Two-year-old Tex Combs was puzzled. There was his beloved stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh, but it was now behind a thick sheet of glass. His dad, Luke Combs, couldn’t help but chuckle as he recounted the moment that had occurred earlier that day. Luke and his wife, Nicole, had taken their two sons on a private tour of the new exhibit dedicated to the country music superstar at Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
“He was like, ‘Open it, open it,’” Combs, 34, recalled. “I was like, ‘It doesn’t open, buddy.’ He asked me for the Pooh. He said, ‘Hold it.’ And I said, ‘Oh, you can’t hold it, buddy.’” The stuffed animal, a cherished childhood toy of Luke’s, usually resides at his parents’ home in Nashville, where Tex and his 11-month-old brother, Beau, often play with it. Museum curators borrowed it for the exhibit to illustrate Combs’ early life.
But how do you explain all that to a 2-year-old? How do you tell a toddler that his dad is a multi-platinum-selling artist, a headliner at sold-out stadium concerts, and a two-time CMA entertainer of the year? How do you tell him that more than a million people will eventually be looking at that stuffed bear? If you’re Combs, you don’t even try. At least not yet.
“I can’t get it for you right now, buddy,” he finally told Tex. “But you can have it next year.”
Combs brought his sons to the museum knowing they were too young to understand it all, but that didn’t matter to him. “I just wanted to have those pictures of going through it with them,” he said. He also realizes the day will come when he has to explain to his boys who he is besides their dad. If he needs any sort of cheat sheet, he could do no better than “Luke Combs: The Man I Am,” the engaging and authoritative exhibit that officially opened on Friday.
Through photos and personal artifacts, the exhibit tells the story of Combs’ improbable and meteoric career ascent. Raised in Asheville, North Carolina, by hard-working blue-collar parents, he loved music and singing but didn’t consider it as a livelihood until he was a 21-year-old college junior in 2011. At his mother’s urging, he taught himself the guitar, and within a year, he was playing his first show at a bar with a $1 cover. Two years later, he was Nashville-bound.
Combs visited the country music museum several times after his arrival, lingering over the history he wanted to be a part of. Well aware he didn’t look like the typical male artist of the era, he knew he had an uphill battle to prove his worth. “I was definitely not a guy that you thought would have his own exhibit in the Hall of Fame — and that was a lot of people’s opinions when I moved here,” he said. “It was like, well, maybe he could be a songwriter, you know, good luck or whatever. Not that that was everybody’s sentiment, but to me, it’s always felt like a bit of an underdog story.”
Yet Combs quickly flipped the script: He signed his major-label record deal in 2016. His first No. 1, “Hurricane,” arrived a year later, and soon, he became the artist — and the sound — that everyone else was chasing.
The artifacts assembled by museum curators to trace Combs’ steps will be deeply satisfying to any of his legions of fans. For his earliest years, grade school paintings offer a hint of his creative side. Snapshots and event programs reveal his growing interest in choral singing in middle school and high school. In fact, Combs made his Carnegie Hall debut as a sophomore when his high school chorale appeared on the legendary New York stage along with other student groups. The ensemble returned the next year, and Combs performed a solo.
Among the exhibit’s greatest treasures is the actual boxed cassette tape of Tracy Chapman’s self-titled 1988 debut album that introduced Combs to “Fast Car,” the song he’s credited with firing his early passion for music. Of course, in 2023, he turned the song into his own blockbuster hit. Accompanying the well-worn plastic box is a photo of Combs’ dad, Lee, sitting beside his 1988 Ford F-150 pickup, where Combs first heard the song as a boy, as well as the formal wear — including a chocolate velvet jacket — that he wore onstage with Chapman for their epic Grammy performance of the song in February.
Combs was gratified that the cassette had been included in the exhibit, but when asked to pick out his favorite artifact, he didn’t hesitate: “The couch.”
As it should be for a man who’s always prided himself in being a regular guy: The fake-suede behemoth is a piece of furniture that could be found in any average Joe’s first-time bachelor pad. In fact, it’s one-third of the sectional that Combs purchased for his original Nashville-area apartment. Combs eventually handed down all three pieces to a college buddy, who lent the center section to the museum.
“I’m surprised that survived this long, to be honest,” Combs said, clearly delighted that it did. The couch has obviously seen its better days, but all the singer could see was its memories. “That’s the first couch me and my wife hung out on together,” he recounted. “I mean, so many great memories on that. I watched the [Carolina] Panthers lose a Super Bowl on that couch, which was heart-wrenching. My first songs I ever wrote as a Nashville resident were on that couch with the guys that I still write with.”
For Combs, that time was also the first chapter of career-building that he admitted he misses now. “That’s the funnest part,” he said. “Getting to this point is the part that was so cool. Like, how do we do this? Do we think we could accomplish this?”
He recognizes now that his career has reached “cruising altitude,” and “you work just as hard to keep it at the same [height].” But, he adds, “it can’t really go anywhere else in some ways, you know what I mean?”
Perhaps that’s why Combs has just done such a surprising turn-about, going deep with his latest project, Fathers & Sons, an intimate concept album that was released last month. “That’s something I wanted to do for my sons,” he explained. “I wanted them to be able to reference later on in their life that even at the height of my success they were still my number one priority. If anyone’s dad had the opportunity to do something like that, I think that they would take it. At least I would hope so. I did it for them.”
That big-heartedness is what Combs hopes museum visitors will sense as they take in the exhibit. “I just want to be remembered as a good friend and a good husband and a good dad — a guy that cared, you know?” Combs said. “I mean, I do care a lot about music, and it’s a huge part of my life.”
But his relationships — with family, friends, and colleagues — are clearly what matter most to him, and he was pleased to see the attention that the museum has given to his team and his fellow songwriters in the displays. “My biggest takeaway [from the exhibit],” he said, “is that I’m very grateful for being surrounded by awesome people.”
And what does he hope will be visitors’ biggest takeaway? The answer is no surprise coming from country music’s most exceptional regular guy. “That if I can do this,” he said, “anybody could do it.”
“Luke Combs: The Man I Am” is open through June 2025 at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville.
Source: PEOPLE, Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
