Last Sunday afternoon, Garth Brooks stared down 10,000-plus fans gathered inside the BOK Center in downtown Tulsa. It was his third concert in the arena in as many days, and the matinee was a de facto homecoming show for Brooks, a native Oklahoman and a one-time
resident of the Tulsa suburbs. He had been playing the biggest hits of his career for more than an hour on a tour he’s calling “Blame It All on My Roots,” and it was time to perform its namesake. Brooks, country music’s bellwether showman for nearly 40 years and counting, opted for self-deprecation.
“I have no talent,” he said from the front of the stage. “I can’t play guitar. But I do know this one chord.”
With that, Brooks picked the first notes of “Friends in Low Places.”
He had already whipped the crowd into a frenzy with staples like “Rodeo,” “The Thunder Rolls” and “That Summer” — a fan in the sixth row tracking sound levels on a smartphone app picked up readings above 110 decibels. But “Friends in Low Places” topped them all, as the frenetic fans gave Brooks the climax he sought. Even before he played the song’s rewritten last verse — the one that ends with “You can kiss my ass!” — he already had the crowd swaying and singing along with the biggest of his 19 career No. 1 hits.
It was obvious that Brooks would build his setlist toward the song, and he wanted the venue sufficiently ready and rowdy for the moment. From the time he took the 360-degree stage singing the first verse of “The Old Stuff” — after his light rigs lifted from the floor to the ceiling to rocket-ship sound effects — the seven-time CMA Entertainer of the Year was dialed in.
“This is the time when people are at church,” Brooks said before “Two of a Kind, Working on a Full House.” “Well, at my church in Oklahoma, we have some fun, and we raise some hell!”
Whether that energy came from his gut at the spur of the moment or had been carefully choreographed over the course of his career was irrelevant. Fans had come to see Brooks douse himself and the front rows with water from his onstage bottles during “Aint’ Goin’ Down (Til the Sun Comes Up.” They had come to see him dart around the stage with the abandon of a blitzing linebacker, imploring each side of the arena to scream louder than the rest. They came to see him break down in tears during “The Dance.”
They got all of that during the two-hour concert. Brooks also revealed his camp is recording this tour for a live album — which would be his first since 2018’s Triple Live — and asserted that both band and crowd nailed “The Thunder Rolls” and it would surely make the record. As much as the crowd hopped to his demands to make noise, Brooks was steadfast in offering his appreciation. “Thanks for making me feel at home, and treating me like I’m somebody, but mostly for treating me like I’m from here and belong here,” he said — hat in hand — before he left the stage ahead of an encore break.
This tour represents Brooks’ latest effort to push back against music industry headwinds — specifically, spiraling ticket prices and bots or brokers snatching up prime tickets during onsales before fans have access. It’s a cause he has championed for most of his nearly 40-year career, most notably when he capped ticket prices at $20 for his 1996-98 World Tour. On the current tour, all tickets are priced uniformly at roughly $155, regardless of their location in a venue. Brooks is also following his long-time formula of announcing a small number of dates at an arena and adding additional shows after the first ones sell to near capacity.
The process has revealed signs that even Brooks is not immune to the pressure on performers and fans as the live music industry deals with the present-day economy. His three shows in Tulsa paled in comparison to the nine he played last time he visited the city — and played the same arena — in 2015. And while the Sunday afternoon crowd was strong, it was shy of a sellout, with a smattering of empty seats visible in the upper deck. More striking is the situation in Kansas City, Missouri, where Brooks’ camp recently halted ticket sales to an added matinee show on Nov. 7 at the Sprint Center, after two shows announced earlier sold out. His team cited increased bot activity after tickets went on sale. That show has since been canceled.
Still, these issues are relative and casting them as setbacks would be a stretch. They’re happening to concerts added after multiple dates in the same arena have sold out or come close — a problem any touring act would relish facing at the moment.
All of this combined had the unintended effect of spotlighting Brooks’ most consistent career trait in Tulsa: He came across as genuinely grateful to be playing the show at all. He launched his career in Stillwater, 60 miles west of Tulsa, in the mid-1980s during the early years of Oklahoma’s Red Dirt scene. He had a standing gig in town at Willie’s Saloon, a dive bar with a tiny corner stage, and forged a reputation for playing the same high-energy show regardless of whether five people or a hundred and five were in the bar. Brooks has spent four decades backing up that reputation, and he carried it into Sunday’s show at the BOK Center.
During his encore, he called out that bar by name: “This is kind of like Willie’s Saloon in Stillwater. That place was always singing along. There were like 13 or 14 people there every night, but they sang.”
It was part of a nearly half-hour curtain call that mostly featured Brooks, playing solo and acoustic, searching the crowd for signs with song requests, and obliging. None of the requests were for his hits or even for songs that were singles. He played “Ireland” for a fan whose request was complete with a hand-made Irish flag. When he took a request for “In Lonesome Dove” of 1990’s No Fences, he said, “I’m gonna play this for your sign, but I’m gonna dedicate this to my youngest baby. She just loves this song,” shouting out his daughter, the singer-songwriter Allie Colleen.
Midway through his penultimate number, a cover of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man,” his band returned to the stage. They closed the show — and their three-day stand in Tulsa — with “Standing Outside the Fire” as fog machines clouded the stage. When they finished, Brooks called the band down front-and-center, where they all locked arms and took a bow.
“It’s not the day to say this,” Brooks shouted with all the voice he could muster, “but you guys fucking rocked!”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose upcoming book, Sonoran Sounds, is set for release in March 2027 via Back Lounge Publishing.
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