Garth Brooks will play Friday, Saturday and Sunday night (Dec. 15 to 17), in Nashville, Tenn., as part of the final seven shows to cap off his three-year World Tour, which ends on Dec. 23.
For a town that is, despite being called Music City, notoriously challenging for artists to sell tickets in, selling out seven shows is a feat that perhaps only Brooks could accomplish. Brooks knows how fortunate he is to have so many fans in the country music capital of the world, which is why, in some ways, he is saving the best for last.
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“When we play Oklahoma, you really want to impress the people that you grew up with the most,” Brooks shared with PopCulture.com at a recent media event. “You want them to be the proudest of you. Well it’s the same here. Of all the cities, this is the one you want people to be the proudest of the show that you do.”
Brooks, who played well into the night last weekend for his first two shows, trusts his audience wants him there as much as he wants to be there. Maybe more.
“You can’t help it. We’re all gonna be trying way too hard, and that crowd is soft on us,” concedes Brooks. “That crowd will let us know, ‘Hey. You don’t have to. We’re all here just to have a good time, and who you are is enough,’ which is the sweetest thing anyone can hear, but you never believe that. You never believe in it until someone proves it to you. No matter how many times, you have to make them prove it to you because none of us think that we’re enough.”
The “Ask Me How I Know” singer sold more than six million tickets on his own World Tour, making him the top-selling solo artist in history, and breaking his own previously-held record of 5.3 million tickets sold during his previous Garth Brooks World Tour, which ran from 1996 to 1998.
“We feel very lucky we get to do this, but you don’t have to go in this town very far to find somebody who plays better than you, sings better than you, writes better than you,” Brooks concedes. “So why these people show up for this tour, in this number, with this attitude … I have no idea why. So you go out and we’ll push way too hard way too early and something will happen. Something will happen where you hear a big laugh from somebody and everybody will take a breath and then settle in, because this is seven nights, but it’s seven important nights for us.”
Brooks hints that he has big plans for 2018, and hopes to have another even bigger tour within a few years.
