Garth Brooks: The Road Out of Santa Fe

Between 1989 and 1996 Garth Brooks sold more than 60 million albums, making him one of the best-selling solo artist of all time. In this absorbing memoir, Matt O'Meilia, a drummer in Brooks's band in the mid-1980s, chronicles the period in the country singer's career before he moved to Nashville and began his rapid ascent to superstardom. The band, Santa Fe, began its life in Stillwater, Oklahoma, in 1986, only to dissolve in Nashville a year and a half later. O'Meilia evokes in vivid detail the delirious highs and glum lows of the life of the group, offering profiles of band members and other figures who influenced the course of Brooks's career. During this formative period, Brooks honed his skills to meet audience expectations, playing in establishments ranging from student hangouts and honky-tonks to hotel lounges and two-step dance halls. He was paymaster and guru, seeking bookings to expand the band's fan base and eventually urging them on with plans to move to Nashville. Not afraid of hard work, Brooks hauled and set up equipment and drove for hours on end to gigs that would expose Santa Fe to a wider audience. From the first, Brooks's ambition far exceeded that of his band members. Talented, shrewd and doggedly persistent, Brooks made the most of every opportunity that came his way. The profile of one popular music singer's self-education, written by one of the few people who witnessed the process firsthand, "Garth Brooks: The Road to Santa Fe" is also the story of any would-be star who must pay his dues to make the dream of fame come true.