Garth Brooks adds another historic concert to his North Texas legacy at AT&T Stadium

Garth Brooks has made a career of special, one-of-a-kind concerts all across the world.

Many of those landmark moments came in North Texas, where some of his most famous nights on stage were preserved on film, including at Reunion Arena and Texas Stadium. Those venues are long gone but the musical memories remain forever.

On Saturday night at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, the iconic country artist took his magic to another level and left searing, indelible memories fans will be talking about for years.

A sold-out crowd nearing 90,000 was champing at the bit when Brooks, 60, finally took the stage at 9:30 p.m., about an hour later than expected. It was a classic Brooks entrance, rising from below the in-the-round stage from beneath the drum riser that began to lift as his band ripped into “All Day Long.”

Brooks’ 27-song set was peppered with his most-beloved tunes, including “The River,” which gave an early indication that the crowd came to sing along.

In fact, that was apparent before Brooks hit the stage. Trisha Yearwood, Brooks’ wife since 2005, played a four-song, 20-minute set, a first on this tour, she said. She finished with “How Do I Live,” with everyone in the stadium providing the background choir.

She joked “we’re going to do a few songs before Mr. Yearwood takes the stage.”

Brooks’ massive touring band also included multiple Nashville-based musicians who helped him write and record some of his most iconic songs during his 35-year recording career. He told fans that he wanted them to see how their songs affected crowds around the world. To do that, they needed to be on stage to see and hear what is sent back up to the stage. Mission accomplished.

Brooks introduced all of them, along with his usual traveling band members with unique stories and words of love for each. The intros were stretched over multiple songs, with Brooks providing specific details on which guitarist wrote this or that introduction on a song, or a blistering fiddle solo in another.

It was heartwarming and emotional, especially for some of the Nashville session players who are more at home in a solemn recording studio than a massive stadium tour filled with ecstatic Garth Brooks devotees.

Fans all around AT&T Stadium held up signs with song requests and Brooks dutifully tried to comply even for 30-year-old deep cuts, often hilariously cautioning fans that this “could be a train wreck.”

He spotted a woman requesting “New Way to Fly” from his 1990 album No Fences and played it because, he said, it was his wife’s favorite Garth song.

By the end of it, the woman was in tears and the crowd was singing along.

“Oh, so it’s going to be that kind of night is it? Then I say the hell with the rules, let’s just play everything then, shall we,” Brooks said between the roars, his and his fans.

He didn’t quite play everything, but he hit most of the gems over about two hours, 15 minutes, that have put him in rarefied territory in the history of popular music. It’s not just the great songs in his canon, of course. It’s what he brings to the stage that also has made Brooks one of the world’s most successful music artist.

His light red button down dress shirt slowly became a dark red dress shirt as Brooks made his way around to all four sides of the stage. By the halfway mark, he was continuously forced to wipe the sweat from his brow, slinging a comically large amount of moisture from his fingers. Someone get the man an Elvis towel!

Throughout the evening, he kept referring back to the start of his career, name-checking local bars and clubs and the important role North Texas played before he shot to worldwide fame with his 1989 debut album.

“I’m a lucky man. Let me tell ya, this is where we all started,” he said. “This is where the first gig was, it’s where all of them were. We lived here the first two years of our career. It’s a blessing you guys gave us back then when we were brand new and you treated us already like a superstar and now we’re a really old act and you treat us like we’re brand new. So sweet.”

Near the end of the night, he told the audience that the show was being recorded for a future live release and apologized for waiting so long to finally play AT&T Stadium, which opened in 2009.

“[Jerry Jones’ family] have been trying to get us out here for a decade and I tell you, we should have come here a helluva lot sooner than this,” he screamed.

After a particularly rowdy rendition of “Friends in Low Places,” Brooks expressed how important it was for him to live up to the expectations from his fans in North Texas.

“When you play in a town where you pretty much started your career, you want them to be the most proud of you, but you know time is going to catch up with you at some point,” he said as the band closed out “The Dance,” perhaps his most well-known song at the end of the main set. “But may I say this now, and trust me with social [media], I know I’m going to hear it again, so you better be speaking the truth. I’ll tell you this, Dallas-Fort Worth, Arlington, this is the greatest trip to this city I have ever had.

“Where it all started! It’s full circle! People, my life, as of tonight, my career is complete,” Brooks exclaimed with joy and a hint of perhaps an eye towards the end of massive touring. “Thank you very much, Dallas! thank you very much, Fort Worth! I love you, Texas!”

At the start of the encore, Brooks was back to honoring requests from the crowd, including a brief but touching “The Red Strokes,” with Brooks on acoustic guitar. “She’s Every Woman” followed and the combination of spontaneity and the spareness in contrast to the full-band fireworks on the rest of the show added deep poignancy.

Garth Brooks setlist from AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, July 30, 2022

1. All Day Long

2. Rodeo

3. Two of a Kind, Workin’ on a Full House

4. The Beaches of Cheyenne

5. Two Piña Coladas

6. The River

7. Fishin’ in the Dark (Nitty Gritty Dirt Band cover)

8. New Way to Fly

9. Papa Loved Mama

10. The Thunder Rolls

11. Unanswered Prayers

12. If Tomorrow Never Comes

13. That Summer

14. Ain’t Goin’ Down (‘Til the Sun Comes Up)

15. Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old)

16. Callin’ Baton Rouge (Oak Ridge Boys cover)

17. Shameless (Billy Joel cover)

18. Friends in Low Places

19. The Dance

Encore

20. The Red Strokes (Snippet)

21. She’s Every Woman

22. We Shall Be Free

23. Longneck Bottle

24. Wild Horses

25. It’s Your Song

26. Shallow (with Trisha Yearwood) (Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper cover)

27. Standing Outside the Fire (with Trisha Yearwood)