Like many of us, pop-centric singer/songwriter Luke Wade is no stranger to adversity; though his story brims with sadness and loss, he has overcome his trials with infectious optimism, and channeled that pain into art.
Wade affectionately describes his parents as “hippies” who raised him in a small town in central Texas populated by roughnecks, farmers, and preachers. “My parents are both artists in the buckle of the Bible Belt as they say,” he laughs. As a teenager, Wade endured a tragic injury that left him with partial blindness and limited depth perception, which effectively ended his teenage sports career in a state where football is a near-mandatory rite of passage. “As a kid, when you’re around people who are all similar and you’re really different, it was a tough thing to deal with,” he explains. “I had difficulty connecting.”
While this chain of events might have kept any lesser mortal down, Wade picked himself up, brushed off that Lonestar dust, and turned his lemons into some seriously soulful lemonade. “Life is just a series of events that effect your trajectory; when I was young, I got a taste of what life was really like, how difficult it can be, and the things that can happen to you,” he recalls. “It made me reflect, maybe more than a normal kid would, which led me to really need a form of expression that eventually turned into songwriting and performing. I had to go through a process figure out what my roots were, and I’ve come to understand myself. It’s been one of the greatest gifts.”
Now, with a successful stint on The Voice, over a thousand live shows, and stages shared with industry icons all under his proverbial belt, the Texan-turned-Los Angeleno will release his brand new album, Only Ghosts, on January 13th. “In general, I feel like I tell the same stories over and over again, but as long as you’re changing and you’re aware of how you’re changing as an artist, you can tell those stories again because your perspective is different,” he explains. “The theme that I keep going back to is that the things we all have in common are usually the things we’re least likely to share, because we’re afraid—whenever you are really yourself and it doesn’t work out, feeling that real rejection, it makes us reel in those parts of ourselves that are vulnerable. The more we’re able to share those things as adults, the more we realize we’re all human. The album is called Only Ghosts, and it’s from a line that says ‘face to face with what you fear the most, I can show you that they’re only ghosts.’”
“There are times when the vulnerability becomes very real, when you feel like you’re a product that’s not selling and you want to take yourself off the shelf,” he continues. “The hardest thing I do every day is get past those moments, to really look at things in a way that makes you realize the world needs you to do what you’re doing and that you can’t stop now.”
Purchase Only Ghosts: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/album/only-ghosts/id1166715831
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Luke Wade On Tour:
Jan 12 – San Diego, CA @ Casbah
Jan 13 – Hollywood, CA @ Hotel Cafe
Jan 18 – Vienna, VA @ Jammin’ Java
Jan 19 – Philadelphia, PA @ World Cafe Live
Jan 20 – New York, NY @ Joe’s Pub at The Public
Jan 21 – North Haven, CT @ Fairfield Theatre
Jan 24 – Atlanta, GA @ Eddie’s Attic
Jan 25 – Charlotte, NC @ Neighborhood Theatre
Jan 26 – Nashville, TN @ Exit/In
Jan 31 – Chicago, IL @ City Winery
Feb 1 – St Louis, MO @ Blueberry Hill
Feb 3 – Dallas, TX @ House of Blues
Feb 4 – Wichita Falls, TX @ Iron Horse Pub
Feb 9 – Austin, TX @ Stubb’s BBQ
Feb 10 – Houston, TX @ House of Blues
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