Retirement with an asterisk for Brooks

For a country superstar who very publicly retired seven years ago, Garth Brooks has some funny ideas about what defines a hobby. He’s holding a press conference Saturday in Nashville, and word around Music City is that he’s going to announce that he’ll be releasing new music this fall, most likely a new single in September to be followed in October by a multi-disc career retrospective box set.

Brooks has hardly been confining himself to whittling on the porch of his Oklahoma homestead since he decided in 2000 to stop recording and touring. He’s made a small handful of public appearances and reissued his album catalog through a pioneering exclusive arrangement with Wal-Mart.

His plan this time, according to record industry sources, is to put the retrospective out on his Pearl Records label through Wal-Mart, as he did with two previous box sets, but also to allow other retail outlets to carry the new set. Additionally, he’s said to be hooking up with Nashville-based Big Machine Records, the young label that has turned teenage singer-songwriter Taylor Swift into a star, to promote any singles he decides to release.

Wal-Mart, as it turns out, can move truckloads of CDs, as it did when he put out “The Limited Series” and “The Entertainer” box sets in 2005 and 2006, respectively, but the retail giant doesn’t hold much sway with country radio programmers. Big Machine has been making significant inroads in Nashville since it was started two years ago by veteran record exec and promotion man Scott Borchetta, and it can’t hurt Brooks’ view of Big Machine that its talent roster also includes one Trisha Yearwood, Brooks’ wife.

Whether he’ll also be doing any concerts as part of this new burst of musical activity is the question concert industry observers are salivating over, since Brooks exited as one of music’s most popular live acts.

He’s said he won’t do a full-fledged tour until his youngest daughter graduates from high school in 2015, but he did perform for a Hurricane Katrina benefit, showed up at the Grand Ole Opry 80th anniversary celebration in 2005 and most recently played in Washington, D.C., for Live Earth.

- Randy Lewis