Luke Combs band drummers to host free Green Bay clinic

The biggest takeaway for local drummers was simple: a player from Luke Combs’ touring band was willing to break down the job face to face, in a shop, for free. Jake Sommers and bassist Mat Maxwell hosted the in-store clinic Saturday morning at Heid Music in Ashwaubenon, just hours after Combs’ first Lambeau Field concert, turning a stadium stop into a hands-on lesson for players who wanted more than a great show.

Heid Music set the clinic for 10:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. and said it was designed specifically for drummers and bass players, with seating limited. The store described the session as a rare behind-the-scenes look at stadium country music, and it partnered with D’Addario, Ernie Ball and Sabian to present it. For drummers, that made the event unusually practical: the focus was not on celebrity, but on groove, endurance, time and the kind of reliability that keeps a singer-songwriter set locked in night after night.

FOX 11 reported that the clinic focused on helping aspiring musicians improve their playing and learn how to build a successful music career. Sommers told attendees that musicians need to be their own best advocates, a point that fit the setting as well as the material. The singer’s backing band is The Wild Cards, and this clinic put two of its most visible rhythm-section players in the same room with younger musicians who normally only see that level of polish from the other side of a stage barrier.

Maxwell brought about two decades of studio and touring experience, plus the perspective of someone who wrote Hired Musician: A Guide to Getting and Keeping Gigs. Sommers has been Combs’ touring drummer for 11 years and has taught privately for the last six, which gave the clinic a second layer of value: not just how to survive a run on the road, but how to think about the drum chair as a craft that has to hold up under pressure, repetition and travel.

The timing mattered, too. Luke Combs’ Lambeau Field dates were part of his My Kinda Saturday Night Tour, with Dierks Bentley, Ty Myers, Jake Worthington and Thelma & James on the bill. Packers.com said the shows opened their gates at 5 p.m., started with the first opener at 5:20 p.m. and were expected to wrap around 11 p.m., while Saturday’s concert also included a Whiskey Jam Tailgate at Titletown beginning at 3 p.m. The clinic extended that weekend beyond the stadium fence, and for Green Bay drummers, that is where the real access began.