Going Home 35-Year-Old Country Music Star Garth Brooks Looks To Return To His Oklahoma Roots

Garth Brooks, in the middle of a three-year world tour, revealed that he’s thinking about leaving Nashville to spend more time with his family.

“The first thing I’ll remind you is that my main gig is to take care of my children,” the country star said during a news conference prior to his six sold-out shows here earlier this month. “My folks were there for me always. So the time has come for me to cut back, to be with my family.”

The 35-year-old Oklahoma native added that while the country music capital has been a good place to call home, he and his wife Sandy want to raise their three young daughters elsewhere.

“We’ve been looking at land in Oklahoma and southern Colorado - we’re looking to find a good deal on some land now,” he said with a laugh. “(Oldest daughter) Taylor is almost 6 now and we’re looking for her to be back home, going to school with the children whose families we have known for years.”

Meanwhile, the singer is setting attendance records on his tour, recently selling more than 139,000 tickets in less than four hours for eight shows in Chicago. The tour passed the 3 million mark in ticket sales last month.

And Brooks’ latest single, a duet with longtime friend Trisha Yearwood titled “In Another’s Eyes,” from Yearwood’s greatest hits album, recently reached the top 10 on Billboard’s country singles chart.

“There are two females I take advice from in my career,” he said. “One is my mom and the other is Trisha Yearwood. I’d like to do a series of duet albums with Trisha. There has never been a series of duet albums in country music. What (George) Jones and (Tammy) Wynette did was an album together, but there has never been a series of duet albums like the ones Trisha and I want to do.”

Brooks has also completed work on a new album of his own, although the singer said negotiations with his record company over a release date are at a standstill, with no date in sight.

“The new album is titled ‘Sevens,’ but if (the release date) goes past 1997, I’m going to change the title to ‘Eights,”’ he quipped.

Though tribute albums are the vehicle du jour for country artists these days, Brooks said he is not ready to jump on that bandwagon anytime soon.

“I don’t do many tribute albums because everybody else in Nashville is doing them,” he said. “I did the KISS tribute album, but Nashville has so many tribute albums that I really don’t want to be on one right now.

“Now, would Garth like to do a single on a George Strait tribute album?” he asked. “Sure I would. Also, would Garth want to do a single for a James Taylor tribute album? You bet he would.”

Taylor’s music, in fact, has been so influential to Brooks that he even named his first child, Taylor Mayne, after the singer-songwriter.

“She is named after James Taylor and the state of Maine where, let’s say she was ‘thought of’ before she was born,” Brooks said with a laugh.

The singer, who won his third entertainer of the year award from the Country Music Association last month, also noted that had he not pursued a music career, he just might have fallen in with the wrong crowd.

“If I wasn’t performing country music, well, you might know my name in a bad way,” he said. “I would have found something else to do. I might have become known to people because I got into trouble. I love athletics, so I probably would have tried to go into athletics, but I just might have gotten into trouble.”