Garth Brooks has spent his whole career singing at rodeos, and he has a simple reason he never competed in one himself.
In a 2024 interview with Taste of Country Nights, he explained why with a joke at his own expense.
“I was never good enough athlete to do it. If I would, I’d be 200 pounds less than I am right now,” he said.
In the same conversation, he talked about his history at rodeos and why he is happy leaving the competition to the professionals. He called the riders amazing athletes, and he said he loves the way they live their lives and the talent they have that he does not.
Garth Brooks Has Sung to Rodeos for Years, and Borrowed From a Champion Cowboy’s Set
His own job, as he described it, was a different one.
“My job was to sing at them. I’ve been singing to rodeos since I was, you know, starting out. I started with the Lazy E down there, the timed events championship, all of the international finals,” he said.
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The Lazy E Arena sits in Guthrie, Oklahoma, not far from Yukon, where Garth grew up, so his rodeo connection goes back to the early days of his career and started close to home.
One man who did both jobs was Chris LeDoux. He was a Cheyenne, Wyoming, rodeo star who won a world championship at the 1976 National Finals Rodeo before he became a country singer. Garth saw him play as a young fan and borrowed pieces of his set, and he later admitted as much to American Cowboy.
“I stole my whole act from Chris,” he said.
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That is about as honest as one entertainer can be about another. Garth name-dropped LeDoux in his first single, “Much Too Young (To Feel This Damn Old),” and the two cut “Whatcha Gonna Do with a Cowboy” together in 1992. In 2000, Garth offered part of his liver to his friend and was not a match, and after LeDoux died in 2005, he wrote “Good Ride Cowboy” for him.
Garth Brooks’ Song ‘Rodeo’ Was First Written From a Woman’s Point of View as ‘Miss Rodeo’
Even the rodeo song fans know him for was meant for somebody else. According to Genius, “Rodeo” began as “Miss Rodeo,” written by Larry Bastian from a woman’s point of view. It was demoed in 1981 and then sat for ten years.
“I tried to get every female I know in the industry to cut this song,” Garth wrote in the liner notes of The Hits.
When it still had no taker, he changed the title and recorded it himself in 1991. The finished song paints the rodeo as tempting to a cowboy as a siren is to a sailor, and the pull of it leads to a broken home.
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In those same liner notes, he called it a favorite live and wrote that he hoped it would stay on his list for as long as he gets to play live. He is still playing, out on his 2026 Blame It All on My Roots Arena Tour, which just added two nights at Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena, November 13 and 14.
A song written for a woman sat unclaimed for a decade until Garth Brooks put his own voice on it. The man who jokes he would have to lose 200 pounds to ride in a rodeo found his place in that arena anyway, singing to the crowds he never had to compete in front of.
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