Garth Brooks wants to channel his beloved alter-ego – Chris Gaines.
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During an interview at Billboard Country Live, the hitmaker revealed that five albums from the rocker would soon be released.
Gaines is a fictional character that Brooks created in the late 1990s. He initially adopted the controversial persona for a feature film, The Lamb. Brooks served as the lead role, a rock star. The movie was meant to be accompanied by an album called Garth Brooks in…The Life of Chris Gaines. However, the motion picture was never released due to “financial” and “management problems.”
The record was dropped a year before the scheduled film release date to spark interest and to display Brooks in a new light – a genre-bending artist. Although the film failed, the LP reached maximum success.
Upon debut in 1999, the project peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart. The track “If Don’t Matter to the Sun” was covered by Rosie Thomas in 2005, and was later transformed into a duet between Don Henley and Stevie Nicks.
The platinum-selling performer explained that the album was a compilation of tracks from five of Gaines’ unreleased collections. Brooks said he’s eager to reach into the vault and share the potential hits with his fans.
“The five albums have to come out,” he declared. “I don’t know if it’s because I’m 114 years old. But now everything takes three hours more than it took time to do before.”
He continued to mention that the writing and recording process was rigorous and time-consuming.
“The Gaines project was a lot of time put in, because it’s not natural, right?” shared Brooks. “You’re acting on a record. But I want to do it.”
The vocalist did not confirm a release date, as his schedule is currently packed solid. Brooks is selling out his Las Vegas residency at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace. Garth Brooks/Plus One kicked off in mid-May.
“I don’t know when we’re going to get to it, but it’s on the list that we’re going to get done,” he assured his fans. “Five albums.”
(Photo by John Shearer/Getty Images for CMT/ViacomCBS)
