Garth Brooks’ Big Return

The conference took place at Marathon Music Works in Nashville and was live streamed on his website.

Before the schedule for the world tour can be officially announced Brooks needs to keep a promise to a fan named Andy, who he met at one of his Las Vegas residency shows. The singer/songwriter plans on calling Andy July 14 to tell him the opening date of the trek. The rest of the world will get to learn details about the excursion after that.

The world tour will be his first since he retired from recording and performing in 2000. Since then he’s returned to the stage for the Las Vegas residency as well as shows here and there, including nine sold-out nights at Kansas City’s Sprint Center in 2007 and five shows over two days at Los Angeles’ Staples Center in 2008.

One question from the audience was about ticket prices for the tour – more specifically, will he be keeping prices low?

“I promise you will know in the next, I’ll say 10 days. And I gotta tell you, I’m very proud of the ticket price,” Brooks said. He said that although he doesn’t usually wave Ticketmaster’s flag, they’ve been “so sweet.”

He added, “I think it’s in the right hands.”

Brooks says he’ll soon be releasing the follow-up to 2001’s Scarecrow via a deal with Sony.

“The new record, I think, is what we would traditionally think of as a double album, just because there’s a lot to say,” Brooks said, according to USA Today.

And what can fans expect from the sound?

He says that his music isn’t “Bro Country or Hick Hop.” Rather, he plays “Garth Music.” Brooks adds, “Our job is to fly the flag of country music,” according to the Tennessean.

You can also count on the album including some “cowboy songs” and tunes that you wish George Strait would have recorded. 

As for a release date, Brooks said he’s been told to keep the timeframe vague and that it could be due out sometime in the next two months. Or maybe a bit longer. Brooks also mentioned,“If we do our job right, sometime around Black Friday is where we usually do our thing,” according to USA Today.

In the meantime, Brooks plans on joining the digital world. After holding out for so long, digital sales will begin in two or three weeks, exclusively at GarthBrooks.com.

He describes the digital prices as competitive, saying some people “might think I’m giving it away, but I’m not.” That being said, his music will be available “at a stupid price.”

Brooks spent plenty of time talking about his five-date residency in Ireland, which was canceled on Tuesday after Dublin’s city council refused to issue permits for two of the gigs. The singer/songwriter had previously issued a statement saying he’d do “five shows or nothing at all” and explained that it wouldn’t be fair to fans who bought tickets to the two shows Dublin wanted him to call off.

Today he said he would be willing to do about anything to reverse Dublin’s decision about the July 25-29 shows.       

“If the Prime Minister himself wants to talk to me, I will crawl, swim, I will fly over there this weekend, sit in front of him, I will drop on my knees and beg for those 400,000 people to have fun,” according to Ireland’s The Journal.

Brooks added that although many fans are disappointed about the canceled residency, they’re “not one-billionth as sad as I am. I’m the loser in this,” according to USA Today.