The BBQ Balladeer
Liam Price is a rising star of the country music scene, with a passion for football and outdoor cooking. RUPERT BATES heads to Rodeos BBQ to hear him
As two long-suffering Wolverhampton Wanderers football fans, we joked about Liam Price writing a Blues – or rather Old Gold – song, with melancholic lyrics of lost games and shattered dreams.
Liam Price is Wolverhampton born and bred and a Molineux season ticket holder, while his wife, Anna Price, played more games for Wolves Women than any other player in a 30-year career at the club she captained.
Liam Price is one of the most exciting voices on the UK country music scene and is also making a name for himself in the US, with the singer-songwriter leading Luke Combs UK – a tribute band to the Grammy-nominated country music megastar, and the band endorsed by the North Carolina man himself.
Meanwhile, Price loves to barbecue, with a steak the go-to on his Char-Broil grill at home, and a passion amplified by his time in the United States. “I lived on the East Coast for a while, teaching soccer to kids, and it was all about barbecues, engrained in the culture. I am always learning, looking deeper into cooking techniques,” says Price.
BBQ is country music’s soul food and appropriately enough one of Price’s biggest and original supporters is Simon Parton of Rodeos BBQ in Wolverhampton, with Price a regular performer at the venue, where you can listen to his own material or, wearing his Luke Combs cap, playing such hits as Beautiful Crazy and Fast Car.
Rodeos, which also has a venue in Birmingham, is all you’d expect it to be, with saloon doors, a honky-tonk vibe, a bucking bronco to tame, country music stars muralled on the walls, and a store selling hats and boots for the full immersive experience.
As I listened to Price and his band belt out ballads and love songs at Rodeos, the audience looked like extras from the epic American modern Western TV series Yellowstone. The fire food hits the spot too, be it Kansas brisket ends, Alabama pork belly, or Texas hot link sausage.
“Rodeos were first to book Luke Combs UK and we sold out in 24 hours. Country music has really evolved as a genre, with a rock element coming into it. Fashion is a big driver too, especially among women, who love to dress in country and western wear – cowboy hats, boots, tops with suede tassels, jewellery. We’re heading to the States again in June, from Delaware up to Maine, as Luke Combs UK.”
Price will be performing his own songs at CMA (Country Music Association) Fest in Nashville, Tennessee in June, with over 100,000 flocking to the event every year.
He is in the stellar line up after winning the Homegrown Talent at The Long Road Festival at Stanford Hall in Leicestershire last year, and he will be on The Long Road main stage in August, with headline acts including Bailey Zimmerman and Emmylou Harris.
There will be BBQ too from Red Dog Saloon, with the Texas-style English restaurant on site serving brisket, beef and pork ribs, and hickory smoked chicken.
Liam’s journey, from joining his first band aged 14 when his grandmother put him forward for an audition, has taken many roads, including spells with the West Midlands Police and, during Covid, the West Midlands Ambulance Service, and even a sales job in engineering.
But his love of and talent for music never wavered despite the setbacks. Price became hugely in demand on the wedding circuit – whether playing brides down the aisle, the first dance, or the reception. At one point he had 90 weddings lined up, but then the pandemic struck.
When weddings came back they returned with a vengeance and Luke Combs and country music became more and more requested as the genre grew, with Price performing at 160 weddings a year.
“I thought there was potential for a Luke Combs tribute band, and it was then that Rodeos booked me. I went on to meet Luke and open his bar in Nashville,” says Price.
“It was fantastic to get his official endorsement, and I feel we have carried the torch for Luke in the UK, and we love that responsibility.”
Should Price need any further musical motivation and inspiration closer to home he only has to listen to the extraordinary versatility and experimental evolution of Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, one of the greatest voices in the history of rock, but with bluegrass, folk, Americana, roots and world music all in his remarkable repertoire. And Plant is a huge Wolves fan and vice-president of the club.
“I did actually get to perform in front of Robert Plant at a players awards evening,” says Price, who also had a band called the Wolf Pack Howlers, exclusively playing club songs and dressed in Wolves shirts.
“During Covid, if you ordered our album, we’d come and play on your drive and deliver it personally – Live on the Drive.”
Price’s LP, The Grass Ain’t Green, is testimony to a storyteller with a voice of power, range and emotion, and none more meaningful and beautiful than Little Star of August, written in half an hour, celebrating Liam and Anna’s baby daughter, born last summer.
“When you have so much inspiration and love to draw on, songwriting becomes easy,” says Price, who also sang Fields of Gold in a poignant tribute to the footballer Diogo Jota after the Wolves and Liverpool star was killed, alongside his brother Andre Silva, in a car crash last year.
Luke Combs UK has a tour across England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland from March to June, with a US tour in between, as well as playing at fan parks later in the year when Luke Combs headlines Wembley and other UK venues.
You suspect, such is his talent and drive, that Price will be playing Wembley before Wolves one day return there for a cup final.
In between performances, both sides of the Atlantic, Price will be looking to up his outdoor cooking game, and any grill brands, building audiences and sales in the UK and the US, should look up this singer-songwriter for, with the music and BBQ crossover, there’s no better ambassador, guitar in hand, to sing round the fire.
We await the ultimate barbecue ballad.
