Cole Swindell is still getting used to seeing himself as a headliner. After opening for artists like Dierks Bentley, Jason Aldean and Florida Georgia Line, the “Break Up In the End” singer kicked off his own Reason To Drink Tour last month, even though he still can’t quite believe his name gets top billing.
“It’s hard for me to believe I have my own tour,” Swindell told PopCulture.com at a recent media event. “Walking into these arenas – I’ve been in arenas the past four years, but I’ve been the opening act and its just hard to get it through my head that were the last ones playing. Seeing my production and knowing that I get to take people I believe in out with me, its just been amazing.”
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The tour name comes from a song on Swindell’s upcoming, still-untitled, new album, and his feelings about being on the road with Chris Janson and Lauren Alaina, who serve as his opening acts.
“The Reason to Drink Tour, it sounded like a fun tour name,” said Swindell. “It’s kind of a country anthem song that’s going on album No. 3. And I think it was just one of those that we loved enough to know that maybe it’ll be a single, maybe it won’t be, but at least it could be a cool album title. We hadn’t picked the album title. But I just wanted to have that. I’ve got a few drinking songs, Janson had ‘Fix a Drink’ … Everybody’s just fun out there, so I just thought it would fit the kind of party vibe I have, but we’ll have a few serious moments in there too.
“We play that live cause I kind of intro the song and say, ‘I can’t name the tour after the song and not play it for you,’” he added. “So we go into that and its something that the fans get an early sneak peek of a song that’s not really out there yet.”
Swindell feels fortunate to have two of country music’s rising stars out on the road with him, for two different reasons.
“To have both of them, I don’t know that I expected that,” the Georgia native conceded. “We locked Chris in because we’re label mates, we’re buddies, and I’ve seen him put on a show before. And I take pride in our live show and people, I want them leaving like, ‘Wow that was amazing!’ And I feel like the shows I’ve seen him do, he gets people fired up, and that’s what’s you want. That’s been job for the past four years or so. You just want it to be a good line-up all the way around. I think it makes us step up our game having him and Lauren Alaina. You don’t hear many voices like that. She comes out and sings with me and I get lost sometimes just paying attention to her singing. I mean, it’ll blow you away.
“I just thought it was very fortunate for us to be together out there,” he continued. “I need people to help me in these bigger arenas, to sell tickets, and make sure they get their money’s worth, and I just want it to be the best all around experience from the very start of it to the end. And I think with those two I couldn’t have hand picked it any better. We were happy to get Chris then also getting Lauren before she goes out on the Aldean tour, I think that was a huge, huge win for me.”
A list of all of Swindell’s upcoming shows can be found on his website.
