Garth Brooks made a lot of fans happy with his “Yukon Jack” pop up show in Denver, Colorado last week. And if it were up to him, he would have done back to back shows under the alias if the security at the bar and local authorities would have allowed it.
Brooks is currently out on the road for the first time in a long time for his Blame It All On My Roots Tour. The “Friends In Low Places” singer has been announcing his concert dates one city at a time (he just recently added Salt Lake City, Utah to the list), and the city he visited last weekend was Denver, Colorado.
Fans have flocked to his concerts thus far, and many are citing his tour date rollout as a successful way to beat “Blue Dot Fever.” With every stop along the tour, Garth and his team has had to add additional shows to meet demand. There was a total of four scheduled for Ball Arena (last Friday through last Sunday), and if fans didn’t catch one of those, they also had the opportunity to see Brooks play a small, intimate venue the night before those arena shows kicked off.
As long as they knew that one of his alter egos is “Yukon Jack.”
A smaller bar and music venue called The Grizzly Rose in the Denver area hyped up a “Yukon Jack” performance in the days leading up to Thursday, September 3. And to be clear… it wasn’t ever officially announced that Garth Brooks was on the bill. One of his alter egos was (and no, it’s not Chris Gaines).
Sure enough, when it came time for “Yukon Jack” to take the stage, it was the one and only Garth Brooks:
@whiskeyriff #whiskeyriff ♬ original sound – Whiskey Riff
He had used that alias in the past, and he’s actually from Yukon, Oklahoma. News quickly got out that “Yukon Jack” was Garth, and it was even referred to as the “worst-kept” secret in Colorado.
Though the surprise show did have to deal with some heat, and unfortunately some heat-related illnesses, it was a massive success, and many people were turned away at the door of the Grizzly Rose. Scott Durland, the owner of the Grizzly Rose, spoke with 9News in Colorado and explained that it was Garth Brooks who reached out – with only a couple of weeks of heads up – to set up the surprise concert:
“You’ve seen that he talks about the Grizzly Rose a lot. He’s really good to us. So, um, of course we said, ‘Yeah, absolutely, there’s no question.’ And so, we just had to make that work. Problem was, we couldn’t leak it. Like nobody, nobody could know. And so we couldn’t even tell our staff.”
As previously mentioned… it didn’t take long for everyone to figure out what a “Yukon Jack” concert really meant.
And when the night did finally come around, Garth Brooks was thrilled with the turnout. That being said, he felt horrible that thousands of people weren’t able to fit into the 2,000-person venue to see him perform. He apparently asked the owner of the Grizzly Rose if it would be possible to “flip the building” and perform two shows instead of one:
“When he came in, he walked past the line outside, and we’d already shut off the doors, so those people could no longer come in, we were full. And the first thing he asked me was, ‘Let’s flip this building,’ and I said, ‘What does that mean?’ He said, ‘How about I do an hour? And then you get everybody out, and then we let the people that are waiting in line come in and I’ll do another hour.'”
Not a bad idea in theory, but the Adams County Sheriff’s Office quickly shut that down, citing security reasons. Armed with hindsight, there were probably some heat-related concerns as well.
Hopefully some of the people that got turned away were able to see him during one of this four sold-out shows in Denver. Clearly there’s still a big demand for Garth Brooks, and the creative way he’s approached his Blame It All On My Roots Tour and its rollout – including secret pop-up concerts – seems to really be working for the country star.
“Two Pina Coladas”
