and as a younger man he did not understand what the flag meant.
“And as I have grown in my time as an artist and changed the world drastically in the last five to seven years, I am now aware of how painful the image can be for someone else,” Combs said. “I never want to be associated with something that hurts someone else so much.”
He said he is addressing the old images now because he wants to show as a very visible country artist that people can change and learn from their mistakes. He also wanted to encourage more people in the country music industry to have the hard conversations.
The genre had a racial reckoning even before Wallen’s performances, but top artists often spoke reluctantly about race, both in the present of the genre and in the past.
“I’m trying to learn. I’m trying to get better, ”Combs said.
Morris also spoke about the Confederate flag, saying that as a native Texan she did not fully understand the history and context of the flag beyond the ‘southern pride’ until her teens.
She said that the fact that the flag is waved at country music festivals does not make them want to play the festivals, and urged country artists to ask that the flags be removed.
She is also one of the few country artists publicly criticize Wallen’s actions on social media said she had a bit of a setback, but it was minimal compared to what black people regularly encounter.
‘I appreciate that Morgan’ stops defending me ‘for his fans, because it’s indefensible. He knows it. We know that, ”Morris said. ‘All we can do, so there is not an elephant in the room, is to say out loud that our peers are being held accountable. I do not care if it is uncomfortable to sit in line at the next awards show. ”