‘Are we doing the right thing?’: Garth Brooks readies for sold-out Arrowhead concert
Standing inside Arrowhead Stadium, Garth Brooks held a microphone and took off his surgical mask as he spoke with members of the media ahead of his sold-out concert, which will be held Saturday.
The last year-and-a-half has not been fun, he said.
“What happens now with this recent spike, everybody’s kind of, you know, worried about, ‘Are we doing the right thing?’ I’m one of them,” Brooks said. “I’m trying to figure it out as we go.”
Brooks’ concert will still be held despite the dramatic rise in COVID-19 cases across the Kansas City metro area. Hospitalizations are rising. Hospital capacity is decreasing. But the sold-out concert will still go on as planned as more than 74,500 tickets were sold — a record for an Arrowhead concert.
When asked if he thought about decreasing the capacity number, the 59-year-old country music star said the problem was there were already several stadiums that were sold out. It wouldn’t have been fair to allow more people at one concert and less at another one.
“That’s kind of the assessment part,” said Brooks, who is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Earlier this week, Brooks announced he was reassessing whether to continue his stadium tour, due to the rise in COVID-19 cases, a rise brought on in part from the highly-contagious delta variant. Brooks’ team said that it will use its scheduled three-week break after his Aug. 14 concert in Lincoln, Nebraska, to assess what to do with the remainder of the shows.
A Jackson County official questioned if the city should cancel the show, but the Jackson County legislature doesn’t have jurisdiction over the event. Kansas City does.
“My job here is to first follow state rules,” Brooks said. “Then you’ve got to follow stadium rules, which as we all know stadium rules change every day, and then we have our own in-tour rules that we follow as well.”
Several safety guidelines have been put in place for the concert. Guests will need to wear masks in enclosed public areas of the stadium unless they are eating or drinking. Masks will be given to guests who don’t have one. Kansas City passed a new mask mandate requiring masks to be worn indoors regardless of vaccination status. The mask mandate, however, doesn’t apply to outdoor spaces.
“I would much rather see masks because I can hear you fine through this,” Brooks said as he held his mask in his hand. “But my thing is I want you to have fun, right, so just respect somebody next to you that is wearing a mask and you’re not, and do the same the other way around.”
Unvaccinated people who go to the Garth Brooks concert will have to quarantine for seven days with a negative test result or 10 days if they don’t get tested, according to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s travel quarantine list. This applies to Kansas residents and anyone who goes to Kansas after the event. Those who are fully vaccinated don’t need to quarantine.
The show will also hold a vaccination event in order to help more people get vaccinated. The Kansas City Health Department will operate a mobile vaccination clinic from 3-7 p.m. in the parking lot.
There is also the chance to win premium floor seats if they get vaccinated at the event. It comes as a push to increase the vaccination rate across the Kansas City metro area. As of Thursday, 39.8% of the city’s population was fully vaccinated. On Friday, the White House announced that 50% of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated.
The vaccination event was not Brooks’ idea, he said, but he loves that the vaccination clinic will be there. Brooks then said he’s fully vaccinated and so is every team member on the tour.
“I encourage you to get vaccinated,” he said.
This story was originally published August 6, 2021 at 6:55 PM.
