Garth Brooks Performs In Cleveland For First Time In 19 Years

Just after ending the first leg of his world tour, country singer Garth Brooks has added a new stop to the next leg: Cleveland, a city he hasn’t performed in for almost two decades.

Country music news website the Boot says that Brooks has been using the downtime between legs of the tour to reexamine and revamp his material — not just the the music, but much of the experience of the show itself, as well.

“We have taken a lot of looks at what’s working, got rid of things that weren’t, and we’re coming out with a brand-new look. We’re gonna re-design the whole video world, the wings of the stage are a little different, and the setlist is kind of … it’s starting to fall into the sweet spot.”

People who went to any of Brooks’s tour stops earlier in the tour will be met with a completely different show, he says.

“If anybody came out to Tulsa, went down to Houston, over to New Orleans, whatever, this is gonna be a different look than what they saw.”

Ben Farrell, the promoter bringing the tour to Cleveland tells Cleveland.com that Brooks is “better than ever” as his tour continues, with each stop seeing new stops announced and shows selling out within ten minutes of tickets going on sale. After dozens of shows on the road to promote last year’s “Man Against Machine” album, Garth Brooks “still jumps all over the stage and works the crowd.”

Brooks announced his retirement back in 2000, citing wanting time to raise his kids as the main reason behind it. This album and this tour both see him back in action, and Farrell says Brooks is even better than he was when he retired 15 years ago. Though, he adds, concert-goers may not see him swinging over the audience on a rope or climbing ladders off to the sides of the stage like in the old days.

The numbers seem to back up the promoter’s high praise: according to Pollstar, Brooks is the second highest grossing North American touring artist for the first half of 2015, and he’s earned nearly $80 million on the first leg of this tour alone.

Garth Brooks’ World Tour will start again in mid-September, starting in Dallas, Texas. His Cleveland stop will be on October 9 and 10, with more to be announced as time goes on. Also performing on Brooks’s tour is his wife, Trisha Yearwood.

[Image: fatherspoon / Flickr / CC BY-ND 2.0]