A Garth Brooks concert is a mix of curiously intriguing elements: part rowdy inspiration, part shrewd calculation, part painstaking precision, part go-it-alone intimacy.
The country music powerhouse brought them all Saturday night to Ford Field for the biggest Detroit show of his career, playing to more than 70,000 to set a concert-attendance record at the 18-year-old venue.
The concert, his first here in five years, found him performing in the round and debuting an impressive new stage — a 17,000-square-foot expanse with a cube of giant video screens overhead, supported by tall LED-lined columns.
The show was supersize and carefully plotted: Just before the the two-hour-plus festivities kicked off with the party anthems “All Day Long” and “Rodeo," the crowd was informed the concert would be recorded. Brooks later confirmed onstage it will be part of a live album, the third of his career.
His famous fixation with detail showed itself midway through the set. The next song, he explained, will actually become the album’s closing track, and so it needed a certain response. Brooks then directed fans to structure their cheering: Please get intense when the vocal kicks in. (The song turned out to be “All-American Kid,” a relatively little-performed track from the 2014 album "Man Against Machine.")
It was a night when even the spontaneity seemed studied. Still, Brooks and his band delivered well-executed renditions of well-chiseled hits, eliciting earsplitting roar after earsplitting roar from the Detroit crowd.
This wasn’t an audience that needed much buttering up — tickets had sold out in 90 minutes — but Brooks helped his cause in the Detroit Lions’ house by donning a No. 20 Barry Sanders shirt. Chants of “Barry! Barry!” broke out across the stadium as he paused to explain the wardrobe choice.
“You guys got the greatest player in NFL history, in my opinion,” he said of the retired running back.
At 58 and unapologetically sporting a bit of belly under the tightly tucked Sanders jersey, Brooks was a hard-working, sweat-soaked dynamo, scampering across the stage and playing to all corners of the stadium. He was 30 minutes in before slowing things down, when the ballad “The River” transformed the venue into an ocean of twinkling cell-phone lights.
Brooks is a master strategist in the craft of audience connection — a performer who has scrutinized, analyzed and zeroed in on what clicks. Saturday at Ford Field came off like the most important, exciting night of his life ... just like it's come off every other time he's manned a concert stage. The gushing might be overboard, the tricks well-worn, but he sells the fantasy of the moment like few others.
At a Garth Brooks concert, you’re not just watching a big star in a big situation. You’re watching a big star who knows you’re watching him in a big situation, and he's contrived the right moves to play up that bond: His voice cracking up in a show of awe when tens of thousands start singing along to a ballad. Chuckling and shaking his head during high-energy tunes, as if in disbelief at fans' fervor. Yelping and exclaiming that he’s got the best job in the world — yes, thanks to you.
Another demonstration of his savvy came later on Saturday evening, when a smattering of concertgoers hit the aisles during the encore to beat the crowd rush. It's standard at nearly every big concert. Performers typically ignore it or — once in a blue moon — playfully mock it.
Brooks, instead, cheerfully bid them good night. It was a subtle but telling maneuver: Shucks, he gets it, we're having fun here but we all have obligations, it's all good.
Nobody is going to leave a Garth show feeling regret on his watch.
Cynical or not, three decades on, it's a brand of showmanship that clearly works. And then there's the ace card in his back pocket: Brooks’ songs have aged well. That musical durability served him well Saturday, whether on a 31-year-old ballad (“If Tomorrow Never Comes”) or on dramatic set pieces such as “The Thunder Rolls.”
Alongside the bursts of Tom-Cruise-on-Oprah’s-couch exuberance, there were moments of time-tested sincerity. “The Dance” reliably dug deep, while midtempo material like “Shameless” and “That Summer” added their own textures to the affair.
“Callin’ Baton Rouge” was a fiddle-fueled stomp and a showcase for Brooks’ band, who nearly matched him in upbeat energy throughout the night. “Friends in Low Places” was a dependable showstopper, with streams of confetti to punctuate the point.
Once upon a time, Brooks was the force who turned country music into arena pageantry. In the 1990s, that made him one of the “bad guys” in the traditional country world, as he said at a Friday press conference. But it also made him a megastar and a game-changer: Attend a big country show in 2020, with its production frills and rock energy, and you’re seeing the hand of Garth Brooks.
Amid Saturday's high-flying energy, some of the real highlights came during a quiet wind-down encore. Alone with his acoustic guitar and voice, Brooks performed deeper catalog cuts and a cover of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” — providing a handful of genuine pin-drop moments after a loud, rambunctious, meticulously designed affair. A scaled-down Garth Brooks show might be something to see.
Contact Detroit Free Press music writer Brian McCollum: 313-223-4450 or bmccollum@freepress.com.
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Garth Brooks brings hits, high energy and a time-tested game plan for 70,000 at Ford Field - Detroit Free Press
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