Tens of thousands of Louisianans flocked to Baton Rouge Saturday night to see famous country singer Garth Brooks perform in Tiger Stadium, a concert so groundbreaking that it will likely go down as one of the greatest nights in Death Valley’s history — after all, it already made history as the second earthquake recorded by local seismographs just from the yelling and cheering of fans in the stadium.
Louisiana natives and LSU students alike are no stranger to his acclaimed music or cultural impact on the Red Stick capital city. So when he announced his performance in Tiger Stadium as part of his stadium tour last December, over 100,000 tickets sold out in mere minutes, causing attendance to rival even the most competitive football games of the legendary 2019 season.
The concert was the biggest in the nation since the start of COVID-19 and the second-largest stadium concert in North American history, behind George Strait’s 2014 farewell concert at the AT&T Stadium in Dallas, Texas, according to Brooks.
In layman’s terms, the hype for Brooks’ first performance in Tiger Stadium was unreal.
“Paint your face, bring your helmet, and bring your cup,” Brooks told reporters at a press conference Friday, predicting Saturday’s concert would be the “largest honky tonk.” Although he joked about how he could sell out a crowd in minutes, he made sure to ask everyone’s name, shake hands, and answer their questions sincerely.
Brooks said his favorite thing about Baton Rouge was “getting to be home to see those faces… those familiar faces made you kind of settle down and play.”
Saturday was a busy day for LSU’s campus before Brooks’ arrival — the university also hosted a baseball game, track meet and softball game, all at the same time. Within hours of the concert’s start, roads leading to campus were plagued with bumper-to-bumper traffic as the masses migrated. Brooks undoubtedly shut down South Baton Rouge for the day.
By the concert’s start, the massive crowd’s enthusiasm was sky high.
“I had never seen Tiger Stadium so packed or so loud. My ears were ringing,” said graphic design senior Gillian Reeves.
After opener Mitch Rossell performed, the lights dimmed until an Amazon Music logo appeared on the massive projectors above the center stage, where the audience heard a voice announce, “Alexa, play Garth Brooks in Baton Rouge.”
Moments later, the drum set in the center slowly rose up, and Brooks shot out from underneath. The stadium immediately erupted into ear-splitting applause as he opened with “All Day Long.”
The concert could have lasted all night long and nobody would have been disappointed in the slightest. Song after song, Tiger Stadium was electric with the audience singing, dancing and having the absolute time of their life while Brooks ran around the stage like a madman, singing his heart out.
“Oh, this is crazy. Are you kidding me?” Brooks asked the biggest party in all of Louisiana on that Saturday night.
Early in the show, he jokingly had bet the audience if they could beat him in loudness, to which they gladly accepted. He commented on how much he loved that everyone was “nuts in this house.”
Calling the 102,321 audience members nuts was an understatement by the time Garth Brooks asked, much to the audience’s delight, “Is it time?”
Then, the 1993 cover that forever changed the city began. “Callin’ Baton Rouge” was by far the landmark moment of the concert, causing fans to scream at the top of their lungs and stomp their cowboy boots on the ground.
Brooks’ guitar fiddling soon caused the second earthquake in Tiger Stadium’s history, which was recorded by a nearby seismograph in Nicholson Hall. The first earthquake was recorded in October 1988 during an LSU football game against Auburn, when LSU scored a game-winning touchdown with less than two points left in the game and 79,000 fans cheered until the ground shook.
Garth ecstatically cried out “L-S-U” at the conclusion of the song, and he, along with the stadium crowd, pumped his fist into the air. Brooks, out of breath, explained why singing “Callin’ Baton Rouge” at LSU meant so much to him.
“That was better than I could have ever dreamed it’d be,” Brooks said. “Thanks for letting us be a small piece of thread in the family and the fabric of LSU Tigers’ Death Valley.”
Though the Baton Rouge anthem wasn’t the final song of the night. Afterward he offered phenomenal performances of “Friends in Low Places” and “The Dance” before the band departed and the country singer took song requests for solo performances.
“I understand why you guys are national champions at everything,” Brooks said in appreciation of the audience.
The band later returned, and Garth performed a show-stopping duet of “Shallow” from “A Star Is Born” with his wife, Trish Yearwood. Yearwood sang solo before leaving with the rest of the band, but Garth decided to stick around and sing a bit more with just his guitar.
The audience seemed intoxicated from the music by the final song of the night, a cover of “American Pie” by Don McLean. He stooped down to the front row and embraced a young fan holding a sign saying, “six more rounds of chemo to go, thank you for everything your music has done.”
“I have seen him in concert seven times, and this was definitely the best concert of his I’ve been to,” chemical engineering senior Carson McBroom said.
As the concert wrapped up and the never-ending Baton Rouge traffic commenced once again, Brooks tweeted that his LSU concert was “better than [his] wildest dreams.”
