Luke Combs once got a pretty special thank you gift from fellow country star Garth Brooks. On an episode of Armchair Expert With Dax Shepard, Combs recalled being surprised with a new vehicle after performing at an event that was honoring Brooks.
“This was last Christmas and my wife was out somewhere. I was feeding my son at the dinner table in our house, and I can see like the gate,” Combs said during the interview. “And my manager’s pulling up in this Bronco. It’s just the same as his, this blue — the Raptor package. And he would never show up at my house unannounced, so I was like, ‘Man, this is kind of weird that he would show up.’ So he walks in and I’m like, ‘Well, I guess he’s giving me a Christmas present…’ So he comes in and he throws me the keys to this thing and I’m like, ‘Are you giving me your car, dude?’ Like, ‘What is this?’
“He’s like, ‘No, man, Garth [Brooks] bought you this,’” Combs recalled. “I was like, ‘What?’” Combs says, at the time, he didn’t know Brooks very well. “This is like a $90,000 car, dude!” Combs said.
In 2022, Brooks was honored by the Nashville Songwriter Awards during a ceremony held at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. During that event, Combs had taken the stage to honor Brooks with a performance of Brooks’ 1995 hit “Beaches of Cheyenne.”
“His team asked me to come and be one of the people that sang a song at this thing. Mine was actually ‘The Beaches of Cheyenne,’ which it was a hit, but it wasn’t like a superhit. So, he was like, ‘Yeah, this is for you coming and singing that one song.’ … I guess he had called my manager the following week, or his manager or something, [and asked] ‘What does Luke like?’ And he’s like ‘Oh, he likes cars…he has a Bronco and he likes Fords and stuff.’ And he’s like, ‘Well, I’m gonna order him a Bronco Raptor.’ Well, I guess they were on hold or something, so it took like a year to get it in. So I didn’t talk to him from that night until that thing showed up at my house. Obviously, I called him and then I had it painted.”
“I called him and was like, ‘You didn’t have to do this, dude,’” Combs said, adding, “I drove 20 minutes and was there for less than an hour, dude. But he was like, ‘Yeah, but you could’ve went out and booked your own show that night and made this much money’ … and I was just kinda floored by that.”
Shortly after that event in September 2022, Brooks stated on Twitter (now X), “I never felt like a songwriter until tonight when Luke Combs sang the sh$@t out of Beaches of Cheyenne! Thank you @NSAIofficial for yet another unforgettable moment in my life and career!! love, g.”
Earlier this year, Brooks appeared at one of Luke Combs’s performances, joining Combs at the Stagecoach Country Music Festival to perform Brooks’s “Friends in Low Places.”
