On Friday Ben Rue stopped by The Bull studio to chat with Tay Hamilton. He talked about his excitement for playing Country In the Park along with Trent Harmon and Jarrod Neimann.
He also discussed his partnership with Accu-Check and their #BuckOffDiabetes campaign to fight diabetes. Check out the interview below!
About Ben Rue: There’s an integrity to Ben Rue: it’s a quality that’s central to his character and his career. And perhaps it’s his natural sincerity, together with a passion for making lyrically meaningful music, that’s made Rue’s Arista Nashville debut single, “I Can’t Wait (Be My Wife),” such a compelling introduction.
Produced by Kyle Lehning (best known for his longtime work with Randy Travis) and released in the spring of 2014, the song immediately began turning heads in the industry, with early excitement at radio and attention from music trades like Billboard and All Access, which called the song “positively irresistible,” predicting it as “the wedding song for summer 2014.”
Rue came to Nashville by way of small-town Silverton, OR, where he grew up the youngest of three brothers on his family’s 2000-acre grass seed farm. Driving a combine since he was 11, Rue wasn’t one to shy from the hard work of the farm, but found himself writing songs and creating his own music as he worked.
“My dad would catch me: I remember one time I was singin’ on a railroad tie. I was fillin’ up one of our tractors with diesel, while looking out in the field, pretending I was singing on stage in Madison Square Garden . My dad walked up behind me, while I was mid-chorus in my song, and just started laughing, like, ‘What are you doing? Why are you even here on the farm?'”
But Rue’s other love was baseball, a passion that followed him into college, attending Concordia University on a baseball scholarship and playing a season for an independent team before realizing that the major leagues weren’t in his future. With music reclaiming center stage in his life, Rue took up guitar in his sophomore year, in part because his brother played, “and I like to think I can do anything he can,” Rue laughs, “and as it turns out, I loved it.”