Sure, Taylor Swift broke a major record and announced a new album — but the real star from this year's women-dominated Grammy Awards was Tracy Chapman. The folk legend made a surprise appearance to perform her all-timer of a song, 1988's "Fast Car," with country artist Luke Combs, whose cover of it became a Billboard No. 1 hit in 2023.
The overall reverence for the performance (including Combs evidently being in awe of Chapman during it) has been a mainstay on social media all week, as have the memes parodying its lyrics and captioning images of silly vehicles with "You've got a fast car." The vehicle for Chapman's performance — her guitar — however, has a surprising Canadian connection: it was made in Calgary.
The instrument was crafted by Judy Threet, a former philosophy professor and luthier who now plays viola in the Calgary Community String Orchestra. She built the guitar around 1999, and after it failed to sell in Calgary, she ended up shipping it to a shop in Palo Alto, CA, called Gryphon Stringed Instruments, where it was acquired by Chapman in 2001.
“She wandered in one day and Willie, the guy that was working the floor, said, ‘What are you looking for?’ And she said, 'My shoulder has been hurting because I’ve been playing this great big dreadnought guitar. I’m looking for a smaller guitar,'" Threet recounted to Global News. "And he just reached over and handed her that one. And she eventually left the store with it.”
Though now retired from making instruments, Threet received an email from a friend after Sunday's (February 4) awards informing her that Chapman had used her hand-crafted guitar on stage at America's biggest night in music, which the friend recognized by the headstock design.
“I was astonished. She’s had it all this time," the former luthier said. "I’ve seen pictures every once in a while of her playing it but she has sort of dropped out of performing so I didn’t know if she still had it. So it was a lovely thing to see that she has it and she’s playing it."
Threet added, “It’s wonderful. I’m hoping that she’s hung onto it because it’s sort of become a trusted friend and if that’s the case, then that’s wonderful because that’s sort of what everybody hopes for when they are building guitars.”
With Combs's assist, "Fast Car" has now likely become something similar for a new generation of listeners. And for those of us who have long heralded it as a classic, we got to see Chapman play it at the Grammys in the year of our lord 2024!
