Luke Bryan Takes Over a HAWK Weekend

Luke Bryan is once again nominated for the coveted Entertainer of the Year award when the Academy of Country Music (ACM) Awards are handed out April 3rd.  Luke will be counting down the top 30 hits in country music, Sunday night 7-10pm on 98.1 The Hawk and sharing some interesting stories along the way.

This week, Lon's co-host Luke Bryan previews his Kill The Lights Tour, which kicks off in a couple weeks, and looks ahead to a lot of exciting things planned for the year. Plus he looks back at CMA night.

There's a fun "Twitter war" going on now between Luke Bryan and Blake Shelton. Luke explained how he found out to Lon Helton: "Blake is periodically putting pictures from my past as his profile pic on his Twitter page. So I'm watching one of the morning shows, and they're talking about Blake & Gwen. All of a sudden, they flash his Twitter page on TV, and it's my high school photo as his profile pic. So I go, I got you on this. So I dig through old archives of Blake from the mullet years. So I may have to call Blake's mama on some stuff. Get her to send me some incriminating photos."

Luke was very proud when his friend Chris Stapleton won 3 CMA Awards last November. He told Lon that he & Chris got together just a week before the CMAs: "Chris & I and Little Big Town's Jimi Westbrook got to do a little fishing trip out on my lake. This was a week before the CMAs. So Chris won 3, Little Big Town won 3, and I won Entertainer, so I'm glad the plug was in the boat. Even though Chris beat me on CMA night, I beat him up fishing. But it's my home lake. They needed a handicap."

Luke has been friends with Cole Swindell for about 10 years. So Luke knows the background behind Cole's new single: "With all the stuff I dealt with in my life, when I got the call about Cole's dad, it just broke my heart. We knew how close Cole was to his dad. The fact that he was able to write a song about it is important in his career. It's amazing that he was able to tell that story."

Luke will be heading to the Grammy Awards next week to take part in the MusiCares Person Of The Year tribute to Lionel Richie. He told Lon that he'll be singing a very special song: "I'm extremely honored to be a part of this night, and to know that Lionel was involved in choosing me means a lot. One of my favorite songs that Lionel ever recorded was 'Oh No' with The Commodores. I just always considered it my favorite song of all time, because it was the first time I remember feeling pain from a singer, and the fact that I can sing that song in front of him is crazy to me."

Luke also has great stories this week about Blake Shelton, Dustin Lynch, Little Big Town, Justin Timberlake, and Jason Aldean.