Garth Brooks to perform March 5 at Petco Park
The thunder may roll, figuratively if not literally, when Garth Brooks performs at San Diego’s Petco Park for the first time in his storied career. The March 5 concert will be his first here since Brooks performed five triumphant back-to-back shows in 2012 at Valley View Casino Center (now Pechanga Arena San Diego).
The country-music superstar announced his March 5 Petco Park show Wednesday morning. It is the only West Coast date of the year for the world’s top-selling solo artist, who will perform at the stadium — the home of the San Diego Padres Major League baseball team — on an in-the-round stage located at the center of the playing field.
Capacity for the concert will be approximately 50,000.
The timing of Brooks’ Petco Park concert suggests healthy optimism that the currently surging COVID-19 Omicron variant will have subsided enough by early March for his performance to proceed smoothly.
Last August, Brooks personally decided to cancel five of his 2021 stadium concerts, citing concerns that such massive outdoor performances could become super-spreader events.
“In July, I sincerely thought the pandemic was falling behind us. Now, watching this new wave, I realize we are still in the fight and I must do my part,” Brooks said in a statement last August about his decision to cancel the five stadium performances.
The announcement of Brooks’ March 5 Petco Park concert states that anyone purchasing tickets for the concert “assumes COVID risk.” It also states that “all COVID rules apply,” without stating what those rules are.
All tickets for Brooks’ Petco Park concert are priced at $94.95 each, including service charges, and will go on sale at 10 a.m. Jan. 14 through ticketmaster.com. However, the Ticketmaster website for the concert notes that “ticket prices may fluctuate, based on demand, at any time ...”
There will be no advance Petco Park box office sales and no advance sales for Padres season-ticket package holders.
To expedite ticket purchases, concertgoers are encouraged to visit the “On Sale Tips & Hints” section of ticketmaster.com/garthbrooks in order to create an account to buy tickets, or or refresh their existing Ticketmaster account.
More information is also available via Ticketmaster’s Garth Brooks phone line at (877) 654-2784 and through the Ticketmaster phone app.
Nick Mason, Tristan Prettyman, others postpone concerts
Pink Floyd co-founder Nick Mason and Encinitas singer-songwriter Tristan Prettyman have postponed their upcoming San Diego-area concerts because of the surging coronavirus pandemic.
Prettyman’s Jan. 13 concert at the Belly Up has been pushed back to March 31 after she and several other musicians scheduled to perform with her contracted COVID-19.
“With cases so high, (postponing) is the responsible thing to do,” Prettyman told the Union-Tribune.
Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets band, which performs lesser-known music from Pink Floyd’s early days in the 1960s, was scheduled to perform in San Diego on Feb. 21 at the Balboa Theatre. That show has been postponed, along with the band’s entire 26-city North American winter tour, due to “uncertainty surrounding the COVID pandemic.” No new dates have been announced yet.
Prettyman and Mason aren’t the only artists whose performances have been impacted.
Rapper DaBaby has canceled all 20 dates on his U.S. winter tour, including his Jan. 29 San Diego performance at the all-ages Soma, according to a representative for Live Nation, the show’s promoter.
No official reason has been given as yet for the decision to shelve the tour. However, an announcement regarding DaBaby’s now-canceled Jan. 15 concert at the Fox Theatre in Detroit, the desire “to protect the health and safety of the fans and crew” is cited on the venue’s website.
In addition, the Rosanna Gamson World Wide dance troupe’s Jan. 21 and 22 performances at University of California San Diego’s Mandeville Auditorium have been postponed because of the Omicron variant. The campus is scheduled to reopen Jan. 17, although it remains to be seen if that date gets pushed back. New dates for Gamson have not yet been determined.
Also postponed is Saturday’s San Diego Folk Heritage Java Joe’s Reunion concert at Carlsbad’s Pilgrim United Church of Christ. No new date has been announced yet for the show, which was scheduled to feature Berkley Hart, Gregory Page, Lisa Sanders, Tim Flannery and Billy Galewood.
A message on the San Diego Folk Heritage website cites the pandemic as the reason for the postponement.