Garth Brooks

Tulsa to Nashville, then everywhere

Troyal Garth Brooks was born on 7 February 1962 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and went to Oklahoma State University on a track scholarship as a javelin thrower rather than a musician. He moved to Nashville in 1987 with his first wife, Sandy Mahl, signed to Capitol Records and released a self-titled debut in 1989. Two singles from it, If Tomorrow Never Comes and The Dance, established the pattern that would define him: plainspoken ballads sung with a big, open voice, and a willingness to look sentimental if the song earned it.

What followed was not a gradual climb. His second album, No Fences, arrived in 1990 and remains his biggest seller, with 18 million copies shipped in the United States. Ropin' the Wind in 1991 became the first country album to enter the Billboard 200 at number one, a moment that is usually taken as the point where Nashville stopped being a niche in the American record business and became one of its engines. Brooks did it with a stage show borrowed from arena rock, wireless headset, rope swings and pyrotechnics included, at a time when country headliners mostly stood still.

The records that set the scale

The run from 1989 to 1998 is the body of work that still fills the setlists. No Fences gave him Friends in Low Places, The Thunder Rolls and Unanswered Prayers. Ropin' the Wind added Rodeo, Shameless and The River. The Chase, In Pieces, Fresh Horses and Sevens followed through 1997, each carrying two or three songs that now get sung back at him word for word. Double Live, released in 1998, is certified 25 times platinum and is the best-selling live album ever issued.

The certifications tell the rest of the story. Brooks holds nine Diamond awards from the Recording Industry Association of America, each for ten million units, which is more than the Beatles' six. His total sales sit above 170 million records. The Library of Congress gave him its Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in 2020 and he received a Kennedy Center Honor in 2021. Later albums include Fun in 2020 and Time Traveler in 2023, but the current tour leans almost entirely on material recorded before 1998, and the crowds do not appear to mind.

Walking away, and the long road back

Brooks retired from recording and performing in 2001 to raise his three daughters in Oklahoma, and for most of a decade he held to it. He divorced Mahl in 2001 and married Trisha Yearwood, the country singer who had been part of his circle since his first records, on 10 December 2005. The return came in stages. A solo residency at the Encore in Las Vegas began in 2009, and a full comeback under Sony Music Nashville followed in 2014, complete with a new world tour.

Las Vegas has stayed part of the routine. The Plus One residency opened at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace on 18 May 2023 and was built around a one-man acoustic format with the band appearing on selected songs. It was extended into 2024 and sold 99 per cent of the tickets it put on sale. He was still playing the Colosseum in February 2025, with a three-night run from 19 to 22 February billed as a concert for the conservation charity Ducks Unlimited, structured as an acoustic soundcheck, a full-band main set and a requests segment with just Brooks and a guitar.

In October 2024 a former hairstylist and make-up artist filed a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment and rape during a 2019 trip. Brooks has denied the allegations and described the claim as a shakedown and an extortion attempt. The case has not stopped him working, and the touring announcements that followed in 2025 and 2026 have been received without any noticeable dent in demand.

Where he stands in September 2026

Brooks opened the year with a post on his own site headed New Year, New Music, New Tour, promising new music and telling fans that Yearwood would be touring through the first half of the year while he waited to see what the second half held. Two dates went up early: 16 and 17 June 2026 at the American Family Insurance Amphitheater in Milwaukee, his first appearance at Summerfest, and 27 June 2026 headlining British Summer Time in Hyde Park, London, with Zac Brown Band and Ashley McBryde as the announced guests.

Hyde Park turned out to be the first Garth Brooks concert on British soil in roughly 28 years. It was also the first show under the festival's expanded configuration of 69,999, which made it a record for the site. Reviewers from the British country press and from general music sites came away saying much the same thing: no set-piece production to speak of, a field full of cowboy hats, and a 64-year-old singer who kept stopping to listen to the crowd sing his own choruses back at him. Support across the day included Zac Brown Band, Ashley McBryde, Jackson Dean, Alexandra Kay and The Shires.

The Blame It All On My Roots Arena Tour then began on 20 August 2026 with the first of four nights at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. It is being announced piecemeal, city by city, in the way his tours usually are. Denver's Ball Arena followed from 4 to 6 September, preceded by a secret warm-up at the Grizzly Rose honky-tonk under the pseudonym Yukon Jack, a name he first used 33 years ago. Four nights at Allstate Arena in Rosemont, outside Chicago, run from 10 to 13 September, with Washington DC on 18 and 19 September. Orlando's Kia Center sold out two nights on 25 and 26 September and a third, a 2pm matinee on 27 September, was added with tickets on sale from 16 September. Salt Lake City is the next city named on his site.

The show: 1997 rebuilt for 2026

The concept of the current tour is literal. It recreates the 1996 to 1998 world tour, down to the set design, the lighting rig and the spinning drum pod that lifted the drummer out over the crowd in the nineties. The Indianapolis opener also added a 360-degree video ring the production calls The Halo, rotating elevated platforms, and a simulated thunderstorm for The Thunder Rolls. There is no support act on the arena dates. The house lights simply go down and a grand piano rises through the floor for The Old Stuff, a song he had not opened with since 2020.

On 20 August 2026 the set ran from 8.15pm to 10.05pm, an hour and fifty minutes, and did not include a single song released after 1997. The order tracked the old tour closely: Rodeo, Two of a Kind, Workin' on a Full House, The Beaches of Cheyenne, Two Piña Coladas, Papa Loved Mama, The River, The Thunder Rolls, Much Too Young, Unanswered Prayers, That Summer, Callin' Baton Rouge, Ain't Goin' Down, Shameless, a run at Shout, Friends in Low Places and The Dance. The encore is where the show loosens, with Brooks taking requests from signs in the crowd. On opening night that produced Ten Feet Away, The Red Strokes, She's Every Woman, Belleau Wood and Standing Outside the Fire.

The reviews from Indianapolis were as warm as the London ones. Country Now described a sold-out, show-stopping night and quoted one fan calling it the best concert of their life. Brooks, for his part, told the room that in this business you are lucky if they show up and blessed if they come back. In Chicago he has a public promise to keep, having pledged to play Cold Like That for a ten-year-old fan named Austin. The pattern of the last few months suggests the promise will be honoured and that the rest of the night will be sung by everyone in the building.