Garth Brooks to restart ‘Dive Bar Tour’ with OKC show
Garth Brooks is restarting his “Dive Bar Tour” in his home state.
The Oklahoma native and Country Music Hall of Famer announced Monday night on his weekly “Inside Studio G” Facebook Live broadcast that he will perform an Oct. 11 concert at Oklahoma City’s venerable Diamond Ballroom.
Tickets can only be won on-air through OKC radio station 93.3 JAKE FM, a country music station owned by Tyler Media.
The “Dive Bar” show will only be open to people who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 or can show proof of a negative COVID-19 test, Brooks’ team revealed in the Facebook Live announcement.
“Oh, sweet,” Brooks said in announcing the home-state show. “That’s cool. That’s really cool.”
JAKE FM management promised on Facebook Monday night to reveal more details about the show and how to win tickets Tuesday morning on the “Wake with Jake Show,” which airs from 6 to 10 a.m.
In August, Brooks, who was born in Tulsa and grew up in Yukon, canceled five shows on his planned stadium tour amid rising COVID-19 case numbers.
“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 at the time.
On Aug. 23, the Oklahoma State
University alumnus announced on “Inside Studio G” that he was planning on bringing back his “Dive Bar Tour” this fall in response to the pandemic.
“You can fully vaccinate dive bars. People have got to have their card to even get in,” Brooks said on on the Aug. 23 Facebook Live broadcast.
“Here’s the deal with vaccinations: I’m vaccinated, 100% vaccinated. Everybody on the freakin’ tour, vaccinated. ... But I cannot make you get vaccinated. Until it becomes a law, it is a choice. And, people, when things are a choice, you have to understand and respect that we’re all going to make our own choices. You get to, I get to, we all get to.”
The former Owasso resident originally launched his “Dive Bar” series in summer 2019 in support of his duet of the same name with fellow Oklahoma native Blake Shelton. Through February 2020, Brooks and his band played seven shows at dive bars, honky tonks and other relatively small venues around the country, including Joe’s on Weed Street in Chicago, Buck Owens Crystal Palace in Bakersfield, California, and Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, Texas.
As with the newly announced show, tickets to all the original “Dive Bar Tour” shows could only be obtained through local country radio stations.
The October OKC concert is the first date to be announced on the revived “Dive Bar Tour.”
“OK, so, dive bars are on,” Brooks said Monday night. “It looks like stadium shows probably are not going to happen this year. There is one more city I don’t want to call it quits on yet. ... I’d love to have another show before the end of the year, stadium-wise, but if we don’t: dive bars, dive bars, dive bars.”
Noting that “our stuff is made for dive bars, man,” Brooks said he is planning to bring recording equipment to the Diamond Ballroom concert.
“We need to record a dive bar (show): You guys are not gonna believe what’s going on in there. I can’t believe it, and I get to watch it every night. ... We can make a dive bar live record that’ll blow you away,” he said.
“That’s where we want to try to get the live version of the current single, ‘That’s What Cowboys Do.’ ... It’s those really, really country songs — ‘Beaches of Cheyenne,’ those kind of things — that just really echo through those honkytonk walls.”