Halloween is right around the corner on Oct. 31, and it seems like everyone has a great story about the holiday, so we caught up with Luke Bryan, Gabby Barrett, Brett Eldredge, Ashley McBryde, Luke Combs, Eric Church and more to share their spooktacular tales.
Luke Bryan: Favorite Costume
“Me and [wife] Caroline did one year where I dressed up as the old lady, and she dressed up as, as she called herself, a dirty old man. So, she went around acting like an old man saying snide comments to everybody. That was a fun one. The main thing is Caroline loves Halloween and always has.”
Ashley McBryde: Favorite Costume
“My friends and I take Halloween really seriously, and we try to have a themed party every year. One year we did superheroes only. We did it in East Nashville where it was super likely there would be children stopping by for candy. We had Thor, and we had the Green Arrow, we had two different versions of Batman . . . we had 1960s Batman and we had the Dark Knight Batman, we had Penguin, we had the Hulk. I got to be Wonder Woman . . . My favorite part of it was, we’d sit on the porch and kids would come by and they would see super heroes, and they would tell their parents, ‘Mom! It’s Batman!’ and they would run up on the porch and we’d give them candy, and some of them were dressed as superheroes too! Of course, it’s Halloween. And we would say, ‘We’ve been fighting crime all night, where have you been?’ and they were like, ‘We’ve been getting candy!’ That was, hands down, my favorite Halloween, so that gets to be my favorite costume.”
Brett Eldredge: Favorite Costume
“I actually got with a bunch of my friends and we dressed as Teletubbies—whatever those things are—and we went to a bar, and it was just a hit. It was so hot inside those suits, but I was having a great time and everybody just wanted to get pictures with us, and so, Teletubbies definitely has to be one of the craziest things you can be for Halloween.”
Gabby Barrett: Favorite Costume
“My most memorable Halloween costume was definitely dressing up as Belle [from Beauty and the Beast]. I always loved pretty princesses when I was younger, and I remember Belle was my favorite princess, so I had a big poofy yellow dress on, and my mom did a little tiny bit of makeup on me, and it was the cutest thing ever, and that was my favorite by far.”
Trevor Rosen from Old Dominion: Favorite Costume
“I had one Halloween where I waited too long to think of anything, so I told my mom, ‘I got it. I’m going to be a mummy.’ I didn’t have a costume, so I took toilet paper, and she was like, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’ I just rolled toilet paper all around me to become a mummy, and shortly into trick-or-treating, it started to drizzle. By the time I got back to the house, I just had little pieces of toilet paper mashed to my body. I did still get candy, so it worked.”
Jon Pardi: Favorite Candy
“Man! The candy corn is pretty good, and that’s seasonal, so it only kinda pops out during Halloween.”
Tenille Townes: Favorite Candy
“I’m always more excited for the chocolate-kinda Halloween candy, that’s my favorite!”
The Brothers Osborne: Favorite Candy
TJ: “I would say, Snickers, Baby Ruth, Kit Kat and Reese’s too.”
John: “I always hated those houses that would give you bad candy, though. You’re like, ‘C’mon. Step it up.’ Spend the extra dollar on a bag, you know?”
TJ: “A house when we were growing up used to give out whole candy bars. It was the best. You were like, ‘That house—that’s the honey hole of candy.’”
John: “I love it, and I love like at the end, like three or four days after Halloween, you would see what candy was left, and it was always like those crappy cheap candies, and they would just go stale.”
Luke Combs: Favorite Candy
“I lived in an apartment complex at the time, and I’m like, ‘I’m gonna get a bag of these because the trick-or-treaters are gonna love these.’ I had one trick-or-treater, and I gave him like five, and then I had this whole bag, and I think I knew when I bought ’em, no one is gonna come trick-or-treating at my apartment. So, I think I was a little bit guilty of subconsciously of buying those and knowing I’d get to eat all of them if I bought them.”
Eric Church: Favorite Costume
“My favorite Halloween costume really came, I remember, when I got a little older during my first year of college, there’s this thing they do every year in Chapel Hill, North Carolina called Halloween on Franklin Street. We drove down from Boone, North Carolina. I had a bunch of friends that went to University of North Carolina, and we didn’t have costumes and didn’t realize until we were on the way that we had to have costumes. So, we stopped at a costume place in Greensboro, North Carolina. It’s Halloween, so there’s a run on everything and we couldn’t find anything. And we end up getting sent around, driving around town. We end up finding this hole-in-the-wall place, but they had the full costume, Sesame Street outfits. The real deal. The real ones [with] feathers and fur. We were Elmo, Cookie Monster and I was Big Bird, and the Big Bird was the actual Big Bird. It’s about 7-foot-4, and you looked out of the body and then you had these straps that went on since the head was a lot higher. There’s a lot of beer involved in Franklin Street, so we get down there and as the night went on, my straps broke, so the head would pivot. And so, I would be walking one way and the head would be facing the other, and it just became this funny . . . I didn’t know the head was on backwards. I had no idea. I see out of the body, so I’m just kinda walking around and people were talking to my ass-end [laughing]. The whole time people come up and start talking and go, ‘Hey, turn around.’ And I’d turn around, and they’d go, ‘No turn around.’ It was a mess. That year, there was no other Big Bird on Franklin Street.”
main photos of Luke Bryan and Eric Church by TCD