Luke Bryan kicks off the 10th annual CMT on Tour Thursday (September 15th) in Huntington, West Virginia. The trek, which also features special guest Lee Brice, Josh Thompson and CMT’s Next Superstar winner Matt Mason, will play 22 shows before wrapping November 19th in Monroe, Louisiana. Nearly every single artist who has headlined the tour, such as Keith Urban, Miranda Lambert and Jason Aldean, has gone on to superstardom, and Luke hopes it does the same for him. “It was a big deal for me,” says Luke. “Everybody kind of watches that tour. I mean, I remember thinking it was a wildly strange coincidence that everybody that does that tour goes on to be headlining very soon afterwards. I was always going, ‘It just can’t be that coincidental.’ It seems like a great little notch in the belt of things that help you get further down the road to becoming one of the premiere acts in country music. So certainly that was a big reason why we signed up.” Luke is currently climbing the country charts with his latest single, “I Don’t Want This Night to End,” the second release from his new album, tailgates & tanlines.

AUDIO: Luke Bryan talks about his CMT Tour, kicking off Thursday (September 15th).

Luke Bryan (CMT Tour) OC: …other artists. 1:31

“I will be beating the streets pretty hard this fall but we’re so excited. When we had CMT ask to join up with us and be a part of it, we were like, ‘Yes.’ It was a big deal for me. Everybody kind of watches that tour. I mean, I remember thinking it was a wildly strange coincidence that everybody that does that tour goes on to be headlining very soon afterwards. I was always going, ‘It just can’t be that coincidental.’ It seems like a great little notch in the belt of things that help you get further down the road to becoming one of the premiere acts in country music. So certainly that was a big reason why we signed up. You know CMT is just great to have their media on your side, and we’re drawing plans together for the semis to have my picture on the side of ‘em, all that stuff. I’m so excited about the fall and the promise of headlining. I moved to town to be where I’m at and to have to bridge into that headlining status one day. This is certainly the first step of it. We’re saying our prayers it goes off good and doing all our homework and working hard, and gonna do everything we can to make sure the fans enjoy it more than ever. And kinda uphold the integrity and the reputation of kinda what the tour has done for all the other artists.”

Luke Bryan (looking forward to tour) OC: …along to that. :18

“Well, I’m looking forward to getting out there and playing for people that you know are 100% is your crowd and they’re there to see you, and they’re pretty much going to know every song on your album and they’re going to know everything you’ve got going on. And that’s always fun when you can do album cuts and you have the whole crowd singing along to that.”