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Country has changed, but Garth Brooks is still the ultimate ticket

 
Garth Brooks performs at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Ill., in September. Getty Images (2014)
Garth Brooks performs at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Ill., in September. Getty Images (2014)
Published May 27, 2015

"And the CMA Award for Entertainer of the Year," drawled Garth Brooks, who owns a record four of those trophies, "goes to Luke Bryan." • Nashville's Bridgestone Arena erupted in a standing ovation. Bryan's head sunk to his hands. He kissed his wife, hugged his friends, made his way to the stage as his massive hit Play It Again cascaded from the speakers. And when he arrived to accept his trophy, he turned back to Brooks with an incredulous look on his face. • "Well, first of all," he said, "I've never met Garth. Hey, Garth. Can I hug you again?"

• • •

A lot has happened in the decade and a half since Garth Brooks last gave America a big ol' honky-tonk hug. Johnny Cash died and Florida Georgia Line roared to life; Sheryl Crow went country and Taylor Swift went pop; Kenny Chesney, Jason Aldean and the Zac Brown Band started packing 60,000-seat stadiums.

But none of them are Garth. Can't be. Won't be. There can only ever be one.

This weekend, after years in semiretirement at home with his family, Brooks brings his comeback tour to Tampa for the first time since four straight soldout shows in 1998. His wife, Trisha Yearwood, is the opening act. There's a good chance his three concerts on June 5 and June 6 will all sell out, too.

But why? Why, after so many years, after so much upheaval in the country music business — heck, the music business, period — is a guy named Troyal Garth Brooks from Tulsa, Okla., still the biggest thing country music has ever seen?

Why does everyone still want to hug Garth Brooks?

• • •

Garth Brooks never fit the mold of a country superstar. He wasn't stoic and stately like his idols George Jones and George Strait; nor was he a magnetic young buck like his peers Clint Black or Dwight Yoakam. He was bright-eyed and clean-cut and perhaps a little doughy, but that indistinct look always worked in his favor. He was a specific sort of everyman — not cut from the same blue-collar cloth as Bruce Springsteen, but perhaps the Boss' boss.

America is full of these folks, and Brooks was the first to grab them through his color-blocked album covers, his explosive TV specials, his larger-than-life live performances. Having a few catchy crossover hits like Friends in Low Places didn't hurt, but it was on the stage when the world really saw the light and fire in his soul.

"His live show was not a country show," said Dean Simmons, 43, who for 20 years has impersonated Garth Brooks in Las Vegas. "It was not a George Strait or Alan Jackson stand-behind-the-microphone sort of thing. He turned it into a high-energy rock concert, with the lights and all the running around. He gave a live performance that appealed to a younger generation. He gave them something to look at on stage."

Today, you can't swing a Stetson in Music City without striking a singer whose live show was directly influenced by Brooks. Look at Bryan, who struts around thrusting into the audience, snapping selfies with delirious fans. Or Eric Church, screaming and pumping his fist like he's leading his crowd into war. Or Aldean, who roars onto his stage flanked by columns of flame, like some sort of heavyweight wrestler.

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But you can't sustain a career built entirely on flash and sizzle — just ask Billy Ray Cyrus, who most assuredly is not selling out arenas across America in 2015. No, with Garth, it's always been about something more.

• • •

This year, Brooks surpassed Elvis Presley as the bestselling solo artist in American history. He did it by finally, for the first time, offering his catalog for download — not through iTunes or Amazon, mind you, but through GhostTunes, a new digital storefront of his own invention.

Brooks, who was an advertising major at Oklahoma State University, is ruthless when it comes to selling records, breaking records, inventing new records to break. No corner of America is safe from his stamp; his website recently touted a four-night stand in Tennessee as "the largest country music event in the history of Knoxville," like we were all on the edge of our seats keeping track.

In his mad, mercenary rush to be the biggest artist in history, Brooks has made missteps. Chris Gaines, his 1999 pop-rock alter ego, is an easy punch line. The music's more harmless than anything, but taken in full — the album's exhaustive, fictional liner notes and baffling artist photos, the dual Brooks-Gaines appearance on Saturday Night Live — the project now feels like a desperate move from a superstar who had run out of mountains to conquer.

And then there's Brooks' 2014 comeback CD, Man Against Machine. The cover is almost unforgivably terrible: Garth in pitch-black shades and a Phiten titanium neck-braid, scowling above a close-cropped patch of chin-fuzz. It debuted, and peaked, at No. 4 on the Billboard 200, three slots behind Taylor Swift's 1989, and is Brooks' only album that has yet to go platinum.

And still the crowds keep coming, no matter how many shows Brooks throws at them. Two million have purchased tickets to his comeback tour, including more than 205,000 over 10 November days at the Target Center in Minneapolis. That's nearly the population of Birmingham, Ala. — Brooks' next stop after Tampa — not to mention, in breathless Garth-speak, "a North American record for the most Garth Brooks tickets sold in a single city!"

If Brooks sold Buicks, he would sell the most Buicks. If he sold lemonade, he would sell the most lemonade. But he's in the business of selling Garth Brooks, and no one has ever done it better.

• • •

Brooks no longer soars from guy-wires in a checkerboard buttonup, but by all accounts, his comeback concerts have not lost much of their mid-'90s power.

He looks fans in the eye, reads the signs they wave wildly, circles arenas in his wireless mic so each ticket holder can get a more intimate look than they ever thought possible. At one of those Minneapolis concerts, he gave his guitar to a fan with cancer. In Nashville, he shared the stage with Justin Timberlake.

If all of this is marketing, it's still magical, a unique blend of the theatrical and the personal that somehow feels anything but artificial.

"I really think when he's up there singing, in his mind, he's living the song," said country singer Frankie Ballard. "That's what it feels like as a listener. That's what it feels like even through TV or video. It feels like Garth is in the theater of his mind; he's alive inside the song. That, to me, is what people connect with. That's what they feel."

After performing as Brooks for 20 years, Simmons has learned a thing or two about what makes him pop live. Frenetic karaoke sing-alongs like Standing Outside the Fire, Ain't Goin' Down (Til the Sun Comes Up) and American Honky-Tonk Bar Association still roust fans from their seats. But those adrenaline highs ensure his ballads pierce the heart even harder. Couples dance during The Dance, pray during Unanswered Prayers, melt into tears throughout The River. "It's a great contrast," Simmons says.

"His ability to deliver a song is second to none," Ballard says. "He's one of the greatest entertainers and deliverers of a song that I've ever seen, up there with Dean Martin and guys like that. Garth has that special thing."

His fans have not forgotten. Sixty thousand of them will pack in to see him in Tampa, and it's not because of how many albums he's sold, how many records he's broken, how slickly he's sold himself to the modern masses.

It's because after all these years, they're dying to hug him again. And when they finally see him up there, it'll feel like he's hugging them back.

Contact Jay Cridlin at cridlin@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8336. Follow @JayCridlin.