Garth Laments Fading Honky Tonks

Garth Brooks photo courtesy of Capitol Nashville

March 31, 2008 - Garth Brooks premiered his latest video, "Midnight Sun," on GAC last Friday, and it includes some concert footage shot at a club called the Country Bumpkin.

Garth used to be a bouncer at a club in Oklahoma, so he's quite familiar with the Honky Tonk scene, but he's also concerned that there are fewer of those kinds of venues, which could have a negative effect on country music in the long run.

"One of the sad things that I feel bad [for] the artists today is they don't have those places to grow up in, to go out and see these people at 20 at a time, 30 at a time," he says. "They're forced into these 17,000-seat arenas with five other names, or they're forced at these free radio shows that have 60,000 people out there on blankets. That's tough. You go to the Honky Tonks and one at a time you shake those hands, you hug those people and they have you sign their tapes that they taped the record off of because they couldn't afford it, and you're realizing that these people love what you do... I don't see how you replace that, and I sure as hell don't see how you replace it in the school of learning, of coming up."

It's appropriate that Garth chose a club called the Country Bumpkin for his video shoot. The 1974 Cal Smith classic "Country Bumpkin," named Song of the Year by both the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music, has been tabbed by Garth as his favorite country song.