Luke Bell, a country singer-songwriter whose style blended strains of Texas, Nashville, and Bakersfield, has died according to his friend and collaborator Matt Kinman. It came as a sad shock to the music industry when Luke Bell was found dead at only 32 years old.
On Saturday, August 20th, Bell traveled to Arizona with Kinman to work, but he vanished in Tucson. He was found dead about a week later, according to SavingCountryMusic.com, “not far from where he disappeared, and in a manner we all feared he would be when we first heard the news.” An autopsy has yet to determine his cause of death.
Kinman had played with Bell for the past six years told the outlet, “We came down here to Arizona, to work down here, play some music, and he just took off. He was in the back of the truck. I went in to get something to eat. I came out, and he’d got out of the truck and left.”
After Bell went missing Kinman had speculated “He could be in Tucson. But it’s possible he jumped a freight train, which wasn’t unusual for Bell. “Semi-homeless and generally adrift,” according to SaveCountryMusic. Bell had couch surfed and hitchhiked during his formative musical years.
In 2015, Rolling Stone described his sound as “classic honky-tonk with a wink and a yodel.” His unique sound got him opening gigs with Willie Nelson, Hank Williams, Jr. and Dwight Yoakam.
Bell released three albums: a self-published debut in 2012, Don’t Mind If I Do in 2014 and an eponymous disc in 2016.
Here’s another good song, ‘Rattlesnake Man’ that you might enjoy.