The first Garth Brooks Dive Bar show started on Monday (July 15) at about 7:30. But the first fan in line for the general admission show arrived at Joe’s Bar at 10:45 in the morning. On Sunday.
Yes, Sunday. His name is Nate Kinsey, 33, and it’s safe to say he earned his spot in the very center of the front row.
By the time the doors of the bar opened late on Monday afternoon, Kinsey and his plus one had been waiting for nearly 30 hours. But if you think that would get a grown man down, you don’t know Brooks fans. Kinsey had nothing but good things to say about Joe’s Bar, telling CMT.com that the people running the place even let them come inside for a while.
Standing in line may seem like a low-energy endeavor, but still. A man’s got to sleep. So Kinsey made his bed for the night right there on Weed Street. “I just slept on the sidewalk in a sleeping bag,” he said.
He’d won his tickets for the last-minute show at a radio station raffle at the Allstate Arena. The same place where Brooks played in 2014, the last time he came through town. And it was a feather in Kinsey’s backwards ball cap, because it made Monday night’s show the 15th time he’d seen Brooks.
But all those other shows? They were nothing like this one. “I was in the second row at his show in Billings, Montana once,” Kinsey said, “but I’ve never been as close as we’ll be tonight.”
