Never has a man been as excited to ride a bus as country singer Chris Lane.
Last month, the up-and-coming artist from North Carolina took to Twitter to share a photograph of a tour bus — his first one after spending recent years traveling to shows in a van.

“It’s life-changing,” he said in a phone interview this week. “Just to be able to sleep at night and wake up at the venue and you’re rested. You don’t wake up on the van floor wondering if it’s your turn to stay up and keep the driver awake. That’s why it’s extra special to me.”

Lane will be riding that bus to St. Louis for a show with Rascal Flatts and Kelsea Ballerini on Thursday at Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre.

His current single, “Fix,” is climbing the charts, and his first album, “Girl Problems,” is being released Aug. 5.
Lane is still a little shell-shocked to be sharing a stage with Rascal Flatts. It was only a few years ago, he recalls, that he was paying to see Rascal Flatts.

Now, he spends much of his free time on the road out on the golf course with them. How often are they playing? “Every day.”

Lane, who played high school football and baseball, then baseball in college, is a good athlete. But, he said, Rascal Flatts guitarist Joe Don Rooney is a much better golfer. “I don’t know if I’ll ever beat him.”
He’ll have plenty of time to practice; the Rhythm & Roots tour continues until early October. And Lane finds an upside to being on the road: meeting new people.

“I kind of take after my dad at that point; I love meeting and talking to everybody,” he says.
Lane, 31, has an identical twin brother who plays drums in his band. Lane said he doesn’t think they look that much alike, but …

“The first night of the tour, Kelsea went running up to my brother. She thought it was me and gave him a big hug and said, ‘It’s the first night of the tour!’ My manager said, ‘You do know that’s not Chris?’”
Even better, some nights his brother, Cory, will go out in the crowd during the evening. Fans grab him for photos and tag Lane on social media: “I just met Chris Lane.”

Lane is also a heavy user of social media and likes to let his fans know what he’s up to.
“It’s kind of my jam right now,” he said. “It’s a fun way to entertain myself and, more or less, people seem to have fun with it.”

And it was via Twitter that he learned Taste of Country had dubbed him one of country music’s sexiest male stars.
“I don’t think so, but I definitely got a laugh out of it.”

One reason for the label is his hair, which is sculpted to perfection. How does he achieve it? “Thick hair and plenty of paste,” he says — nothing else.