Brooks, Yearwood Featured at 'Conversations with Harvard'

Country music power couple Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood fielded questions from students at the newly-revamped “Conversations with Harvard” speaker series about their careers and personal lives Friday at the Graduate School of Education.

This first-ever Conversations with Harvard evolved from Conversations with Kirkland, a speaker series launched by former Kirkland resident scholar Peter V. Emerson in 2002. According to Emerson, Conversations with Kirkland aimed to foster “an informal environment for actual conversation” with distinguished leaders in the arts, music, politics, media, and business. While Conversations with Kirkland gave priority to Kirkland House residents, Emerson said the name change made it clear that all Harvard affiliates could attend the event.

“We decided it wasn’t fair to have it at one House, that everybody should have a chance to participate,” Emerson said.

Garth Brooks (standing), country music star, plays a short melody during a conversation held at the Ed School as part of the "Conversations with Harvard" speaker series. By Sarah P Reid

Emerson first met Brooks six years ago in January 2009 while backstage at President Barack Obama’s first inauguration celebration concert, at which Brooks performed as a headlining act and agreed to speak at the University upon hearing Emerson’s pitch. The Harvard event finally came together when Brooks aligned the schedule with his tour stop in Boston.

To a packed lecture hall, Brooks and Yearwood reflected on their journeys to becoming acclaimed artists, the two having had very different approaches to the music industry.

According to Brooks, he was informed after his college graduation ceremony that he was one hour short from actually receiving a degree, and despite financial pressures, he went back to school to take a summer course. Brooks said that in order to finance what remained of his education, he began to play guitar at Willies Saloon, a local bar.

“One night turned into three nights; three nights turned into five to six nights a week,” Brooks said.

For her part, Yearwood said she knew since she was a child that she wanted to be a singer.

“I knew what I wanted to do. I just had no clue about how to go about it, ” Yearwood said.

Both Brooks and Yearwood said that making the decision to go forward with their dreams required courage.

“There is a huge difference between you and the people you left in your hometown,” Brooks said. “And that difference was that you had the courage to leave.”

When attendee Leah E. Waldo, a student in the Ed School’s Arts in Education program, said she worried about how her music was received and asked the couple about how they gained confidence in their performances, the couple asked Waldo to come onstage and sing in front of the audience. After the event, Brooks gifted Waldo his guitar.

The event also featured a video of Brooks's acclaimed 1992 song, “We Shall Be Free,” which received some backlash at the time of its release from more conservative groups about a lyric, “When we’re free to love anyone we choose," that was perceived to express support for same-sex relationships.

However, Yearwood said the song was “the anthem of the world” and “ahead of its time.”

“Love is something that the law can’t constitute,” Brooks said.

—Staff writer Carolina I. Portela-Blanco can be reached at carolina.portelablanco@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @cportelablanco.