Garth Brooks Admits He Still Gets Nervous Performing

Garth Brooks is currently crossing the country on his World Tour, accompanied by his wife, Trisha Yearwood. But the veteran performer, who returned to the spotlight this year after retiring in 2001 to raise his three daughters, admits he still fights his nerves every time he takes the stage.

"[I] still get nervous," he tells Indiana radio station WKDQ. "I hope there's never a show where [I] don't, but it's more, the word now becomes 'anxious.' It's just, like, wanting to get out there and wanting to find out how it's going to go and all this stuff.

"The first night in Chicago, I looked over at Ms. Yearwood, and I said, 'Are you scared?' She said, 'I'm scared to death.' I said, 'Me too,'" Brooks continues. "It was weird."

Brooks kicked off his tour with a series of shows in Chicago, Ill., followed by stops in several other cities, including Atlanta, Ga., Jacksonville, Fla., Minneapolis, Minn., and St. Louis, Mo. But while the Oklahoma native now has multiple concerts under his belt, he says he is still tweaking his performance on stage each night.

"I'd like to say I remember the first show. I really don't. But the second show, I can tell you everything about, and every show since then," he concedes. "You start to feel, 'OK, I remember this.' 'Oh, this feels good.' 'Oh, this doesn't feel that great.' All these things, you start to put them in your head.

"This thing is just starting to crack open," Brooks adds. "You can start to see some light, and you're starting to catch up, if that makes any sense."

Brooks also notes that having Yearwood along helps his show in more ways than one.

"She's magic," he boasts. "When she enters the stage in the arena, when it's her time in the show to come on, you can tell, all of the band members kind of stand up a little straighter because they all know we're going to a different level now. And then when she leaves, she's kind of left you up there, and now you better work your butt off because you don't want the show to drop back down.

"It's great," Brooks says. "She challenges me, and my thing is, I hope I challenge her back."

Brooks' tour will continue in 2015 in Tulsa, Okla., which will allow the tunesmith to enjoy an extended holiday celebration with some of his closest friends.

"The great thing that I can't wait to see -- there's a lot of friends we made that never had seen us as a musician or an artist," he says. "They know us as somebody totally different. So watching their faces that night up on stage, I think I'm going to get to see a lot of reactions that I wasn't expecting.

"They know a totally different Garth back there, because you just work together in the fields or whatever," Brooks continues. "I'm looking forward to that. It's going to be like going home again, but on steroids."

Updated tour information, including ticket prices, is available here.

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