Garth Brooks: The Road Out of Santa Fe

As O'Meilia admits in his introduction, ""[T]his isn't a book about how I knew Garth Brooks better than anyone else."" The truth is, this book is not exactly about Garth Brooks at all. The country music superstar certainly is a central figure, but it's O'Meilia himself who is the protagonist. From March 1986 through January 1987, O'Meilia played drums in a Stillwater, Oklahoma band called Santa Fe; Brooks sang lead vocals and played rhythm guitar. This charming memoir chronicles that period of their lives, a time when Brooks seems somehow to have already been living in his famous future and waiting for his fate to unfold. O'Meilia is disarmingly modest: he considers himself lucky to have known a man so smiled upon by fortune as Brooks has been. Of his own history, the drummer recalls with some disgust his cowardice, his seven years in college and the day he made rude hand gestures during a Santa Fe photo shoot. The book often reads like a volume from the larger work on O'Meilia's life, with the then-unknown Brooks serving merely the ten-month foil. O'Meilia describes his brush with greatness with real grace and skill. (Apr.)