Cole Swindell Told Us About His Obsession with The Atlanta Braves, And How He Used To Sell T-Shirts For Luke Bryan Before Making It Big
Before Cole Swindell became a country music star in his own right, he was the master of merch for none other than Luke Bryan. The man with hits like "You Should Be Here"
and "Middle of a Memory"
started off hustling T-shirts instead of music.
When we sat down with him in Nashville, (before he hopped on stage and CRUSHED the Barstool Nashville Bar with a surprise set, brought to you by Warner Music Group and Barstool Backstage, nbd), he told us all about his days before "making it". He was a broke college kid at Georgia Southern (where his buddies Luke Bryan and Jim Willis also attended at the time), who just loved to play guitar and sing. Almost as much as he loves the Atlanta Braves.
He told us about the time he sat outside the Braves box office sleeping in his car all in hopes to score tickets to a Braves post season game.
He also told us about his stint as the most famous merch man (not named Mike Welker) in the country.
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Swindell's buddy Luke Bryan, who was just starting out himself, took Cole on the road with him to help with tour duties. Which just so happened to include running Luke's merch table. (Miami Ohio alums might remember these two rocking famous Brick Street on several occasions. (Fun fact - the only act to sell out Brickstreet more times than Luke Bryan was the Barstool Blackout Tour.)
Who knew the road to country stardom was paved with cotton and clever sales pitches? Swindell traded in the merch table for the microphone, and couldn't be prouder of his early days, tough jobs.
(Sidebar- one of my favorite things about interviewing country artists is asking them what their shittiest job growing up was. I love asking everybody this question because it almost always provides for a great response, and amusing story. But the country guys always have the greatest answers. And most random.)
Cole just got married last week and is hard at work on being a newlywed, and writing new music.
Check out the interview here -
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Check out Cole on Spotify here -
and on socials -
Check out Barstool Backstage here -