Luke Grimes first gained fame as an actor, appearing in the 2014 film American Sniper and the 2015 film Fifty Shades of Grey. He became a fan favorite on the Paramount Yellowstone series from 2018 to 2024 and its follow-up Marshals in 2026, playing Kayce Dutton. Throughout those years he resided primarily in Montana with his wife, Brazilian model Bianca Rodrigues Grimes (they married in 2018) because the shows were filmed there.
Grimes' music actually started before his acting did. He played drums throughout high school, and in 2008 released an album with an alt-country band called
Mitchells Folly.
In his younger years, Grimes enjoyed mooning people (showing his bare butt), particularly Hollywood actresses. He once mooned Lindsay Lohan at a club and was promptly thrown out. "When I'm a little intoxicated, I think it's really fun to moon starlets," he told BlackBook Magazine in 2009.
Despite his long background in making music, Grimes was hesitant to release an album after achieving acting success. He
told Billboard, "There's some imposter syndrome there. Sometimes it feels like I stepped into somebody else's job for a minute."
The death of his father in 2022 convinced Luke to pursue music. "Losing a parent is one of the more profound things that you'll go through," he
told American Songwriter. "I had been talking about maybe coming to Nashville and trying this for a long time, and I'd been talking with my manager for a long time and I didn't want to do it because I was afraid of what people might think. I was getting my own way a lot with it. I lost my dad in the middle of those conversations and it became very clear that I had to try it. Because I was like,
who cares? When you see that happen, and I watched it happen, it's like other people's voices become so small."
Grimes co-wrote most of his songs with veteran songwriters. His 2024 self-titled debut album is filled with various writers, but his second album, Red Bird (2026), relied heavily on Jessie Jo Dillon and Dave Cobb. In his American Songwriter interview, he said of Dillon: "She's brilliant with lyrics and melody. She understands the tone of something really fast. She's just simpatico with whatever the other writers are doing. Whatever your idea is, she sees it immediately the way you see it."
Grimes' self-titled debut album is an eclectic mix of songs he later felt were a bit too scattered. His second album,
Red Bird, narrowed the focus to songs that were more personal. He
told Whiskey Riff: "Making
Red Bird was a cathartic experience in many ways. Sometimes the highs and lows of life are too much to express with words, so song becomes necessary. As deeply personal as it is, the themes are simple and universal: love, loss, and learning along the way."
Grimes explained the Red Bird title to American Songwriter, saying, "There's a thing in a lot of Southern states where if you see a cardinal, it's someone that you've lost coming back to visit you. And the cardinal's also the state bird of Ohio where I'm from."
Grimes grew up the son of a Pentecostal pastor in Dayton, Ohio. He was only allowed to listen to religious music, with Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Willie Nelson being rare exceptions (he later incorporated bits of all their styles into his music). His first musical performances were mostly with gospel acts, but eventually he told his parents that he wasn't a fan of organized religion. His parents still supported him in his acting and music ambitions.
When Grimes went to New York to study acting, he taught himself to play guitar because having a drum set there is near impossible ("your neighbors would kill you").
"I got a guitar and started teaching myself chords," he told American Songwriter. "It's been a part of my life ever since. If I have an acting gig, I always have a guitar. And not just because I'm working on an album. It's always been a little buddy that I can take around anywhere. It's somewhere to put some of that energy when you're in a new place and don't know what else to do."
