Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Friends In Low Places’ on Prime Video, A Docuseries Chronicling Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood’s Efforts To Build A Nashville Bar And Music Venue

In the six-episode docuseries Friends In Low Places (Prime Video), Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood set out to design and build a contemporary honky-tonk, named after his all-time biggest single, in the heart of Nashville’s Lower Broadway entertainment district. Joined by a team of local hospitality pros and construction contractors, Brooks and Yearwood oversee the project as it comes to fruition – look, it’s Yearwood swinging a sledgehammer, or Brooks marking up blueprints with his dreams for 20-foot indoor palm trees – while they share tales from their careers in country music and establish an overall spirit of making a place for people to enjoy. “If hope has a voice,” Brooks says in one of his many self-righteous Low Places moments, “it’s music.”     

FRIENDS IN LOW PLACES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

Opening Shot: “Here’s the basic rule of entertainment,” Garth Brooks says over footage from his concerts and career fast facts, like how he’s the number one selling solo artist in US history. “Get ‘em down, and just keep beating the shit out of ‘em. Because it’s a prize fight.”  

The Gist: Brooks says that the concept of performance as pugilism came from his time spent playing honky-tonks, both in his native Tulsa, Oklahoma and everywhere the backroads of country music took him. And since all country roads eventually lead to Nashville, that’s where Brooks and Trisha Yearwood decided to design and custom build their own honky-tonk from the ground up. Brooks wants that traditional proximity of the crowd to the performer. But he also wants to build a place for people to gather and listen to live music specifically in Nashville, because he owes the country music hotbed a debt for having always supported his career.

Located right next door to Lower Broad’s legendary Ernest Tubb Record Shop, the space that will become Friends In Low Places is a former furniture store and restaurant concept with a historic neon sign. Brooks and Yearwood bought the building from Ben and Max Goldberg, local developers of hospitality projects through their company Strategic Hospitality, and the Goldbergs also brought Jenny Deathridge-Bratt and Camille Tambunting onto the project, who are Strategic’s chief of staff and chief operating officer respectively. Rounding out Brooks and Yearwood’s team is Gary Birdwell, a contractor who has worked with the couple for decades – he built a church on their vast luxury homestead just outside of Nashville.

Sometimes Friends In Low Places feels like Property Brothers or even something like Selling Sunset, as supercuts of demolition work combine with cutaway interviews with the Goldbergs or Deathridge-Bratt and Tambunting. But driving this train is Brooks, who shares stories of his upbringing, inspirational hokum, and stories about his experiences in the entertainment business, often while slipping into the third person. (“If Garth Brooks is involved, you know we’re gonna raise hell.”) With 400 days till the honky-tonk’s grand opening, Low Places lays out the work still to be done, which includes constructing a stage with professional sound, multiple dancefloors and bars, an exclusive club level, and the indoor/outdoor rooftop space, which Brooks refers to as “The Oasis” after the most shoutable lyric of his most famous song.    

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Watching Garth Brooks squeeze his eyes shut like a preacher during his interview segments – he’s really feeling his latest sincere utterance – or shouting questions as he barrels through the Friends in Low Places jobsite, or flashing an overbearing version of his trademark charm in planning meetings with Ben and Max and Jenny and Camille, who comes to mind but Mark Wahlberg. Consult the actor and multiple-business owner’s reality show Wahl Street for a sense of what it feels like to be warned through a million dollar grin not to fuck it up.  

And if you’re considering traveling to Nashville for a Friends in Low Places visit, Prime Video has you covered with Amazon Music Live with Garth Brooks, which features Garth and Trish playing a test concert at the venue, which opens officially this month.

Our Take: Garth Brooks adores waxing poetic. And while there’s no doubt he’s sincere – this has been the superstar country singer’s M.O. since No Fences and Ropin’ the Wind – his persona is spilled all over Friends In Low Places like a tipped over longneck at the end of a long honky-tonk bar. In the context of a docuseries/reality show, it’s a little tough to take, because it starts to feel like The Garth Show when it’s supposed to be about the collaborative design and construction of an entertainment venue. There are a few nice moments slipped in between Brooks and Yearwood as a married couple, how they can read each other’s minds, that sort of thing. And all of the people on the Strategic Hospitality side are nice enough. But Low Places features too many stilted setups where everybody’s standing around an architectural drawing, or discussing a particular dialed-in bit of decor that Brooks demanded, segments that don’t actually advance the construction timeline as we see it, and generally feel contrived. What you end up with is Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood’s star power on one side, random elements drawn from project-based reality shows on the other, and the remainder filled with promo for visiting Nashville’s nightlife scene.    

Sex and Skin: Hey, leave talk like that to Garth Brooks’ 1993 pickup truck-rocking country chart topper “Ain’t Goin’ Down (‘Til the Sun Comes Up).”

Parting Shot: “I’ll be honest, I didn’t think it was gonna be as hard as it is,” Brooks says of the Friends In Low Places project. And with a few shout-outs to his business partners, the country superstar closes the first episode with another chunk of the folksy wisdom it feels like he must have locked and loaded at all times.   

Sleeper Star: We unfortunately don’t see much of Trisha Yearwood in the lead episode of Friends In Low Places. But Brooks does say the design of their honky-tonk’s third floor includes a “studio kitchen,” so hopefully later episodes of the series will incorporate a little of what made Yearwood’s Trisha’s Southern Kitchen such an enjoyable, Daytime Emmy-winning cooking show.  

Most Pilot-y Line: “Define a honky-tonk?” Brooks asks his unseen interviewer. “For me – forgive me – a honky-tonk’s a church. Because we all need a shoulder to lean on sometimes, and sometimes the shoulder we need to lean on is a perfect stranger’s.”

Our Call: Friends In Low Places is a STREAM IT for anyone nuts about Garth – his persona is buckled on and lassoed to this piece of feelgood reality programming, so as to be inseparable. But as more general interest goes, this is a SKIP IT. Without the connection to Brooks and Yearwood, it doesn’t have enough structure to compete with the property makeover shows that populate places like Discovery Plus and HGTV.  

Johnny Loftus (@glennganges) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.