Garth Brooks And Trisha Yearwood Performed At the ACM

Like other country music stars, the guys from Montgomery Gentry aren’t buying the idea that Sunday was the last time they’d see Garth Brooks perform for a while.Garth Brooks was invited to perform on this evenings ACM Awards where he will receive the inaugural Crystal Milestone Award.“If he has a passion for music, which we know he does like Eddie (Montgomery) and I do, you can’t stay retired,” Troy Gentry told The Associated Press as he strolled into the 43rd annual Academy of Country Music Awards.

Brooks planned to perform a medley of his hits on the telecast this evening.“(We) called (the Academy) and told them how sweet it was for them to do this, and . . . they said, ‘Would you come on the awards show and do this?’ And we said, ‘You betcha,’” Brooks told AP Television after Saturday night’s rehearsals.Brooks announced his retirement in 2000 and said he wanted to focus on raising his three kids with wife Sandy Mahl. Brooks and Mahl divorced in 2001, and he married fellow country superstar Trisha Yearwood in 2005.

“(Back then) you wondered, ‘Will I see the guys again, and all this stuff?’ So, it was a lot more dramatic,” he said. “This one, we saw the guys, and it was like we’d never taken the 10 years off. That was good for me, and it was that way with the crowd, too. So, this time, when I walked away, I felt, ‘You know what? We’ll be back. And, good lord willing, we will. It’ll be fun.”He has performed occasionally since, for charity and to promote his latest album, a three-disc compilation set called “The Ultimate Hits.”

Life as a stay-at-home dad has been eye-opening, Brooks said.“The most surprising thing is it’s 10-times cooler than what you walked away from. I really thought it was going to be the other way around,” he said. “I really thought, ‘What the hell am I going to do, and what’s going to feed me?’ And, I got to tell you, watching those kids, watching the tumblers click, watching them grow up — not in years, but inside — nothing better than that.”