Is Garth Brooks selling his bar and leaving Nashville, Tennessee, saying, "I get no respect in this town"? No, that's not true: The site that originally posted the claim says its satirical articles are "not meant to be taken seriously." Brooks' bar is open and will host a holiday event on July 4, 2024. Brooks' website states that as of June 2024, he has returned to Nevada specifically to perform in his Las Vegas residency.
The claim appeared in a post by America's Last Line of Defense on Facebook on June 27, 2024. Above a composite image of Garth Brooks and what appears to be the interior of the Friends in Low Places Bar & Honky-Tonk, the caption read:
Few people have ruined a career as effectively as Garth Brooks. It's gotten so bad that he's selling his failing bar and moving out of the Music City.
You did this to yourself, Garth.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue Jul 2 22:26:26 2024 UTC)
The author continued in the comment section:
What a shame, patriots. Our version of Garth Brooks is a sad, drunken, and lonely soul who spends all day in his empty bar doing Nirvana covers. He refuses to play any Toby Kieth, because he doesn't know either of his hits, so he just sits there drinking Bud Light and wishing he made better choices.
History will want to know how we did it, patriots, and the answer will be simple: A well-tended potato crop and an understanding of Cult 45. God Bless America.
Under Categories on the About page of the America's Last Line of Defense (ALLOD) Facebook account, it reads:
Satire/Parody · Entertainment website
Lead Stories did a search using keywords on Google News, which is visible here, but found no credible documents or reporting to corroborate the claim.
In a March 7, 2024, "Good Morning America" YouTube video, Brooks talked about the grand opening of his bar, Friends in Low Places, named after his hit song, "Friends in Low Places." The barrroom image in the post that is the focus of this article resembles the interior of the bar as pictured in a 2024 article in The Tennessean. At the 2:50 mark in the video, Brooks responds to a question host Robin Roberts asks concerning the timeline of Brooks opening the bar:
I just think this is a thank you. This town [Nashville] has been fabulous to me.
In a July 2, 2024, Instagram post (archived here), the verified account of Friends in Low Places Bar & Honky-Tonk stated that it is holding a Fourth of July holiday party on the bar's rooftop.
Brooks announced in 2023 that he will begin a new Las Vegas concert residency (archived here) with "18 new dates in 2024" at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace. The related Caesars Palace press release (archived here) remains on the facility's website.
A recently published news release (archived here) on Brooks' website said he would return to Las Vegas to perform the next shows in his residency at Caesars Colosseum on June 26, 28 and 29, 2024.
Lead Stories reached out to Brooks' public relations representatives for a statement on this claim and will update this article if a response is received.
Additional Lead Stories fact checks mentioning Garth Brooks can be read here.
America's Last Line of Defense
The site is part of the "America's Last Line of Defense" network of satire websites run by self-professed liberal troll Christopher Blair from Maine along with a loose confederation of friends and allies. He runs several websites and Facebook pages with visible satire disclaimers everywhere. They mostly publish made-up stories with headlines specifically created to trigger Republicans, conservatives and evangelical Christians into angrily sharing or commenting on the story on Facebook without actually reading the full article, exposing them to mockery and ridicule by fans of the sites and pages.
Every site in the network has an about page that reads (in part):
About Satire
Before you complain and decide satire is synonymous with "comedy":sat·ire
ˈsaˌtī(ə)r
noun
The use of humor, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.Everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real. If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined. Any similarities between this site's pure fantasy and actual people, places, and events are purely coincidental and all images should be considered altered and satirical. See above if you're still having an issue with that satire thing.
Articles from Blair's sites frequently get copied by "real" fake news sites that omit the satire disclaimer and other hints that the stories are fake. One of the most persistent networks of such sites is run by a man from Pakistan named Kashif Shahzad Khokhar (aka "DashiKashi"), who has spammed hundreds of such stolen stories into conservative and right-wing Facebook pages to profit from the ad revenue.
When fact checkers point this out to the people liking and sharing these copycat stories some of them get mad at the fact checkers instead of directing their anger at the foreign spammers or the liberal satire writers. Others send a polite "thank you" note, which is much appreciated.
