I want you to imagine this for me. A six -foot -five, 265 -pound college bouncer is standing at the door of a bar in Stillwater, Oklahoma. He is literally the biggest guy in the room and he is supposed to be keeping the peace. But what he’s actually doing is just quietly watching the band play, just studying every chord change, every vocal run, every single crowd reaction.

The thing is, Garth’s ambitions go way beyond just writing songs and performing in honky tonks. He is a strategic thinker. Even as a college athlete, he’s applying game theory to the music business. He starts treating his live shows like arena events, even when he’s playing for 50 people.

• The idea that a bouncer was secretly mapping out the future of country music while checking IDs is just fantastic
• The year is 1981, and an 18 year old Troyal Garth Brooks arrives at Oklahoma State University on a track scholarship
• He is using the observational skills of an athlete to study what makes a performer compelling
• So what we are really talking about here is the origin of a fundamentally new approach to country music performance