Brooks Takes Country Songs to Big City

NEW YORK — Thousands of country music fans converged on the big city Thursday for a free concert by Garth Brooks, turning Central Park into an urban hoedown.

As many as 300,000 were expected in the park’s first oversized free concert since Luciano Pavarotti’s 1993 appearance, which drew 250,000.

Police wouldn’t give an official crowd estimate, but with unabashed exuberance, and more than a bit of embellishment, an announcer told fans they were 750,000 strong as Brooks launched into his hit “Rodeo.”

“Hello, New York,” he bellowed afterward.

Fans flew in from Wyoming, hitchhiked from Florida and drove tractor-trailers from Kansas, all to get a glimpse of country music’s biggest star.

Hundreds camped out overnight on Fifth Avenue to be among the first in when the concert area opened at 10 a.m.

The lawn in front of the stage was so packed that some people resorted to using their cellular phones to talk to friends they could see but couldn’t get to.

Native New Yorkers, whose tastes generally run to other kinds of music, were few.

“We would’ve crossed the country for Garth,” said Bo Williams, who drove 7 1/2 hours with a group of friends from Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.

While the show was free and broadcast by HBO, some fans shelled out big bucks to see the singer.

“I had to come see this. There was no choice,” said Shawn Stoval, a 21-year-old from Casper, Wyo., who spent $600 for an airline ticket to New York.

“It’s kind of wild that it’s New York City,” said Amy Morris, 22, from Nyack College in Rockland County, north of the city. “You think of cities and you don’t think of country music.”

Brooks, whose 1990 album “No Fences” sold 13 million copies, is known for the hits “The Thunder Rolls” and “Friends in Low Places.”