Exclusive: Luke Combs covers Toby Keith, leads 'Fast Car' singalong during private Ryman set
Multiple-time country music artist and entertainer of the year Luke Combs' private, intimate and acoustic 90-minute performance at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium did much more than award nearly $1 million to winners of his "Living Lucky With Luke Combs" scratch-off ticket game partnership with Atlas and North American Lotteries across 15 states in the United States.
The grand prize event involved flying nearly 500 winners nationwide to Nashville for prizes, including chances at $10,000 and a private concert from Combs (with highly-touted Warner Music-signed Georgia sister trio The Castellows as openers) at the Ryman Auditorium. One fan in attendance also won $500,000.
In his 2017 hit ballad "When It Rains It Pours," Combs sings of driving on Interstate 65 outside of Nashville and purchasing two 12-packs of beer and a tank of gasoline from a Shell gas station. He also wins $100 from a scratch-off ticket he purchases there.
"She swore they were a waste of time / Oh, but she was wrong," he adds.
Combs' nearly 500 similar scratch-off game devotees from across America in attendance at The Ryman would agree with his sentiments.
"No name is bigger in country music right now than Luke Combs. [He's] selling out stadiums but still understands what it means to be a fan of country music and experience intimate performances, stated Rick Stowe, a partner at EastCoast Entertainment, to The Tennessean.
Stowe and company executed the event alongside Atlas Experiences, plus Combs and The Castellows' management teams at Make Wake Artists.
Tracy Chapman, Toby Keith covers performed
Combs arrived at The Ryman 48 hours removed from performing "Fast Car" — for which he was awarded 2023's CMA's Single of the Year, thus making its writer and initial performer, Tracy Chapman, the first Black woman ever to win a CMA Award — at Los Angeles' 66th Grammy Awards, alongside the soulful folk-rock icon.
He admitted to still being in awe of the moment. Though he had stood mere feet away from her in support on Sunday evening, he was no more capable of playing a better rendition of the anthem because of the experience.
The take Combs performed at country music's Mother Church still proved riveting. It still caused an impassioned in-pew sing-along among the lottery winners in attendance.
Also, the news of superstar country hitmaker Toby Keith's death a day prior was fresh on the minds of all in attendance.
At the intimate event, Combs played 13 songs without a setlist. He eventually obliged the crowd with a rendition of "Should've Been A Cowboy."
It followed, at various points in the evening, his band striking into "Doin' This" or "Beautiful Crazy," Combs himself suggesting a track like "Lovin' On You," or, in the case of Keith, an audience member would ask to hear one of his hit songs.
Six years later...
A significant amount of contextual magic also touched the "Living Lucky with Luke Combs" event.
Six years ago, to the week, Combs headlined The Ryman on back-to-back nights.
A Tennessean report from the events highlighted that Combs had played a benefit concert for radio host Bobby Bones a week before two concerts that sold out in 45 minutes.
At the time, his "growing fan base [was] passionate and loyal to [Combs'] "approachable" and "plain-spoken anthems" that he delivered, while singing the track "Out There," — and like another approachable plain-spoken country troubadour in the just-passed Keith — drinking from a red Solo cup.
2024 also finds Combs, also like Keith — and now many other country stars in the three decades since Keith's triple-platinum success via "Should've Been A Cowboy" — as soon having his name licensed to Lower Broadway honky-tonk Category 10 (named to honor his inaugural 2016 hit "Hurricane"). Like The Ryman, Category 10 has Opry Entertainment Group as one of its owners.
Thus, as Combs played hit after hit in an acoustic set in front of 500 people, it had every earmarking of what a night at Category 10 could look like in the summer of 2024.
He offered that he was unexpectedly "sweating more than usual" onstage because he was unsure that songs like the Toby Keith cover, plus a take on Brooks & Dunn's "Brand New Man," would hold up to a diverse, wholly national crowd.
However, on the night after Keith's death, in the wake of playing with Chapman, one torch was passed and another shared with Combs.
In a quiet moment during his concert, Combs humbly noted that many times during his lottery campaign, he was not recognized while buying scratch-off cards with his face on them.
This, though he's a seven-times Grammy-nominated, Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping artist with over a dozen consecutive No. 1 songs on country radio to open the first half-decade of his mainstream career.
Combs' performance and country's future, in context
Modern country music history has created the genre as a Frankenstein-style cultural polyglot boldly stumbling into an unknown future.
Also, it bears noting that nearly 60 million albums sold, over 100 global top 10 hits recorded and almost 30 Country Music Association Awards are split between Brooks & Dunn, Tracy Chapman, Luke Combs, and Toby Keith.
On many levels, there is no precedent for what having that history — and having country music and its direct inspirations as American pop culture and music's guiding hand for the first time in a half-century — can mean for the nation.
However, Combs has the resources and talent to be a leader in discovering the extraordinary music and times that could exist ahead.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Luke Combs covers Toby Keith in private 'Living Lucky' Nashville show
