Garth Brooks just kicked off his three-year Stadium Tour with a sold-out show in St. Louis, Missouri on March 9. The tour will continue with sold-out shows scheduled in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota, where Brooks says he, along with his band and crew, are preparing just like it’s the beginning of a sports season.
“It’s going to be full contact, I can tell you right now,” Brooks told CMT. “Cause the guys are so scared and the only way to get that scare out is to go out and pop somebody. That’s just how sports are. So I can’t wait for that first exchange. [Fans] are gonna get it on the first song, they’re going to get their test on the first song and you’ll know at that moment, what kind of night it’s going to be.”
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Unlike Brooks’ previous World Tour, which had him performing several nights in one city before quickly moving to the next, for his Stadium Tour, Brooks has gaps between each city – an intentional move on his part.
“Remember that Chicago was 11 nights, Minneapolis was 11 nights,” Brooks said. “Now you see that many people on one night or in two nights. So it makes the tour itself shrink down to about 40 cities, but it makes each city show its own.”
The Oklahoma native resisted doing stadiums at first, because the structure of stadiums made it hard, if not impossible, to give everyone a good view. Thankfully, Brooks and his team found a way to remedy that problem
“There’s those four poles that everybody hates – I hate them, everybody hates them,” Brooks said of the parts of a stadium that give some attendees an obstructed view. “But wait until you see these. [They are] totally dressed in videos, they’re just going to become part of the set. They’ll look like they’re moving, it’s gorgeous. It’s just going to be fun, it’s going to be something that you’ve never seen.”
Brooks’ Notre Dame concert in the fall was originally intended to serve as the kick-off for the Stadium Tour, before CBS offered to make the historic concert into a TV special. So instead, Brooks reworked his entire show after Notre Dame, to give fans something new.
“Stuff will go back to the drawing board, [to] modify the stage,” Brooks told PopCulture.com and other media. “The last thing I like is to see something on TV and then go and see the exact same thing if I pay a ticket to go sit outside and watch these things. So, we’ll go back to drawing board right after Notre Dame.”
All of Brooks’ currently listed shows are sold out. More dates will be posted on his website as available.
Photo Credit: Getty Images/Tim Mosenfelder
