CRS: Garth Plays A Honky Tonk

There may not be many firsts left for Garth Brooks, but somehow during his meteoric rise in the ‘90s, he never played in any of the honky-tonks on Lower Broad in Nashville.

According to Variety, he rectified that oversight Monday night with a secret, nearly two-hour-long bar gig for an audience of fewer than 200 country radio professionals inside Layla’s Bluegrass Inn, along with a couple dozen startled onlookers on the street pressing their nose against the glass to get a glimpse of Brooks’ back (and occasionally front) side.

“Me and Mike (Palmer, his drummer) have not played this close together in 30 years,” he marveled, experiencing the power of the kick drum in a way he’s unaccustomed to on a tiny stage that barely had room for his six band members.

Although he didn’t explicitly state it as the reason for the pop-up gig, Brooks no doubt wanted to thank radio programmers who gave him his first No. 1 hit in a decade in December. He wasn’t the only genre star looking to give thanks at the 49th Country Radio Seminar. The first night of the three-day confab had many of the 2,000 industry visitors checking out overlapping appearances by Brooks, Dierks Bentley, Jason Aldean, Kelsea Ballerini, and Chris Janson.


Earlier in the day, Bentley received Country Radio Seminar’s humanitarian award for his Miles & Music for Kids charity, along with a keynote Q&A. He touted his forthcoming album “The Mountain,” which he recorded in and around Telluride, Colorado, with the moderators showing some outdoorsy video imagery that resembled nothing so much as the marketing for the latest Justin Timberlake album, except that Bentley is actually from the West (Arizona, specifically).

Bentley spoke candidly about his own career struggles on the way to arena headliner status, including making the leap to sheds too early in his career, picking the wrong singles (“Bourbon in Kentucky,” which he freely reminded the assembled radio pros was a rare flop), and nearly nixing the right singles (he’d desperately wanted to leave his smash “Drunk on a Plane” off the otherwise serious album it was included on).