Skip to footer

Garth Brooks is back on the road after time away from the music industry

Garth Brooks recently announced he was releasing his back catalog bundled with his next two albums of new music through digital pay service ghosttunes.com, making his music available digitally for the first time. Garth Brooks will also release new work in November and fall 2015.

|
Barry Brecheisen/Invision/AP
Garth Brooks performs at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Ill. on Sept. 4, 2014.
  • By Caryn Rousseau Associated Press

| ROSEMONT, Ill.

Garth Brooks wondered if his fans would come back. He got his answer when he returned to the stage Thursday night.

The 52-year-old country star reunited with thousands of enthusiastic fans during his official return to the road after more than a decade largely away from the music industry.

"You came back, you came back!" Brooks yelled at the Allstate Arena crowd in the Chicago suburbs where he plans 10 more shows. He later told his fans, "I could not ask for a better start than this, people."

Brooks began the day by announcing he was releasing his back catalog bundled with his next two albums of new music through a digital pay service, ghosttunes.com, which he founded and partly owns, making his music available digitally for the first time. Brooks will continue his comeback by releasing albums in November and fall 2015.

He played a portion of that back catalog later in the evening, energetically running around the stage like the old days as he worked through hits like "Rodeo," ''The Thunder Rolls," ''The River," and "The Dance." He also played his new single "People Loving People."

The crowd let out a huge cheer after Brooks strummed just the first four notes of his biggest hit "Friends in Low Places."

Brooks' wife, country singer Trisha Yearwood, joined him on stage for two songs and sang a set of her own hits, including "XXX's and OOO's (An American Girl)" and "She's in Love With the Boy," along with new song "PrizeFighter."

Brooks entered semi-retirement in 2001 near the height of his popularity to raise his three daughters in Oklahoma. Since then he has performed an extended run in Las Vegas and done a few charity shows, but largely stayed true to his fatherhood plan until his youngest daughter graduated from high school. His comeback will continue later this month with multiple shows in Atlanta before he moves on to Jacksonville, Florida, next month.

The singer's been gone from the spotlight for so long, he wondered before the show if his fans might return. He said he'd know he has something going if the young fans in the crowd sang along Thursday night.

"And to you younger people who knew every single word," Brooks said at the conclusion of the show, "thank you so, so much."

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Garth Brooks is back on the road after time away from the music industry
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Music/2014/0905/Garth-Brooks-is-back-on-the-road-after-time-away-from-the-music-industry
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe