Garth Brooks [ tickets ] will come out of retirement next year to perform 16 weeks of shows at the Wynn Las Vegas hotel and casino resort, the country star is expected to announce later today.

Details on the comeback bid are still forthcoming, but the deal with billionaire resort-tycoon Steve Wynn will involve Brooks performing two to three shows a week over a four-month run, according to a Reuters report.

According to reports, Brooks began the day with a press conference in Nashville, with several reporters then joining him on a private, chartered flight to Las Vegas.

"I know this is a young industry, so I'm not sure I'll be welcomed back but, if the fans want me, I still want to pursue my music," Brooks told reporters at the Nashville press conference.

"We're going to take the retirement roof off over our head, and I already feel taller," he added.

Brooks announced his official retirement in 2000 after years of publicly flirting with possibility of removing himself from the spotlight. In his retirement press conference, the performer, 39 years old at the time, cited his desire to spend more time with family.

"I can only be as honest as I can be," he said at the time. "I don't know how else to say it. I am here to announce my retirement. It is a thing that I feel good about. I feel that what I am trading it for is more important at this point in my life--which I never thought that I would find anything that would be that important--your relationship to your children is to anybody who is a parent out there. So, today we start a new life."

In the years that followed, Brooks has performed for several charity causes, including at a 2005 telethon for Hurricane Katrina relief, where he sang Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Who'll Stop the Rain" with fellow country star Trisha Yearwood. In 2007, he played nine sold-out shows at Kansas City, MO's Sprint Center--an engagement that originally was announced as a single-show thank-you to Walmart employees, but later expanded to multiple public shows.

Brooks has sold more albums in the US--upwards of 128 million--than any solo artist in history, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

He also was one of the best concert draws in the business during the 1990s. During his 1996-98 tour, Brooks played 350 shows in 100 cities, selling more than 5.3 million tickets, according to his publicist at the time.