The Dance – Garth Brooks

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The Dance – Garth Brooks


I had to post this one today, it has a very special place on my heart. I was lucky enough to go to Nashville five years ago this week, we managed to get tickets for The Bluebird Cafe, the spiritual home of songwriters. It was our first night in Nashville sandwiched between a Rolling Stones gig in Atlanta and the CMA Fest, a huge annual country music festival. We arrived in town and had a nightmare finding the hotel we booked, we then had to race downtown and try to find somewhere to park near the Bluebird before they closed the doors, stress. The TV show ‘Nashville’ was all the go at the time and the cafe was featured a lot, so it was weird sitting in the real place and knowing some of the amazing history it has. For example Taylor Swift was discovered there and so was Garth Brooks, who happens to be the best selling solo artist in the US ever. Garth Brooks had a huge hit with this song in 1989. We were sat watching four local singer-songwriters on stage performing their own songs in the round, where they play a song each and tell the story of why it was written. Really enjoyable stuff.

Then at one point during the night one of the singers said they would like to bring their friend onto the stage, this random guy stepped out of the audience and took a chair on the tiny stage. He introduced himself as Tony Arata and explained he was the writer of Garth Brook’s huge hit and told the story of how Garth used to perform in the cafe on a regular basis and happened to be in the audience when he was playing this song. Garth approaches him after the show and said “If I ever get a record deal I’m going to record this song!”. Tony Arata didn’t think anymore of it, but true to his word Garth found him when he was famous and took the song and made a smash out of it. Tony Arata then picked his way through the song, singing from his heart and everyone in the place was captured in the special moment of being part of how music history happens. Bam, emotional connection for life to a song I never really paid much attention to before.

The song itself is truly lovely, it’s the story of how life could have been so different, there was a chance to change it all, but to do so would have meant missing out on having ‘The Dance’ and it just wouldn’t be worth it. Love the song and the memory, the guitar version was beautiful. Then give a great credit to Garth Brook’s team to add an emotional intro and smooth instrumentation and create a true vision.

If I’m honest I wasn’t a huge Garth Brook’s fan at the time, even though I’m a silly big Country music fan, but hearing that song in that setting got my interest. I’ve since got his greatest hits and fell in love with them, coming very late to the biggest party of country music and then main stream music in the 90’s.

The fact its five years to the day that this happened to me and like all great coincidences they just released a two part documentary on the life of Garth Brooks called 'The Road I'm On' on Netflix. I watched it last week and funnily enough Tony Arata tells this story I’ve mentioned above, bringing it all back to life. I recommend a watch it's very honest.

I hope you’ll have a watch/listen to this great song and if you ever get a chance to go to The Bluebird Cafe take it.

Favourite lyric : 'Our lives are better left to chance I could have missed the pain'

Tony Arata spellbinding us all (Sarah Peacock)

The songwriters lineup for The Bluebird Cafe that night Jesse Terry, James Casto, Sarah Peacock and Alex Berger.
Location: Rayleigh, UK

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