Garth and Trisha to sing Christmas

The couple have not harmonised their vocal talents on a recording since 1997 when they took ‘In Another’s Eyes’ to No 1 in the American summer charts of 1997.

Since then there has been much talk of a duet album from Garth and Trisha, and, now, it looks as if it will happen this year.

Trisha has accompanied Garth on his much-publicised ‘World Tour’, which got off to a blank start two years ago when he ‘no-showed’ for five concerts at Croke Park in Dublin, disappointing hundreds of thousands of his fans in Ireland.

The Oklahoma man’s US segment of the tour, however, has been highly successful, raking in an average million dollars a night. And last weekend, the pair revealed they have been finishing up a Christmas record over a summer holiday break.

Garth and Trisha have both cut multiple seasonal projects before, although it has been a while. Garth released Beyond the Season in 1992, followed by ‘Garth Brooks and the Magic of Christmas’. And in 1999. Trisha’s The Sweetest Gift came out in 1994.

This weekend, Garth and Trisha are in Baltimore, Maryland for five sell-out shows and the entourage will keep moving on into 2017.

On another front, Garth has embarked on the launch of his own televsion station, billed the Garth Channel. The network will kick off 24/7 next month, featuring Brooks music that spans four decades from when he moved as an ‘Okie’ to Nashville and rocked the Tennessee capital, and ultimately the world, with his dynamic country/pop/rock stage shows and recordings. The television blurb confirms it will personally be curated and presented by Garth

The 54-year-old has come a long way from an exclusive one-to-one interview I had with him at his West End base in Nashvile in June 1993, when, modestly, he told me his apprehension about how his singing career would unfold.

Garth’s record sales at the time were bigger than Michael Jackson and Madonna, but he confessed: “I was probably the last person who thought this would happen and I am now getting reports of my record sales in England, Australia, Japan, Germany and Ireland. There are exciting opportunities opening for me in the rest of the world, but I am finding it a bit scary. I don’t know if anyone out there will show up, but we’ll see.”

An amazing observation, considering his megastar appeal today, but seen in the context that up to then Garth’s shows had only been staged in America.

In that 1993 interview, Garth also said: “I’m not going to take the credit for what has happened to country music over the past few years. But if I was able to bring people into country music who did not listen to country before then I’d be flattered. I’d also have to say they are better off listening to country music. I love country music.”

Later in November, 1998, Garth, joined by Trisha Yearwood as his main support singer, phenomenally pulled in 35,000 people for five shows at the King’s Hall in Belfast. It was a highly memorable sequence of shows, promoted by the late Jim Aiken.

Garth, meanwhile, is No 1 on the Forbes’ annual Celebrity 100 list of top earners for 2016, coming in at 15th overall with a 70 million dollar (£53m) haul. He falls from 2015’s spot at No 6, when he netted 90 million dollars (£68.4m). Music has made him one of the wealthiest men in America.