For Martina McBride, a podcast is “What She’s Doing Now” — and Garth Brooks is her first guest!
In the inaugural episode of Vocal Point with Martina McBride, Brooks opens up about his favorite songs to perform on stage, and how he cried while seeing Bruno Mars perform.
“What’s your favorite song to play live? Do you have one?” the “Valentine” singer asks Brooks on the episode, which debuted Friday morning.
“I’ve got to say for me, it’s ‘Callin’ Baton Rouge.’ It just really always is,” Brooks replies. “It’s the one that kind of flies under the radar.”
“It’s so much fun and I think that’s why I love it,” he continues on the podcast, available on Luminary. “When you go to a concert of Garth’s, you’re thinking ‘Friends in Low Places,’ ‘Thunder Rolls,’ ‘Shameless,’ you’ve got all these things, and then ‘Callin’ Baton Rouge’ just catches you off guard and the whole crowd goes to another gear and they don’t come down from there. So that’s probably my favorite.”
Later on, Brooks raves about being on the “flip side” during a Mars concert he attended.
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“You’re seeing it from that fan side,” Brooks starts. “So the crazy thing was, with Bruno Mars was the first time ever in my life I got to put the light on my phone and sing.”
“I cried like a baby the whole time I did it because I’m thinking, ‘Wow, if this is what they’re feeling, that’s cool,’” he recalls.
McBride jumps in, adding that she felt the same way after seeing Brandi Carlile at Bonnaroo.
“I went to see Brandi Carlile at Bonnaroo and cried the entire …” she says. “I was in the front row, she saw me, it was so embarrassing.”
“What was so moving about it?” Brooks asks.
“Just her spirit. She’s got this really great positivity and the songs were great and she’s a killer singer, and I don’t know, I was just moved by it,” she responds.
The pair also discussed how country music has changed over the years, with Brooks suggesting that the ’90s was the “most successful decade” of country music.
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“The reason why was it was a really good 50/50, if it wasn’t 50/50 it was geared toward women than it was toward men, but what it does was it spoke to people,” he says on the podcast. “We can only sing so much about dive bars, right, ’Friends in Low Places,‘ but it’s that song that makes you pull over on the side of the road when you don’t have time to.
“And nine times out of 10, there’s going to be a female involved, either an artist or a songwriter. They just bring a wonderful presence to the song,” he continued. “So as you know, ever since I have started my career, I want the female songwriters.”
McBride tells PEOPLE exclusively that featuring Brooks on the podcast was “so special” for her.
“I’ve known Garth a long time, but having the opportunity to really sit down and get his perspective on everything from women in the music business to what it’s like to perform in front of 80,000 people, and get to hear him sing? It’s such an intimate setting and you don’t want to miss it!” she tells PEOPLE exclusively.
McBride also added that the experience of putting together the 26-episode podcast has been “fascinating.”
“I love just sitting down with someone and hearing their story, how they handled challenges, what matters to them, and their point of view on lots of different topics,” she says. “It’s more of a conversation than an interview so you never know where it will lead. And just hearing stories from legends like Brenda Lee and Loretta Lynn to hearing from newcomers like Lauren Alaina, Dustin Lynch, and Runaway June and getting their perspective, it’s so interesting to me to hear people at all stages of their lives and careers.”
Along with the release of her podcast, McBride will debut her cooking show Martina’s Table on the Food Network in November.