Garth Brooks has rejected a proposal intended to "break the impasse" over his aborted residency at Dublin's Croke Park. Encouraged by Ireland's Taoiseach, concert promoters and city officials had agreed a plan to salvage Brooks' recently cancelled gigs by replacing two evening shows with matinees.  According to a statement by Dublin city council, via thejournal, officials and promoters met for an emergency meeting on Thursday morning, hoping to find a solution to the licensing issue – rooted in local residents' objections to five concerts on consecutive nights. Brooks's Irish partners, Aiken Promotions, were the ones who submitted the matinee plan: "[We have] agreed to a proposal from Aiken Promotions," the council revealed, "whereby the three concerts will proceed but the Saturday and Sunday concerts will start earlier to facilitate separate matinee audiences on these two days. This will allow everybody who bought a ticket to see Garth Brooks."  But Brooks wasn't having it. The matinee scheme "will not be feasible", Aiken later confirmed in a terse message. Speaking to journalists in Nashville, Brooks' publicist, Nancy Seltzer, said the proposal would not be fair to those who had already bought tickets for the sold-out concerts on Monday and Tuesday nights. "To treat 160,000 people differently than all the rest who will be seeing the show the way it was meant and created is wrong," she said. "[Garth] does not understand why it is once again put upon him to treat people less than they deserve to be treated and he still returns to why did they allow five shows to be sold and all these people to be disappointed."  At a press conference just minutes earlier, Brooks said he was willing to "crawl ... swim ... [and] drop on my knees and beg" Irish prime minister Enda Kenny to save the shows. "The system is screwing it up," he said. "The powers who can fix it are not here."  Kenny has, in fact, become involved. With Dublin's chamber of commerce estimating that local businesses stand to lose about €50m (£40m) if none of the concerts take place, the Taoiseach reportedly instructed his department to help the parties come to a solution. "It's a major loss to the country, to the goodwill and good feeling of all those fans of Garth Brooks ... not to mention the hard economic loss to people here," Kenny said. While the prime minister dismissed calls for emergency pro-Brooks legislation, he has asked for a review of Dublin's planning process. Aiken and city manager Owen Keegan have also been called to meet with an Oireachtas committee to discuss what went wrong.  Although Brooks' Dublin shows now seem very unlikely to go ahead, the country singer is still proceeding with a world tour – his first such trip in more than 13 years. Details of that tour will be announced on 14 July, Brooks said yesterday, or at least they will be divulged to one fan: "a kid named Andy from Atlanta", who attended one of Brooks' earlier gigs. "What Andy chooses to do with that information [is up to him]."  Brooks will release a new studio album, his first since 2001, some time around November. "You're damn straight we'll do cowboys songs on this album," he said. "We'll be doing stuff where you hear it on the radio and you'll go, 'Wow, who's that?'"  The 52-year-old's discography is also set to finally become available in digital formats: one of iTunes' longest hold-outs, Brooks said he plans to sell his catalogue direct via his official website.
Attempts to find a solution for the country singer's tour cancellation, proposing matinee shows to replace some of his five original dates, have proved unsuccessful so far