Country music superstar Garth Brooks announced this morning that he will be embarking on his first world tour in over a decade next year. Although the singer has been extremely vague about when he’ll hit the road next, he decided to finally open up and tell fans what they wanted to hear.
“You know what, since it’s you and since we’ve had a history forever, let’s announce it. We’re going on a world tour in 2014,” Brooks told GMA‘s Robin Roberts while promoting his new box set Blame It All on My Roots: Five Decades of Influences. “I can’t believe I just did that but you are a doll.”
Brooks had been reluctant to tour in the past because he wanted to focus all of his time on his children before they went off to college.
“Our baby is a senior in high school,” he said. “My children are off on their own so the guilt of not being there…I’m a phone call dad now. ‘Hey Dad, I love you, can I borrow some money?’”
While the country superstar has played a handful of gigs across the country, he hasn’t toured since 2000. In 2009 he began a residency at the Wynn Las Vegas which allowed him to perform shows on the weekends, yet spend time with his family in Oklahoma during the week. Although the residency ended last month with a television special, Brooks promised that he would be bringing his full band back for two shows in January.
“Wynn has allowed me to keep that room as a laboratory type of thing so I’m going to bring the band out there and let the band experience this room,” Brooks said.
“[It’s] very naked,”he added about his one-man show residency. ”You’re just out there with you and your guitar and you depend on the people to kind of take care of you and they have my whole career and so Vegas was just a love-fest.”
No dates have been released yet for the upcoming world tour, but Brooks hinted that his wife, Trisha Yearwood, may be the opening act.
“It sure feels good to get to throw your hat back in the ring,” Brooks said. “All my babies are fine with it. Ms. Yearwood is fine with it. So now I get to do what I love to do, which is play music. I get to be with the person I want to be with, which is Ms. Yearwood.”