A Garth Brooks show was so loud it registered as an earthquake
The song “Callin’ Baton Rouge” is infused with a pining love for a Samantha from Louisiana. But as Garth Brooks took the stage Saturday, the country music staple became an ode of seismic proportions to the city that inspired the song’s name.
Stage lights flashed yellow and red inside Louisiana State University’s Tiger Stadium as a cowboy-hat-clad Brooks — along with a fiddler — jumped into the first verse. Boots started thumping, hands started clapping and a sea of cellphone lights started beaming to the rhythm of a song that has become a tailgate anthem at the Baton Rouge university.
The earth was literally shaken as Brooks and an audience of over 102,000 sang about “send[ing] my love down to Baton Rouge.”
The small earthquake was captured by LSU’s seismograph — marking the second time in over three decades that Tiger Stadium registered a tremor from cheering fans. The first, WBRZ reported, was when LSU narrowly defeated Auburn University with two minutes left in a 1988 football game.
But more than ever so slightly moving the ground, the commotion increased to dangerous noise levels. Fans’ Apple Watches began shooting up alerts about sound levels reaching 95 decibels — warning that spending “[just] 10 minutes at this level can cause temporary hearing loss.”
“The noise level in the stadium was insane!” a concertgoer commented on Facebook. “I’ve seen Garth before but it wasn’t like this! He is such a great entertainer. It was my 11-year-old son’s first concert and he can’t stop talking about it.”
Saturday was the first time Brooks had played in Baton Rouge in 24 years. But “Callin’ Baton Rouge” has long been LSU’s unofficial alma mater song.
Composed by Dennis Linde — the mastermind behind Elvis Presley’s “Burning Love” and the Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl” — the song was first recorded by the
Oak Ridge Boys, a country and gospel quartet. About a decade later, the bluegrass group New Grass Revival revamped the song for its 1989 album, “Friday Night in America.”
Then, four years later, Brooks — an artist known for his penchant for covering songs while injecting them with his own flair — immortalized “Callin’ Baton Rouge” on his “In Pieces” album. The song peaked at No. 2 on the 1994 country singles charts.
Nearly 30 years after first recording of the song, Brooks could anticipate the sort of emotion it would bring out in Baton Rouge.
“This is going to be loud. This is going to be stupid, and it’s going to go all night long,” he said before the concert, according to WAFB.
A day later, his prediction came true: “Thanks for letting us be a small piece of thread in the family and the fabric of the LSU Tigers,” Brooks said as he walked across the stage, white cowboy hat in hand.