Garth Brooks May Halt Stadium Tour Amid COVID-19 Resurgence

Garth Brooks is reconsidering the future of his Stadium Tour amid the resurgence of COVID-19 cases, sharing in a press release on Tuesday, Aug. 3 that the tour is up in the air after this month. The release stated that Brooks' upcoming shows scheduled for Kansas City, Missouri on Aug. 7th and Lincoln, Nebraska on Aug. 14th will continue as scheduled, but additional dates may not.

The release also shared that a planned on-sale date for Brooks' Sept. 4 Seattle show will not happen. "It breaks my heart to see city after city go on sale and then have to ask those sweet people and the venues to reschedule," Brooks said in a statement. "We have a three week window coming up where we, as a group, will assess the remainder of the stadium tour this year. It's humbling to see people put this much faith in you as an artist, and it kills me to think I am letting them down."

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After his August shows, Brooks currently has concerts scheduled for Cincinnati, Ohio on Sept. 18; Charlotte, North Carolina on Sept. 25; Baltimore, Maryland on Oct. 2 and Foxborough, Massachusetts on Oct. 9. During a press conference ahead of his Nashville show, which was canceled on Saturday and later postponed due to weather, Brooks told reporters that he and his team are doing everything possible to keep fans safe, and if that means stopping the tour, that's the decision he'll make.

"Our job is to gather people in mass numbers," he said. "If that's a bad thing, then we need to stand back, and that's what we'll do. It'd be an honor, as much as I'd hate to do it, it'd be an honor because you feel like you're doing your part. We were lucky enough to survive last year, we'll pull together and survive this year if everything shuts down."

The Oklahoma native also shared that he is following rules set out by the stadiums he plays and the states they reside in, and his own team also has their own set of requirements, which includes everyone on the road with Brooks being vaccinated.

"here's a saying that I love to live by, especially during the COVID time. All you can do is all you can do. Make sure you do that, all right?" he said. "Let's talk about who gets priority. State rules, stadium rules, follow those. Then you have your in tour rules, right? We personally are mask-mandated until January of '22. So no matter what happens, unfortunately, it looks like it's coming back to masks. We might even have to bump ours up even more. I don't know how you'd bump it up even more, we're all vaccinated, everybody's here."