Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood Are Giving an Entire Day of Their Nashville Business to Carry Dolly Parton’s Greatest Mission Forward

For one day this September, one of the busiest country-music venues on Nashville’s Broadway will operate for something much bigger than food, drinks and entertainment.

Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood are dedicating September 25 to Dolly Parton.

They are calling it “Dolly Day.”

At Friends in Low Places Bar & Honky-Tonk, the sprawling Nashville venue created by Brooks and Yearwood, the money generated that day will support children’s literacy — the cause that became one of the most important parts of Parton’s life.

And Brooks and Yearwood do not intend for it to be a one-time memorial.

Dolly Day is planned as an annual event.

The date itself contains a tribute that almost every Dolly Parton fan will immediately understand.

September 25 is written 9/25.

“9 to 5.”

It is a playful reference to one of Parton’s most famous songs, but the purpose behind the event is far more serious. Brooks and Yearwood are connecting one of Parton’s greatest musical achievements to one of her greatest humanitarian achievements: helping children learn to love books.

According to Brooks’ official announcement, Friends in Low Places will donate its entire income from September 25 to children’s literacy. The official event listing goes further, saying money raised will benefit Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library and Nashville Public Libraries. The venue will also accept donations of children’s books during the event.

Yearwood summarized the idea in remarkably simple terms:

“Whatever the cash register says at the end of the day is going to Dolly’s passion.”

For a woman whose career produced some of the most recognizable songs in American music, Parton’s “passion” was not limited to singing or songwriting.

It was also books.

Turning a Nashville Honky-Tonk Into a Literacy Fundraiser

Friends in Low Places is not a small neighborhood bar.

The four-story entertainment complex covers approximately 54,715 square feet at 411 Broadway, in the heart of Nashville’s famous downtown entertainment district.

The venue fully opened on March 7, 2024, after portions of it had previously welcomed guests beginning in late 2023. Brooks described the project as a way of giving something back to the city that played such an important role in his career.

Its name comes, of course, from Brooks’ signature hit “Friends in Low Places,” a song that has become one of country music’s most recognizable singalongs.

Brooks has said he deliberately avoided simply attaching his own name to the venue. To him, the song belonged to a much wider audience.

Two years after its full opening, Friends in Low Places had developed into one of Lower Broadway’s recognizable gathering places, with multiple floors, bars, entertainment spaces, food and a rooftop area.

That scale gives Dolly Day unusual fundraising potential.

Every meal ordered, every drink purchased and every dollar moving through the venue during the September 25 event can become part of a larger effort to promote literacy.

The current event listing schedules Dolly Day from 10 a.m. on September 25 until 2 a.m. the following morning, effectively turning the full operating day into a tribute.

There is something particularly fitting about using a honky-tonk for the effort.

Parton spent her life proving that commercial success and generosity did not have to exist in separate worlds.

She built an entertainment career, businesses and an international brand, yet repeatedly redirected her resources and fame toward education, disaster relief, health care and other causes.

Brooks and Yearwood are now applying that principle to their own business.

Instead of closing the venue for a private memorial, they are opening it and allowing ordinary customers to participate simply by showing up.

People can eat.

They can listen to country music.

They can celebrate Parton.

And the business generated around them becomes part of a literacy effort.

Why September 25 Had to Be the Date

Choosing 9/25 was more than a clever marketing decision.

It immediately connects Dolly Day with a song that changed Parton’s career.

Parton wrote “9 to 5” for the 1980 film of the same name, in which she starred alongside Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin.

The movie was Parton’s feature-film debut.

The song quickly became much more than a movie theme.

In 1981, “9 to 5” reached No. 1 on both the country and pop charts. It earned Parton Grammy Awards for Best Country Song and Best Country Vocal Performance by a Female, and it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Decades later, the opening rhythm remains instantly recognizable.

The song captured the frustrations of workers who felt underpaid, underestimated and trapped inside systems controlled by people with greater power.

Parton delivered those frustrations with humor and energy rather than bitterness, which helped the song cross boundaries between country and pop audiences.

That cultural endurance makes 9/25 immediately understandable as “Dolly Day.”

But instead of simply turning the date into another celebration of a hit record, Brooks and Yearwood have attached it to something Parton regarded as deeply personal.

Books.

The Project Dolly Created Because Her Father Could Not Read

Dolly Parton founded the Imagination Library in 1995.

At first, its ambition was local.

She wanted to provide books to preschool children in Sevier County, Tennessee, where she had grown up.

The inspiration came from her father, Robert Lee Parton.

Although Dolly described him as one of the smartest people she had ever known, he could not read or write.

Parton believed his illiteracy had prevented him from realizing some of the possibilities his intelligence might otherwise have given him.

She never forgot that.

Instead of treating her father’s experience as a private family story, she eventually built an organization around it.

The concept was beautifully simple.

Registered children would receive a specially selected, age-appropriate book in the mail each month from birth until age five.

The books would arrive at their homes.

They would be addressed to the children.

And families would not have to pay for them.

The first book order in 1995 contained only 1,760 books.

But the idea kept growing.

By 2000, communities outside Parton’s home county were beginning to replicate the program.

Tennessee later achieved statewide coverage.

The program expanded into Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and the Republic of Ireland.

Today, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library operates across five countries and sends more than three million books every month to children.

By the time Parton died in August 2026, the program had distributed more than 300 million books worldwide. Reuters reported that the total had surpassed 304 million.

Those numbers help explain why Brooks and Yearwood chose literacy as the focus of their tribute.

This was not simply one charity among many bearing Dolly Parton’s name.

It was one of the central missions of her life.

Dolly Considered It One of Her Greatest Achievements

Parton often talked about the Imagination Library with unusual pride.

Her father lived long enough to witness the program’s beginnings.

Before he died, Parton said, he told her that the Imagination Library was probably the most important thing she had ever done.

For a woman who had already written famous songs, sold millions of records and become an international celebrity, that judgment from her father meant something extraordinary.