Vegas Weekend Shows With Garth Brooks, continued
The country superstar would love to take credit for the idea, but that all goes to the man who became known to the public 20 years ago for his humorous television commericals promoting the Golden Nugget casino with Frank Sinatra and Kenny Rogers. Brooks was ready to blow Wynn away with a full band and the high-energy show everyone came to expect as he transformed country music in the 1990s.
However, Wynn envisioned something much different. He asked Brooks to take a step back and reconsider after watching the entertainer's reconstituted band play the Encore. "He said, 'I love them, great guys. But not what happened the other night when it was just you,'" Brooks said. That's when Wynn pitched the one-man show.
"I'm telling you, it's totally opposite from anything we have here," Wynn told the singer. Trisha Yearwood, Brooks' wife, said fans are in for something from Brooks that he usually reserves for small, intimate charity dinners. Even she wasn't familiar with that side of her husband until a few years ago.
"First of all I think he's an amazing singer and to perform acoustically showcases him in a way that he can't do in the big arena," Yearwood said. "I think it's really unique because I think it's a really cool show and I'm excited that people get to see it."
Wynn patiently paved the way for Brooks' return from the retirement he announced in 2000. He wanted to create something with innate cool like the acts that first transformed Las Vegas. Artists like Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack buddies still haunt the scene.
He thinks Brooks might be able to recreate some of that aura. "When they walked on stage, they sucked the air out of the universe," Wynn said. "There hasn't been anything like that since."
Brooks said that some fans of his live shows in the 1990s have seen bits and pieces of what they'll get at the Encore. "When we'd run out of bullets, when a crowd would outlast us, I'd say, 'Shoot, they're not going home,'" Brooks said. "So I'd drag my guitar out there and we'd play stuff that influenced us."
It's the essence of that great music he's loved Brooks wants to share with fans willing to come to Vegas and see him play in the 1,500-seat theater.
Brooks becomes energized when he talks about the music he loves and plans to showcase. He rattled off a dozen names, most from the 1960s and '70s. Greats like Bob Seeger, Merle Haggard, George Jones, Randy Travis, Cat Stevens, Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Tom Rush and "all these real obscure things."
While looking back at the past, Brooks also has an eye on the future. The 47-year-old has been thinking about what happens in 2014 or 2015 when his daughters are all in college and grown up.
"I really think I'm here because it makes sense for my future," Brooks said. "This gives me five years to kind of do what Willie's did for me when I was in Stillwater before I went to Nashville. A one-man show. It gives me a chance to kind of find out who I am again at this age in my life."
Buy a ticket to this one-of-a-kind show and you'll get to enjoy the music that inspired Brooks as well as his own catalogue of hits such as Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old), If Tomorrow Never Comes, Friends in Low Places, and his personal favorite, The Dance.
However, they'll be none of the potentially distracting glitz, glamour and pyrotechnics that typify your average Sin City show. Just the man, his guitar and the songs he loves, and you.
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