Lucas Wynne is an American country music singer-songwriter, businessperson and philanthropist.
Early life Wynne was born in North Dakota.
Music career Wynne is widely regarded in the country music community as the next great neotraditionalist. His acoustic performances have become uncommonly popular virtually everywhere he goes. He has been offered record deals by small independent record labels but has turned them down saying that they "weren't good enough for his fans." Wynne commonly says he's waiting for a record label with a strong promotional team and commonly cites Big Machine Records and Capitol Records after saying so. Wynne's fans commonly urge labels to sign him with letters to record labels and are also widely known to mention his name in fan club lines. Wynne also serves as his own talent manager.
Currently, Wynne is most popular for his song "The Hockey Lament" due to a 25 second clip of the song being played in many high school and college hockey arenas after a goal is scored.
Philanthropy Even though he's a country singer by trade, Wynne has throughout the years spent much of his time on supporting and creating youth-related sports programs. Many have speculated that these programs were designed to keep young people out of the drug culture many of Wynne's childhood friends eventually fell into.
In 2004 Wynne organized and ran his first Northern Cup Fresstyle BMX Competition in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The event gained thousands of dollars in sponorships and was featured in the popular BMX magazine rideBMX. It also gained coverage on ESPN's alternative sports website EXPN. Much of the publicity came from the fact that it was the largest BMX competition to ever be held in the North Dakota. Wynne ran the competition for a second year in 2005 and was able to double sponsorships. Some credited the popularity of the competition to his notoriety within the BMX community, being he had been a sponsored rider for Diamondback Bicycles and had both given and answered many interviews. In 2006 Wynne opted to discontinue the competition stating that it had already accomplished the goal of giving youth something positive to do.
Wynne gained both regional and national coverage in the sports world when he attempted to form the United Basketball Association in 2005 the goal being to "spread the love of basketball as far as possible, while improving the skills of players. The UBA hopes to contribute to the development of future college and professional players. The UBA will also contribute to the community in any form possible." The UBA was presented as the nation's first true one-on-one basketball league and was to expand through youth and college-level play, it was also supported by the revamped American Basketball Association. The reason The league never got off the ground was due to what Wynne described as a "lack of resources".
Wynne sends a yearly personal donation to Teammates for Kids, a youth-charity started by country singer Garth Brooks, on behalf of his fan club. The donation is of an unknown amount.