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Garth Brooks Breaks Out The Hits For Intimate Nashville Show as Superstar Plays Smallest Venue In 30 Years
Garth Brooks performs at the Honda Center on Sept. 16, 2016 in Anaheim, Calif
Garth Brooks
took to the Broadway stage on Monday night (Feb. 5). Not in New York,
but the famous strip of seedy bars and nightclubs on Lower Broadway in
Nashville.
Playing the smallest venue the superstar
has played in nearly 30 years, Brooks and his band crammed close
together on a stage slightly larger than a postage stamp at Layla’s for
an exhilarating, intimate, invite-only show before around 170 radio
station program directors during Country Radio Seminar.
The confines were so cozy that Brooks took requests from the program
directors, some of whom had been around since his first single, “Much
Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)” peaked at No. 8 on Billboard’s Hot
Country Singles chart in 1989, right through his most recent No. 1, last
fall’s “Ask Me How I Know.”
“Tell me a story of a song that you love, hopefully one of mine,” he
said, leading to people sharing poignant tales about broken
relationships made whole through his music or memories of departed loved
ones, whose spirits came back alive through his tunes.
After the request, Brooks, the top-selling solo artist in
the U.S., according to the RIAA, would often bring up his own memory of
the song, including revealing that the lovers who inspired “That
Summer” were hardly the May-December romance the song depicts. “I was a
junior in high school, she was a senior in high school,” he said. “That
was the age difference. No one died. There was no widow.”
Brooks,
dressed in jeans, a t-shirt and a baseball cap, walked into the venue a
little after 11 p.m. and hopped right onto the stage, playing for
nearly 100 minutes. Eschewing his trademark headset mike and without a
larger stage to run around, he stayed anchored in front of the mike
stand, grinning broadly as the audience sang along to almost every tune.
After a few songs, an audience outside, pressed up against the glass,
began to gather with Brooks frequently waving to the growing outside
crowd.
A little more than six weeks after ending his
record-breaking three-year arena tour that sold more than 6.3 million
tickets, Brooks was in great voice, especially on such tunes as
“Shameless,” “Standing Outside the Fire” and “To Make You Feel My Love,”
even though the audience singing along often threatened to drown out
his vocals.
During sentimental ballad “If Tomorrow Never Comes,” Brooks
choked up during the chorus, momentarily rendered unable to sing. After
the song, which he normally plays solo in concert, concluded, he
admitted the tears were brought on by hearing Bruce Bouton’s gorgeous
pedal steel playing. “I haven’t heard those steel licks since I recorded
the song in the ‘80s,” he said.
After a 21-song set,
the crowd continued shouting out requests, chanting for his 1993 hit,
“Ain’t Goin’ Down (’Til the Sun Comes Up).” “Unlike the current
politicians, I hear you,” Brooks joked before launching into the rushing
tongue twisting song. After the crowd serenaded him with “Happy
Birthday”— Brooks turns 56 on Wednesday— he professed “This is the
first time I’ve ever played on Broadway. I’m fine with it being the only
time. I had the best time.”
Brooks' team picked the
venue in part because Layla's had a banner up that read "Merry Christmas
and thanks Garth Brooks." Intrigued, they asked the proprietor the
reason for the sign. It turns out that December is traditionally a slow
month for the night spot, but because of Brooks' seven shows at nearby
Bridgestone Arena that spanned Dec. 9-23 and sold more than 100,000
tickets, Layla's was busier than ever in December.
Brooks
next concerts will be on much bigger stages: he headlines the Houston
Rodeo Feb. 27 and March 18, as well as Stagecoach on April 29.
Garth Brooks’ Set List
“Two of a Kind, Workin’ on a Full House”
“Shameless”
“That Summer”
“Callin’ Baton Rouge”
“Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old”)
“To Make You Feel My Love”
“If Tomorrow Never Comes”
“Rodeo”
“The Thunder Rolls”
“Ask Me How I Know”
“The River”
“The Red Strokes”
“The Beaches Of Cheyenne”
“Standing Outside The Fire”
“She’s Every Woman”
“Papa Loved Mama”
“We Shall Be Free”
“Two Pina Coladas”
“Not Counting You”
“The Dance”
“Friends In Low Places”
“Ain’t Going Down (’Til the Sun Comes Up)”
Earlier in the evening, Brooks dropped by the Amazon party to join Jason Aldean on stage for "Friends in Low Places."
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