Garth Brooks postpones his Charlotte stadium concert. But the new date may surprise you.
You figured this was coming, Garth Brooks fans, and on Tuesday morning, the announcement was finally made: The country star’s sold-out concert at Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium, originally scheduled for May 2, has been postponed.
Like every other big public event in the time of the coronavirus.
But it is already back on the board with a new date, and that new date is closer than you might expect. Brooks has rescheduled his only 2020 stop in the Carolinas for Saturday, June 13 — a delay of just six weeks.
Now, you never know what might happen between now and then — and it certainly could get pushed back again if the pandemic gets worse and stays bad. But it’s a positive sign from a guy who clearly wants to return to the road as quickly as possible.
“Like so many people right now, I just want to get back to what I do,” Garth Brooks said in a statement. “Knowing these shows are eventually going to happen makes me happy.”
(In the same press release, the tour announced that his May 16 concert at Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati has been rescheduled for June 27.)
The news comes on the heels of the postponement of the Billy Joel concert, which was moved from Saturday, April 18 to Saturday, April 17, 2021.
That means Brooks’ show — assuming it happens on June 13 — will mark the first concert at Bank of America Stadium in almost eight years. (The venue hasn’t hosted a concert since country stars Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw brought their “Brothers of the Sun Tour” to the stadium in June 2012. The Rolling Stones played the only other show there — in October 1997, back when it was Ericsson Stadium.)
And — again, assuming the show happens, but also that most everyone shows up — it’ll be the largest paid crowd in the history of Bank of America Stadium. After tickets for the Charlotte concert originally went on sale last November, he sold out 74,000 of them in 90 minutes. They’ll be honored on the new date, so just hang onto them.
This is, by the way, the third in a string of high-profile postponements for the stadium, which last fall pledged to get back into the concert business. In addition to Joel’s postponement, The Rolling Stones bowed out of their July 1 concert at the stadium (their makeup date is TBA). As of now, Def Leppard and Mötley Crüe are still on the BofA schedule for July 11.
Brooks, 58, hasn’t been to town since he played a pair of sold-out shows (attended by 48,000-plus) on back-to-back nights at the old Charlotte Coliseum in March 1998 — during the decade in which he cranked out a slew of No. 1 hits, from “If Tomorrow Never Comes” and “The Dance” to “Two Piña Coladas” and “To Make You Feel My Love.”
He was last in the Carolinas in November 2016, when he played three shows at Greenville, S.C.’s Bon Secours Wellness Arena as part of “The Garth Brooks World Tour.” That tour smashed records previously held by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and himself, and included 390 concerts in 79 cities, with 6.3 million tickets sold — making it the biggest North American tour in history and the biggest American tour in the world.
