Lucas Hoge On His Farm Roots, Performing at the Opry, and New Album

Lucas Hoge is a Nashville recording artist who grew up on a farm near Hubbell, Nebraska. He released his first album in 2002 and has a new autobiographical album, Book About Me, coming out this summer. A single from that album, Farmhand, was just released. Hoge shares his journey from the farm to the stage in this episode of the 15 Minutes With a Farmer podcast.

Listen to the Podcast

Subscribe to 15 Minutes With a Farmer on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Please rate and review us!

Meet Lucas Hoge

Hoge grew up on a corn, milo, and soybean farm in southeast Nebraska, near the Kansas border. He always loved to sing and played drums in the school band. When his music teacher started a jazz band and needed a guitar player, Hoge volunteered to learn. He soon realized he found his calling and began performing whenever he could.

After college, he moved to Nashville to focus on his music career, and found massive support from his hometown. A concert was held to raise money for his journey, complete with funds from donated quilts, baked goods, and other items made by his mother and a local women’s club.

He released his first album in 2002 and has spent the past two decades performing, touring around the world, and making more new music. His latest album will be released in July, with a single, Farmhand, out now.

Episode Highlights

• In addition to working on his family’s farm, Hoge worked for other farmers as a teenager, doing jobs like detassling corn and setting up pivots and irrigation pipe. 
• Hoge’s father and brother are also singers, performing around Nebraska. 
• His parents owned a small hotel, and his mother did laundry for a long-term guest in exchange for guitar lessons for him.
• Once in Nashville, Hoge worked in construction, and bartered his services in exchange for things like studio time and help producing albums.
• One of his first big breaks was having some of his songs included in the television series Smallville.
• In 2017, Hoge had his first number one album on the country Billboard album sales chart and was invited to perform at the Grand Old Opry.
• Hoge is the host of the television series Hoge Wild, which documents his hunting, fishing, diving, and other adventures around the world.
• Hoge’s new album, Book of Me, is autobiographical, including country songs about farming and tracks with a beachy vibe.

Links and Resources

Transcript

Please note: This transcript has not been edited.

Lisa Foust Prater: Welcome to the 15 Minutes With a Farmer podcast from Successful Farming. I’m your host, Lisa Foust Prater. My guest today is Lucas Hoge, a Nashville recording artist who grew up on a farm near Hubbell, Nebraska. He released his first album in 2002 and has a new autobiographical album coming this summer. A single from that album, Farmhand, was just released. 

In each episode, I have a quick 15 minute conversation with a farmer to hear their story and share their experience, expertise, and life lessons.

Lucas Hoge: My folks still actually live on that little farm, but I grew up in a little bitty small town called Hubbell, Nebraska, right on the Kansas, Nebraska line, town of 44 people at the time. So it was pretty small. We were about a half mile outside of town on a small little farm out there. And, you know, we had corn and milo, soybeans at one point in time. I think dad has it all to alfalfa right now, but I remember having to do a lot of that when we were kids. And then,

We had a super small farm, so I would always work for the local farmers around to help them out and make a little money too.

Lisa Foust Prater: Classic farm town summer job for any kid working for the farmers.

Lucas Hoge: Exactly. Yeah, detassling and setting up pivots and irrigation pipe and all that stuff. Yep.

Lisa Foust Prater: That’s so great. So are you able to still get back to the farm?

Lucas Hoge: Absolutely, yeah, I go back as much as possible. Hopefully, trying to get back even more and more, as the older we all get, mom and dad are still there and always try and go back for as many holidays as we can and then always try and go back for whatever occasion we can think of, hunting season. Yeah, exactly.

Lisa Foust Prater: Now you’re living in Nashville and we’ll get to your path of how you got there, but what do you miss most about living on the farm?

Lucas Hoge: Oh, gosh, just this slow pace. I mean, you know, it’s a little fast paced in our life right now. But I just love being home, close to family. I love the wide open spaces. Wouldn’t trade it for the world. I always dream about getting back there as often as possible. It’s just a beautiful place. I love when the crops are in the field and I love when the crops are out of the field. It’s just you can watch your dog run away for three days. I love it.

Lisa Foust Prater: Nebraska is beautiful. I’m next door in Iowa, but I travel in Nebraska a lot and I always really enjoy it. It’s beautiful scenery and the people are so great. So I read that when you first got started and you were about to head out to Nashville as a young man, that your hometown actually like helped you get going. Tell me about that.

Lucas Hoge: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, growing up in that area, my dad was singing, you know, in different places all over the county, all over the state, you know, if people needed somebody to volunteer to go sing somewhere, know, dad was always first one that raises his hand, you know. And then me and my brother kind of started following around and my older brother and him, my dad started singing together and then I saw him singing on stage. One of my favorite Alan Jackson songs. was like, man, I’d really like to try that out, you know, and then it kind of grew from there, then we started all singing together all over the place.

I went to Southeast Community College in Milford, and right out of college, I decided I was like, you know, I’m gonna try this for real. And I was playing with three different bands at the time. I had a kind of a mixed band called Southern Cross, out of Beatrice, Nebraska. And then I had a worship band going called Extreme Devotion out of Lincoln, on the UNL campus. And then I had just a country band called Borderline out of my hometown. So I was playing a lot of different bands, fronting a lot of different bands.

And when it came that time, you know, I asked all my singing buddies to come in and we did a concert at the Chester Auditorium. So they all came and everybody sang a little bit kind of like Opry style where everybody came in, did a couple songs a piece. But the local community showed up like crazy. There’s probably I would say they filled that place up, probably a couple hundred people, two, three hundred people.

Everybody did free will donation at the door. And then the local women’s club would bake like cookies and cakes and stuff and sell them and auction them off. And then some of the women did paintings and auctioned them off. And my mom made some quilts and auctioned them off. And I think I think, you know, at the end of the night, they handed me, you know, a wad of cash. was like two or three thousand dollars. And yeah, it was awesome. And it was just so cool. And still everybody shows up whenever I come back home and it just helped out a ton, you know, as just a punk kid moving to Nashville. Everything’s pretty expensive there.

Lisa Foust Prater: Right. I mean, geez, not only that, but just that kind of moral support. That’s incredible. mean, small towns are like that. They come together. So, you mentioned, you know, singing, always and your dad and your brother, so did you always play guitar too or is that something you just picked up along the way?

Lucas Hoge: Yeah, so I started out playing drums as a young, young kid and started playing in the high school band before I was even in high school because they needed as much help as we can get back then. Exactly. So I was a drummer for many years and then started getting into, you know, choir and things like that. And then they decided to start a jazz band, probably, think, my sophomore, junior year of high school. If they didn’t have a guitar player. And I was like, man, I really love to play guitar. So I started teaching myself how to play guitar because nobody around there knew how to play guitar either. you just kind of teach yourself how to do everything.

We had a music teacher that came in probably my sophomore year and he played a little bit of guitar. So he kind of gave me a little bit of help there. And then my mom and dad owned the little pity 13 room motel right in Chester there. And when the interstate went around us, the road crew would stay, you know, pack the hotel or the motel out. And mom noticed that one of the guys had a guitar and she said, Hey, if I you know, do your laundry every week. Will you give my son some guitar lessons? And he said, absolutely. Yeah, it was cool. So I learned how to play guitar from just pieces of everything, you know, back then that was my YouTube.

Lisa Foust Prater: You got to Nashville and like, how did you land that, that, that first, you contract for your first album? That must’ve just been incredible.

Lucas Hoge: Yeah, mean, putting out the very first album, it was completely independent as well. And when I first moved to town, I got some very good pointers from people that they’re like, if you’re coming here for music, got to make Nashville your home. First of all, you know, got to establish your roots, go out and get a great job because it’s going to take a while for the music habit to pay off. I became a contractor there and started building the custom homes and stuff like that. And then I’d work all day long and then go get a quick shower and I’d be playing all the bars and all the songwriter nights all night long. And just to establish those contacts and start cultivating those relationships, because it really does, you’ve got to get into those little things. So it’s a long time in the making, a long process. 

And being that contractor, I started, again, trading out my services. Somebody needed a deck or some windows put in or whatever, and they happened to be a studio musician or a producer. I’d be like, Hey, I’ll build you a deck. If you give me some studio time. And that’s how it started out. Like one of the first guys that I met was Eddie Kay. And it was that exact thing. He was like, Hey, I know you’re trying to put a record together. How about you, you know, build my screened in porch and we’ll start putting an album together. I’m like, done. And then I met Lonnie Wilson who, yeah, I met Lonnie Wilson, who was Joe Diffie’s drummer. And he was a producer at the time too.

Lisa Foust Prater: That’s amazing.

Lucas Hoge: And it’s the same thing with him. He’s like, Hey, I can go play drums on your record if you want to, you know, put my screened in porch together or, you know, put my windows in my house. And that’s how most of that stuff came about. And, you know, just started building those relationships and started, you know, showing up and just writing with anybody that would say, Hey, yes, let’s write together. And, and again, it was a long time in the making and you can’t take no for an answer in that town. 

Lisa Foust Prater: Right. You have to sell yourself for sure.

Lucas Hoge: You just have to say yes to everything that comes along as well, you know, you’ll figure it out later.

Lisa Foust Prater: Right, right. So you had albums and success in between that first album and where we are now. .

Lucas Hoge: Mm-hmm, yeah, totally. I met my wife about four or five years into me moving to Nashville and we hit it off and she came from the TV and film world so she knew I was writing like crazy and she took some of my songs and she knew a lot of the music producers out in LA and sent off a bunch of my songs to the TV show Smallville which was one of my favorite TV shows at the time, obviously coming from small town. I’m a Superman guy, know? All that.

Lisa Foust Prater: Right. Yeah, that was a good one.

Lucas Hoge: And she was able to get some of my music into the Smallville episodes. That helped take my songwriting to a whole nother level. People started realizing, hey, who’s this guy getting his songs in big TV productions and stuff like that? So it opened up some more doors there. And it’s just those little bitty achievements. You just keep knocking them down and just taking advantage of everything that you possibly can.

Lisa Foust Prater: And so often in life, no matter what your path is, it’s like, I know a guy. Someone knows someone who knows someone and just having those contacts and meeting new people all the time really puts you in a good position for success, for sure.

Lucas Hoge: Definitely, definitely. Yeah, we just kept knocking down doors along the way and writing and recording like crazy. And then in 2017, I had my first number one album on the country Billboard album sales chart and had my Opry debut and so amazing to have those achievements, you know.

Lisa Foust Prater: What was that like the Opry debut that has to just be such a surreal moment? Like what is happening?

Lucas Hoge: Yeah, it was just incredible. You know, when you finally get the invitation because you don’t just, you say, Hey, I want to play the Opry, you know, they, yeah, you have to get the call from the Opry saying, Hey, we’d to invite you to come play the Opry. 

Lisa Foust Prater: Yeah, it’s not an open mic night.

Lucas Hoge: Yeah. It’s just cool. They do it up so good there too, you know, and my debut was on the Ryman Auditorium stage too, which is the mother, the mother church of the Opry back in the day, you know, now it’s all in the Opry house, which we just played that a few weeks ago, but it’s just an amazing time every time you get to do it.

Lisa Foust Prater: Yeah, that must have just been an incredible moment. So now you have a new album coming out this summer, like I mentioned, and a single that by the time this episode airs will have just come out. So tell us about Farmhand, the single that’s coming out.

Lucas Hoge: Absolutely. You know, we’ve been putting out so many singles, you know, kind of after that 2017, everybody kind of started doing the single, single, single, nobody was putting out albums. And I finally was like, Hey, it’s time to put out a full-on album. You know, how albums used to be literally a book, you know, chapters of your career or chapters of your life during that time of recording. And that’s what this album is called is a book about me. And it’s just literally growing up on the farm, you know, and that progression into all the different things and a very rural life, very, very country way of life. A lot of themes in all these songs that I’m doing. 

And the first single is called Farmhand, which is basically that story, you know, growing up on the farm when you got the calloused hands and the handshake really meant the world back then. It was a contract or, you know, it was a hello. It was the loyalty. It was everything about, you know, that handshake. And that’s what that song’s about, encompassing that way of life and the farm community and the loyal, you know, friendships that we have of all that. And then it just completely, the whole album completely goes from, I call it barn to beach because when I met my, yeah, I met my wife and she was from LA and I’d never seen the ocean. And then I met her when I was like 24, 25 years old or whatever. And I’d never seen the ocean. And she was like, my God.

She booked us a ticket to go see the ocean like the next week or the next few days. And I just fell in love with the ocean and the beach and palm trees and everything that it had to offer, know? And so I’ve been, now I’ve been across the world and back a hundred times and in the ocean and over it and under it and you name it. And I can’t get enough of it. So there’s a lot of kind of country beach tunes in there as well.

Lisa Foust Prater: That’s so fun. Well, I loved the sort of play on words, the writing for farmhand with, you know, farmhand you think of like, you know, a worker on a farm, but then talking about the hands and the callous hands and the handshakes and all that. That writing was really good. I really enjoyed that.

Lucas Hoge: Thank you so much. My buddy Nate Kenyon and I really knocked it out of the park with that one, I think.

Lisa Foust Prater: Yeah. And so another single that I just watched a preview of is when a cowboy prays. So tell us and it was beautiful. So tell us about that collaboration on that song, what that is and how that kind of came to be.

Lucas Hoge: Yeah. Thank you. I wrote When a Cowboy Prays with my friend Justin Lance, who’s a Montana cowboy, you know, writing songs in Nashville and killing it right now. And we, I had this idea for a song about, you know, cowboys and praying and all this stuff. And he helped me bring it together and it turned out so, so good. And I was performing it last year at the NFR, which is a Wrangler National Finals Rodeo. And I was doing a spot for RFD TV. So they had the big stage and they’re recording it for TV and everything. And Forrie J. Smith, who plays Lloyd on Yellowstone, was doing an autograph signing like right on the side of the stage, like, I don’t know, maybe 20 feet away. And when I got to the chorus, he heard “When a cowboy prays” and he just started like, oh my God, yeah, I stopped his autograph line, come and sat down at the front of the stage and just listened to the whole song and was just like, oh yeah, he was like the only one you could really hear in the crowd yelling, it was awesome. And after the song, you know, we kind of started talking and I knew he was a cowboy poet and he has some albums out doing that kind of stuff. And I said, man, would you ever want to collab on anything like this? And he said, absolutely. And we finally worked it out and flew a little, you know, kind of home recording studio out to his place. And we met him in his ranch there in New Mexico and just set up a studio in his living room and recorded it right there. And it turned out so great to be able to not only collaborate with somebody like him, but put something like that on the project as well.

Lisa Foust Prater: Right. That’s so great. I love that. I love the way that came together. So I’m curious what your advice would be as a person who has been there and done that to, you know, the farm kids of America who when they’re done with their chores, they pick up their guitar and they have those dreams too. So what would you say to those kids?

Lucas Hoge: You’re going to have every reason to not pick up that guitar every single day. And then, and if you really are dedicated to it, you got to pick up that guitar every single day and make that your, your go-to. I mean, that’s, that’s your pastime, right? Don’t get swamped down and scrolling like this and, you know, make sure you always pick that thing up and you’re cultivating something in your craft if you really, really want to do it. And then just start saying yes to everything. If somebody wants you to go play somewhere, say yes. Figure it out later, know, put a little more time in the field to make some money so that you can afford to go play for free because you’re going do a lot of free shows. 

Lisa Foust Prater: Yeah, that’s good advice. It’s been it’s been so much fun to talk to you today and to follow your career. And I’m going to share in our show notes all of the links to, you know, to you and the website and the show and the album and all of that good stuff. So folks can hop over and give it a listen. And congratulations on the new single and wishing you the best of luck with this album. I know it’s going to be fantastic.

Lucas Hoge: Thanks so much. I appreciate your time and I look forward to doing it again.

Lisa Foust Prater: Thank you for listening. Please subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Open the latest issue of Successful Farming and visit us online at agriculture.com for more interesting features and news for your farm and Join me next week for another episode of 15 Minutes With a Farmer.