Our series Dusting ‘Em Off looks at how classic albums across genres found an enduring place in pop culture. Today, we spend some time with Garth Brooks’ Ropin’ the Wind.
In his 1999 book The Nashville Family Album: A Country Music Scrapbook, photographer Alan Mayor reflects on what it felt like working a Garth Brooks show. “Shooting a Garth concert was like shooting a basketball game,” he writes. “He went around the stage like a player at full court press. I learned to let him come to me rather than try to chase him… No other concert I’ve seen before or since had such electricity — except for other Garth concerts.”
Mayor was specifically recalling the energy during Garth Brooks’ “Ropin’ the Wind” tour, which took place from February 1991 to December 1992. Brooks’ first major headlining tour arrived in support of his 1991 LP of the same name, his third studio album, which will always be remembered as the project that turned expectations of country music upside-down.
It’s not that Brooks’ first two albums, a 1989 self-titled effort and 1990’s No Fences, were flops. Far from it; Garth Brooks was a critical and chart success, leaning into fiddle flourishes and dependable country music song structures. No Fences hit No. 1 on the Billboard Country charts, and also peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200. The latter included two of Brooks’ most beloved tracks — “The Thunder Rolls,” and “Friends in Low Places” — but when Ropin’ the Wind arrived in 1991, it surpassed all expectations.
In a book written to accompany his musical box set, Garth Brooks: The Anthology Part I, Brooks reflects on the vision for Ropin’ the Wind, explaining that he wanted the project to sound like a live show, wanting to distill the “rollercoaster” energy of a performance into the record. “It can’t be all ballads, can’t be all story songs, can’t be all up-tempo swing kind of stuff, just like it can’t be all humor – but you damn sure need all that stuff in its moment,” he writes.
On that front, Ropin’ the Wind unequivocally succeeds. It begins with the toe-tapping, almost frantic energy of “Against the Grain” before settling in with the project’s highly visual first single, “Rodeo.” Over the next 12 songs, Brooks keeps that ebb and flow, spending time in ballad territory with the mournful “What She’s Doing Now” and equally regretful “Burning Bridges.” The pace picks back up by the time the playful “We Bury the Hatchett” rolls around — but his enduring “The River” is undoubtedly the emotional cornerstone of the album. Brooks co-wrote seven of the songs on the album by teaming up with a rotation of songwriters, while “Shameless” is a cover of a Billy Joel track. It wasn’t any longer than his first two projects, yet it somehow felt bigger.
