Seven Question About GRS

I didn't get these done last night...too much 5th grade homework, LOL. I get internet at the house tomorrow, so if not today, then tomorrow, I will get these 7 answered. I will put my Garth Story & message up here in it's own post this weekend too, thanks to everyone who asked about that.


1. Anonymous said...

You alluded to a tidbit regarding Taylor Swift/Keith Urban during your Garth postings. What was that about?

In our morning session, before the press conference, Garth mentioned Taylor as being someone who impressed him, and who his girls listen to. Some of you remember Mandy, who has been a longtime friend of the family (he actually talked with us in depth about his history with her, which was really neat.) Anyway, Mandy works for Big Machine now, and lives in OK a few blocks from Garth, and the girls have Taylor Swift posters.

Keith he REALLY talked a lot about in our morning session, as being someone he was watching - as a competitor and a fan. Talked about him being the complete package - singer, songwriter, guitar player, good looking guy, who knows how to entertain an audience. I think he touched on it a little in the PC. It's funny, because the giant elephant in the room when current entertainers come up was Kenny Chesney, who, because of his massive touring, has continuously been referred to as the new, or next, Garth. But despite everyone expecting it to come up, Garth never mentioned him - and no one brought him up by name.

Ok, now that I answered your question, you have to tell me your name. :-)

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2. Kathleen said...
You wrote about watching Trisha on the Opry with Garth Saturday night. I'd love to know what that was like!

It was COOL. If you didn't see the Opry Live, Trisha performed 2 songs on tv. So we're out at the party, food is being served, bars are open, people are wandering around checking things out. Garth music had been playing, but then they switched the biggest tv monitor over to Grand Ole Opry Live and fed that audio to the house. Trisha came out and performed her latest single. Because of the proximity of where my table was to the tv, I was in the front, and a bunch of people, probably 40-50 gathered around. When it was over of course, we all applauded, and then I turned around to go back to finish my dinner, and about 5 feet behind me was Garth. I'm thinking "oh how cute, I bet he was happy to see the crowd gathered around watching her. " I go back and finish my dinner.

So when her 2nd appearance comes up later I was down by the stage looking at the stuff on display, and she popped up on tv again. So I take a few steps back to watch, and Scott Borchetta comes up and stands next to me to watch, and then Garth comes and stands next to him. We stand there a minute watching, commenting how great she looks, yada yada yada, and then Garth kind of gets this "light bulb" moment, looks around, and grabs the photographer. He climbs over the velvet ropes in front of the stage, giggling the whole time, and stands in front of the tv fawning over her and gets his picture taken. He was all proud of himself, and the photog came over and showed Scott and I the picture. It was too cute - she snapped it right when the tv had a closeup of Trisha's face and it looked like she was looking right at Garth. He said something about now he could prove he really did watch her performance. :-)

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3. marissa said...

One of your tid-bits was "Garth not singing on Trisha's album", (or something like that), could you talk about that?

Well first off, I can tell you that Garth is REALLY happy that Trisha is REALLY happy. He talked about how excited she was about the new music and how she feels like she's new again. And he's very much into letting her do HER thing, and not be overshadowed by being Mrs. GB. He did talk about how it was a "great gig" being Mr. Yearwood. I can still hear the tone in his voice when he re-iterated "It's a REALLY great gig." In fact, at one point he called her his "breath."

But what I was probably referencing was something he said in closing session. He was talking about her new album, and how Trisha did a duet with Keith Urban. And Garth said "Now, I'm a jealous guy... but they sound GREAT together" and he raved about the song, and how well their voices went together, and how he couldn't wait until we heard it.

And then, you know how Garth is normally really self-deprecating to a fault? Like, he'd say things like he puts the girls report cards on the fridge - because that's where he spends most of his time, or them not airbrushing enough grey out of his hair. Well after raving about Trisha and Keith's duet he kind of pulls himself up and sticks his fingers in his belt loops and says (in a mock, 'no I'm not jealous at all 'tone) "Besides, I don't need to help her, I've got my own album to sell." The whole room cracked up.

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4. bll said...

I'd love the scoop on Blue Rose's 'Barn'.

Well a picture is worth a thousand words, and they told us not to take photos, however... there is an AWESOME photo album here that Moni sent me a link to that shows you a LOT of the barn.

For starters, this barn is the size of my entire block. It has the most G-normous "g" on the outside of it that you can imagine. There are garage doors at both ends that you literally could pull a semi through. When you walk in the stage pieces were set up on the right, and they ran the entire length of the barn. The drum pod, the piano he came up through, a bunch of instruments, etc. were up there. The bulk of the barn was a riding ring - at one point they had chips on the floor. To the left were a few stalls for horses -- maybe 4, and a couple of the "stalls" had been outfitted with displays. Awards in one, gutars in another. The piano from the Red Strokes video was there, one of the guitars that was smashed for the tv show... One thing you don't see in the photos is all around the walls of the riding rink were the sales certifications - from all over the world. I saw one from New Zealand that had a tiki on it! I **so** wanted to pull out my camera and get a photo of it. Found them from Australia and Ireland, and zillions from the US.

His bus was parked at the far end -- this must have been a very early bus - he had a bedroom at the back, but still shared it with the band. It was VERY blue and very masculine - not a "take the family on the road with you" bus.

Further up the left side was the sports area. There was a raquetball court and a basketball court and a kitchen and a locker room. There was a second floor game room with a pool table and kitchenette and bathroom that looked down into both courts. The place hadn't been redecorated in the past 10 years probably, LOL - blue shag carpeting hasn't been in style for a while.

They brought in air conditioning for the barn via these massive machines, normally it's just used for storage and the plaques are kept somewhere with climate control. I talked for a while with Mark Greenwood, who is incredibly sweet - he had to hang ALL those zillion plaques for the party. I can't imagine how hard he and Tracy had to work to get the place looking so spectacular - they did an amazing job!

The food was VERY frou-frou. A carving station, an risotto bar, lots of really unique salads. And YUMMY deserts.

Oh, and out behind the barn was a tractor. LOL

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5. Anonymous said...

Can you tell us, what is the track listing for The ultimate hits and what new videos have been filmed and will it be released internationally?

I do not have the track listing, so I don't have the complete list of videos either. I know they've done one for Shameless, and I know that Stillwater was involved in at least one. However, I did specifically have a conversation with Bob Doyle about international availability, because I know it was such an issue with WalMart. He's telling me they're working on it... there seems to be some issues with the DVD (I assume a compatibility with foreign players), but it will be available at all the online retailers, which, if my memory serves, places like Amazon will ship internationally. So it should be a lot easier to get this time.

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6. fuzzwuzz said...

Hi Joyce. Were you able to ask Garth how his scriptwriting is going these days???

Yes, he said he still works on it, and it's a good creative outlet for him, but he doesn't have anything that's been "green lighted." He was asked in one of our sessions about acting, and he said the only movie he's ever read for was The Green Mile. Jon and I had a separate conversation with Bob about Chris Gaines in which I learned a lot about how it all came down, and Bob told us he learned 2 important things from the experience:
1. Just because you make music for a movie, don't count on the music winding up in the movie.
2. Don't mess with an icon.
I was sure I'd heard a rumor at one point that Garth was working on The Lamb script, but that apparently isn't the case.

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7. ~Ann~ said...

Did he seem more at ease when he played music? Was it like riding a bike for him? Or was he nervous and rusty?

It was absolutely like riding a bike. He joked about feeling more comfortable with a guitar between him and us, so he could let his gut out. But he was really awesome, crafting stories and using songs... about his musical influences and songs that he borrowed from to write his songs. How if you listen to "That Summer" you hear Bob Seger, etc. Some of the songs he played pieces of were "Mama Tried," "Piano Man" "Night Moves" and "Wild World." It was neat hearing him talk about how he was raised around country music, and how every day when they'd get in the car his dad was playing Haggard and Jones. He talked about the music all his brothers and sisters played, and how he got to the point where it wasn't cool to like the music his dad liked, so he discovered Queen and Kiss, and then later the singer/songwriters. He talked about Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley - oh and George Strait, he performed a little of "Unwound." He said "It was that day that I knew what I wanted to do. I already knew I wanted to play. But I didn't look good in makeup." (This came after talking about Kiss, and coming around to deciding to play country music.)

It was neat hearing him talk about how the Urban Cowboy era was a bad time... that all they knew was it was driving the price of Wranglers through the roof. At one point he played a little of "Mama He's Crazy" and said "The second you hear Wynonna's voice, you go 'Who the Hell is THAT?"

My favorite quote though from this session was when he talked about crediting all his influences with giving him the Garth Brooks 'sound': "My favorite thing about Garth Brooks music is that I would love to hear other people sing it." Meaning he hears those influences in his music -- "When you hear this .... (plays an old song) you gotta think this (plays his song.)

Another neat thing he talked about - I can't remember which session - was his mom. He told us that someone back in Oklahoma had some old recordings of Colleens that she gave to him, and he now had his mom singing on CD. He said he played them for Trisha and she said "I had no idea!" Not that his mom was a singer, but that she was that GOOD of a singer. He said easily he'd put his mom as one of the ten best female vocalists he'd ever heard.