Where Ya Been? The Odyssey & Elegy of Luke Bell

Wyoming-ranch-kid turned country-music-artist-to-watch, Luke Bell, is reported dead outside a convenience store in Tuscon, Arizona after having disappeared four days prior. The online message boards and YouTube comments had wondered for years already— “Where the hell is Luke Bell?!” The singer-songwriter’s abrupt, total-seeming disappearance from the stage, studio, and public eye following his father’s death, subsequent with the successful 2016 release of his self-titled album, was both odd and mysterious to fans, and to many in the music industry with an eye trained on a talent like Luke Bell’s. Just prior to stepping away from the limelight, he’d begun to gain the rare sort of traction that allowed him to open for the likes of country music legends Willie Nelson, Dwight Yoakam, and Hank Williams Jr. His other-timely sound, authentic, surprising, and deeply reminiscent of the great American country music troubadours who came before him offered Luke Bell a chance at stardom, which—not for the last time—sent Luke running. The odyssey of Luke Bell is a complex one, plagued with loss and mental health issues, the musician’s dream-come-true, and a man with more than one contemporary who wonders now whether or not Luke Bell had been, in fact, some type of a musical genius, with a career that promised so much in time.

Luke Bell died at the age of thirty-two, which of course, is not a classically long life. But before his overdose from fentanyl in 2022, Luke Bell lived a lot of lives. He built fences in the blaring Wyoming sun, rode horses and branded cattle, urged dying vehicles to Austin and New Orleans and onto Nashville. Took small stages at bars and honky-tonks, performed like shit. Took massive stages, nailed it. At some point in his steep and sudden decline in mental health following the death of his father, Luke was diagnosed with psychosis, paranoid schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. He’d disappear a lot. Go on meds and back off them. Luke hopped trains, learned to cook on the ground and never to wear new overalls, even if he had a chance. He slept on the streets and in homeless camps and forced his own band mates to throw him out of the bar when he got violent. There came a time when his family and friends, his bandmates and managers could only hope that he’d turn back up eventually after he’d disappeared. He always had before.

The story of Luke Bell—his quiet, his disappearance, a career that began so remarkably, a story that seems so unlikely and inexplicable from the outside—is a mysterious, puzzling, and deeply complex one. WHERE YA BEEN? The Odyssey and Elegy of Luke Bell, retraces Luke Bell’s steps through the winding and complex odyssey that are his life and career. The film elegizes a complex, troubled, and often-difficult artist, piecing his story back together by way of the people who loved and hated him, ultimately revealing the portrait of a man who, despite fame, success, and (perhaps) genius could, in the end, not recognize himself enough to hold onto it all. In 2016, he released his self-titled LP that gained international acclaim and the world seemed at his doorstep.
Soon after, he mysteriously disappeared from public life and live performances became increasingly rare. From the outside, no one seemed to know just what the hell had happened to Luke Bell.
On August 26th, 2022, he was found dead in Tucson, Arizona from a Fentanyl overdose after disappearing for 4 days.