Garth Brooks returns to arenas on Blame it All on My Roots tour

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Garth Brooks returns to arenas on Blame it All on My Roots tour

INDIANAPOLIS – Garth Brooks choked back something between a chuckle and a sob, overwhelmed and stunned. He was making his way through his 1992 Billboard Hot Country Songs chart-topper “The River,” and the sound of some 17,000-plus singing it with him was just too much for him to handle.

It’s odd that a fairly standard crowd flabbergasted the guy famous for drawing inconceivably large ones (one million in Central Park, anyone?), but the sea of Brooks faithful at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in downtown Indianapolis ran the country star through the emotional wringer. He laughed and cried and laughed again. He scanned the arena, mouth agape. And, of course, he threw his head back and screamed, massive and guttural.

“PICKING INDIANAPOLIS FOR THE OPENING CITY OF THIS TOUR,” he howled as the band swelled around him during proper set closer “The Dance,” “I WAS RIGHT.”

Brooks called his shot in Indy, and it paid off. Opening night of his Blame it All on My Roots Tour at Gainbridge Fieldhouse Aug. 20 – the first of a four show run – was a victorious return to form for the country legend: an epic outing for a generational performer who could attract acres of fans but stakes his claim as the arena king.

All eyes were on Brooks’ maiden voyage on his first arena tour in a decade. Almost 400,000 queued for tickets during the general sale July 17, and demand soared so much that the originally planned Indianapolis double-header turned into a triple, then a quadruple in real time. For a while, the Indy run was the only batch of shows Brooks announced, though he’s since added dates in Denver, Washington, D.C. and Rosemont, Illinois. Fervor manifested at a packed night one, where even clips from the “Garth Brooks: The Road I’m On” documentary that played pre-show had the arena buzzing.

Brooks, whose live performance style falls somewhere between megachurch pastor and WWE wrestler, matched the energy and then some. The prolific hit-maker, widely regarded as one of the most successful artists ever with more than 200 million albums sold thanks to a white-hot ‘90s reign, blazed through a 17-song proper set, only letting his foot off the gas when emotion poured over in big moments like the sweeping “Shameless” and tender “Unanswered Prayers.”

Brooks is a bulldozer, and he wants you to see him sweat. He whipped water and his own perspiration onto the floor seats, sprinted from corner to corner of the stage and teared up when the arena sang every word of early cuts like “Much Too Young (to Feel This Damn Old)” or an impromptu version of “Bury the Hatchet” back to him. His own exhaustion somehow fueled him: The harder he went, the more the audience demanded – and the more he obliged. The room reached a fever pitch at “Friends in Low Places.” I wouldn’t be shocked if that last chorus was audible throughout downtown Indianapolis.

Any promised bells and whistles on the Blame it All on My Roots Tour – like the return of the ’90s “drum pod” that cemented Brooks as a legendary live performer or an in-the-round stage setup that bills every seat as the best in the house – are inconsequential. Save for a brief moment where the musicians’ platforms rise, the plexiglass pod housing drummers Mike Palmer and Milton Sledge remains stationary. And, as the resale market revealed earlier this week, this “every seat is equally great” business is an impossible premise: Brooks stays confined to the stage, which sits in the back of the arena. In no world do the nosebleeds afford an experience equivalent to floor seats.

Instead, Brooks and his stellar band commandeer the show on merit alone. Brooks introduced players across the two-hour show’s back half, spotlighting musicians a handful at a time and launching into songs that showcased each of them. Jimmy Mattingly, a monster on the fiddle, shined during a thunderous “Callin’ Baton Rouge.” Backup singer Robert Bailey took the lead for a raucous rendition of The Isley Brothers’ “Shout.”

Was the show perfect? No. At 64 and “a little older than the last time we saw each other,” Brooks might’ve lost a step. And though that crystal-clear twang is still intact, he didn’t land every note. But Brooks’ boundless enthusiasm – passion that’s too big for his body to contain – outshines all of that.

Far be it from me to look a gift cowboy in the belt buckle or whatever, but here’s my lingering question: One of the most dynamic and celebrated performers on planet Earth debuts his grand arena comeback tour… here? Not the usual suspects like New York or Los Angeles, not his native Oklahoma, not country music’s Mecca of Nashville, but little old us? You have to wonder why.

Brooks didn’t give much of an answer at Gainbridge, but there’s no doubt he made the right decision in opening his tour in Indianapolis. With thousands of Hoosiers still bearing the brunt of historic flooding, it’s been a heavy week for Indiana. The Blame it All on My Roots run is a much-needed bright spot, a reminder to “pick each other up,” as Brooks urged before a big, dramatic intro to “The Thunder Rolls.” Brooks knew the crowd was special: The two-hour show, he said, “felt like 15 seconds.”

Fellow country singer and Brooks’ wife Trisha Yearwood called his live shows the “Church of Garth” in the 2019 “Road I’m On” documentary. Indianapolis deserved a beacon this week. What’s more sacred than opening night? Sweating, screaming, a whole arena echoing his every word – Brooks was rapturous.

Garth Brooks has nothing left to prove, but he proved it anyway. And with a whole weekend of shows ahead of him in Indianapolis, he’ll do it again, and again, and again.