Garth Brooks Loves His Job, And It Shows

How many Nashville music luminaries can pull off a one-man show on stage at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium? I mean, get multiple standing ovations and create foot stomping so strong you feel the place shake? A few could swoon for you, maybe even impress you, but Garth Brooks is on a level you don’t even understand.

Last weekend’s show was my second Garth solo gig, with one previously at The Wynn in Las Vegas. Just Garth and his acoustic guitar with some crew keeping guitars in tune and handling the sound and lights. How can this hold me for almost three hours?

With his audience backing him up, he sang Bob Seger, George Strait and George Jones, and even did “Girl Crush.” Garth had the audience eating out of the palm of his hand in a matter of minutes. Loud singalongs, foot stomping, phones acting like lighters, all in on every tune.

From Bob Dylan to Seger, he sang, and played and showed off his singing skills that are highly underrated. Before you ever try this on your A, B or C list fans, remember, close to three hours, multiple standing ovations, roaming from side to side of the stage and never sitting down. He is in a league all by himself. Many could sing for three hours and even have good sing-a-longs, but the humor and his comfortable command of the stage are not something likely to be successfully copied.

The Ryman is a special place to play and to be a fan. The place always sounds great.

However, $52 to park three hours at 5th and Commerce still makes me crazy. Downtown Nashville doesn’t feel like the Nashville I loved for so long. It feels hijacked!

Someone came in around Covid in the spring and stole the Nashville I knew. It has not been an overnight theft, but a slow-motion tragedy.

There are New York prices for everything. How do these up-and-coming singers and songwriters do it? Where did the Southern charm fly off to?

It feels slick and soulless. Inside the Ryman, the heart lives on, but hit the streets and the pulse is weak. The local meat and threes, the Firestone store, The Tennessean building, you name it: gone! Who are these people roaming every street and what are they looking for?

It’s an “it” town now. Where is this story headed?

The building where the Apple store is looks beautiful. The lights are like the Broadway in some other place. There’s still the Bluebird Café in Green Hills, and the Parthenon is still standing. Music Row hangs on. Lots of traffic and lines and all the things that Atlanta has. The dream of so many since I pulled into town in 1980.

Art often reflects where it is created. The music that is now called Country music, exactly where is it created now? Anyone able to answer that basic question?

These are very complicated, exciting times. Scary, too.

A young lady, Melanie Safka, once wrote:

Look what they’ve done to my song, ma
Look what they’ve done to my song
Well, it’s the only thing that I could do half right
And it’s turning out all wrong, ma
Look what they’ve done to my song.

I wish I could find a good book to live in
Wish I could find a good book
Well if I could find a real good book
I’d never have to come out and look at
What they’ve done to my song

And so it goes …