Garth Brooks will tour again
To mark his return to touring after a dozen years, country superstar Garth Brooks will play two stadium shows in Dublin, Ireland’s Croke Park, where he performed sellout shows in 1997.
The “Garth Brooks Comeback Special Event” will take place July 25-26 in anticipation of a world tour slated to get underway this year.
“In ’97, [when] we were lucky enough to play Croke Park, the stadium was under construction,” Brooks said in a statement. “130,000-plus of some of the greatest fans in the world. I was quoted then as saying, ‘When this stadium is finished, I would love to come back and try to fill it again ... this time to the brink’ ... and we’re back to do just that.”
Brooks took a hiatus from touring in 2001, saying he wanted to devote himself to his three daughters until each was ready to go to college. He accepted an offer from hotel magnate Steve Wynn to appear periodically at his Wynn Encore Theatre in Las Vegas for a four-year solo residency because he was able to schedule those performances around his daughters’ school activities.
But now he’s returning to action, having recently released an eight-disc box set, “Blame It All on My Roots,” inspired by the Las Vegas performances in which he shared with audiences the music that influenced him growing up. It has sold more than 800,000 copies in the U.S. since its Nov. 28 release, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
This month, Brooks returned to the Wynn for performances with his full band as a preview of the tour. Tickets for the Croke Park shows will go on sale Jan. 30 through Ticketmaster.