Throwing it way back in his new bar…
Garth Brooks finally held the grand opening for his new Nashville bar, Friends In Low Places, earlier this month, after a soft opening in November that welcomed visitors to the first two floors.
The four-story venue features a massive rooftop deck, a two-story honky tonk, and a kitchen that cranks out his wife Trisha Yearwood’s southern cooking (including their sour cream wedding cake…).
When you walk into the bar, the first thing you’ll probably notice are the two-story palm trees that run from the first floor to the balcony above the honky tonk. Or the massive LED screen behind the stage, which is situated along a side wall and is one of the biggest on Broadway.
But what you might not notice about the stage is that Garth’s signature logo is in that stage – and it’s actually made from a piece of Garth Brooks history.
In the new Amazon Prime docuseries, Friends In Low Places: Building the Oasis, which showcases the development of the bar, Garth revealed that he wanted to include something special in the stage to mimic the iconic circle at the Grand Ole Opry:
“When you play the Opry, you got that circle of wood from the Ryman right across the street. So these are the floorboards that Hank Williams and Patsy Cline stepped on, and you as an artist are sitting there on these same floorboards.”
So Garth asked his longtime stage builder, Brad Wathne, to find him a piece of a stage from one of his tours to include on the stage in his new bar.
And it turns out they had a piece of the stage from the biggest Garth Brooks concert of them all: His 1997 Central Park show.
That concert remains one of the largest American concerts of all time, with an estimated 1 million people in attendance for the massive show that featured special appearances from Billy Joel and Don McLean. It was released not only as an album but as a television special, and is still one of the most iconic moments in Garth’s long career.
So you can imagine that ol’ G was pretty excited to be able to include a piece of the stage in his bar:
“If you’re the entertainer, you’ll be standing on a circle G that came from Central Park, the same one we stood on there.
And it’s not to compare Garth Brooks or anything with the circle of wood at the Opry. But I swear if you play the Ryman there are – I don’t want to call them ghosts, but there are just things that help you.
If you’re standing on this circle G here in the Friends in Low Places bar, if this brings you comfort or not, I’m right there with you.”
The result was a lighted “circle G,” with his Garth’s recognizable logo, made out of the same stage that Garth performed on in front of 1 million people in Central Park nearly two decades ago.
Let’s just hope that it’s country music that’s coming from the stage when entertainers step onto that circle G.
