Sixteen years ago, Mae Estes was just another fan, thrilled to meet Luke Bryan at a concert meet-and-greet. Today, that same fan is sharing the stage with him — a moment that feels like a country music fairy tale coming full circle.
Luke Bryan is currently out on his 2025 summer headlining trek, A Country Song Came On Tour. The tour, which kicked off in May, features several rising stars as openers — including Mae Estes. For her, it’s not just another gig, it’s the dream she’s been chasing since that first unforgettable encounter with Bryan back in 2009.
This week, Mae shared a heartfelt post with her fans on social media. Alongside photos of her recent performance at the Xfinity Theatre in Hartford, CT — where Luke Bryan invited her up to sing with him — she included a throwback photo from that fateful meet-and-greet years ago.
“Y’all already know I’m sappy and that ‘full circle’ is the name of the game round here sooo… Check out these pics from 2009 when @lukebryan played in Little Rock and some random lady walked up to me and my sister in our lawn chairs out front and asked if we wanted to meet Luke. She gave us meet and greet passes and we got this pic,” Mae shared, reflecting on the moment that sparked it all.
Now, nearly two decades later, she’s living the very dream that once felt out of reach. With gratitude in her heart, Mae thanked her team and Luke’s for making it all possible:
“Thanks to my team and Luke’s for this unreal experience… We’ll see y’all this weekend in WV, Nashville, then VA!”
Mae is finishing out the last few dates of Bryan’s tour, and fans still have a chance to catch her growing catalog live. One of the songs she’s been lighting up crowds with is her latest release, “Mountain of a Man.”
The track, written by Jon Decious, Lauren McLamb, Liz Rose, and Paul Sikes, is a gritty breakup anthem about the heartbreak of loving someone impossible to forget. Fueled by fiddle, pedal steel, and dobro, it’s classic Mae — a neotraditional sound wrapped around raw emotion.
“Damn that mountain of a man/ Tumbleweed, wild horse, seventeen hand/ Daddy fighting mad, Mama don’t understand/ Why I’m rock-bottom rolling with a Rolling Rock can…” she sings, delivering every line with conviction.
To make the song even more fun, Mae has turned it into a live tradition: she picks out an honorary “mountain of a man” in the crowd each night. “This tune reminds me of an old Patty Loveless song,” she said. “It’s so much fun and I feel really lucky the songwriters let me record it.”
Fans might also recognize her earlier release “Mr. Fix It,” which went viral on TikTok earlier this year and inspired a wave of videos celebrating the “fix-it” men in people’s lives. With that momentum and more new music on the way, Mae Estes is quickly becoming a name to watch.
From a teenage fan in a lawn chair to a rising star on the same stage as Luke Bryan, Mae Estes is proof that country music dreams really can come true — sometimes, you just have to wait for the full circle moment.
