Thursday Noodles 2/15/24

Driving and singing edition

Watch this. Or rewatch it.

I’ll wait.

OK.

My God, this song.

Tracy Chapman.

Harken back to the late 80s. Chapman had been busking in Boston for a decade, busting her ass as a working musician.

She was an openly gay, Black, folksy singer-songwriter - and then she broke through.

On the radio. On MTV. Just her and her guitar singing to us.

Inviting us to sing along with her.

She was the real deal. Everyone I knew, knew all the words to this song. Small-town teens, vast majority white, most of us didn’t know Blackness, but we witnessed and/or knew poverty and love and scarcity and love and queerness (although we didn’t know how to name it) and love.

We knew authenticity and realness when we saw it. And we belted along. Badly or well, we sang.

Fast forward to 2023.

When I first heard Luke Combs’ cover of Fast Car, I was in the car, it came on the radio. And I got mad. I mean ANGRY. He didn’t even change it! It sounded exactly the same! And now a white country musician was benefitting from Tracy Chapman’s talent, perseverance, and hard damn work. Did young people even know it was a cover?!

I still feel that way. I mean … tell me Combs is not making money off of a queer Black woman’s work.

But I feel other ways, too.

I read about Luke Combs - how he heard “Fast Car” in the car with his dad when Combs was young. And like with anyone with a beating heart who hears this song, it stuck. Combs knew it was the perfect song. And he didn’t want to change a thing BECAUSE it was perfect. He even kept the lyric “I work in the market as a checkout girl.”

And I watched this performance, a surprise, unannounced appearance by Tracy Chapman who had retired. And she was incredible. And they were really good together. That, too, is a feeling I’m holding in my heart.

And another feeling I have:

It’s a BIG feeling. It’s the feeing that there is something about driving and singing.

I remember driving and singing with my dad. Especially 80s remakes of 60s songs when they came on the radio.

If I wanted to have use of the car as a teen, I needed to drive him to and from work. He’d tell me of times the songs reminded him of. School dances. Crushes I’d never heard about. It made my dad more of a human, still a dad but also with a big, full life.

And I remember driving and singing with my child. Listening to the radio, it’s how he knows by heart so many 80s songs. And Tom Petty. And all sorts of mix tapes. Driving him to school. Driving through Outback Australia. Driving to appointments. Driving and singing.

And now, last week, I got a job at the micro high school Sam graduated from last year. We share a car, like my dad and I did.

Now Sam drives me to school, which is also my work.

We drive. And we sing. Together.

XOXO

P.S. THANK YOU for bearing with me through last month of COVID … and now as I get my footing with a big new job and the start of another grad-school semester. Unruly Quaker will be shifting to Tuesdays and Thursdays for the next few months to accommodate a healthy human balance of work, play, writing, and rest. I’m so grateful for all of you.