You don’t have to be a huge country music fan to know that Kenny Chesney is making a lot of noise this summer. The 41-year-old Tennessee native and reigning Country Music Association artist of the year is making his way across North America on his Sun City Carnival Tour, which also happens to be one of the only shows this summer that can fill a stadium. His single, “Out Last Night, from his new Greatest Hits II album, is blasting from car stereos everywhere. And even the people that only know him as the guy that briefly married actress Renee Zellweger are coming around to his brand of crossover country, which takes its cues from ‘80s rockers like Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi. We spoke to Chesney just as the tour was getting underway.
How is it that you're the only act that can pull off a stadium show this summer?
It's been a gradual build. This is our fifth summer doing the stadiums. It took me a while to get used to it. We worked really hard to put on the best show we could so our audience just kind of grew organically. I always think there are a lot of people at the show that have never been at the show before and I make sure they're going to leave going, “Wow.” That's been my thought process. You can hype a lot of things with smoke and mirrors but word of mouth is not something you can buy. People leave there and tell their friends about it and it just builds and builds. That's how we built our fan base.
Even though you wear a cowboy hat your music isn’t strictly country.
It's pretty universal. When I sing and talk it's a product of where I grew up but the records are a product of everything I loved growing up. And it was everything. So that's kind of why our shows are the way they are. It lends itself to a pretty universal audience. I believe I have a core country audience but you can't play a stadium without having a lot of crossover appeal.
Does putting out your second greatest hits album feel like closing a chapter of your life?
It didn't until I put it all together. I play these songs all the time but I haven't listened to those records in a long time. The version we play onstage is different. I sat and listened to the actual records in the sequence we made it and you can't help but think it was a chapter of your career. It's one that changed my life that's for sure.
Are you glad it’s over?
In some ways, yeah. I guess the only way for me is it gives me a little more artistic freedom to have done all that. There's still a lot of things I want to do. It might not be the most commercial at times. I'm still going to make records with a lot of guitars but I do want to make an acoustic record someday. You can't always be afforded those luxuries when you have your foot on the gas pedal like I have it now. In that sense it's good to get that portion behind me. Because maybe now I can lift that foot up a little bit.
You’re not going to pull a Chris Gaines like Garth Brooks did, are you?
God, no. If I make a record it will have my name on it. I'm not going to wear a wig and I'm not going to use a fake name.
You’ve said working with Willie Nelson on his album Moment of Forever changed your life. How so?
That whole experience with Willie was like a big shot of B-12, mentally and personally. It was a big source of inspiration. I flew to Santa Monica, California, and was staying at this hotel. I walked on Willie’s bus sitting right outside there in the parking lot and said, ‘Okay, what do we want to cut?’ And he played me this song called “Over You Again.” And I was going through the exact same thing that he wrote. I’d gone through a pretty rough period in my personal life and it was so inspirational.
Where do you want to be when you’re 70?
I hope I'm still writing songs. I hope that I'm happy, not that I'm not. I hope I'm in a place in my life where there's clarity and a lot of friends and I'm still making music people want to hear. I hope that I can look at myself in the mirror and be proud.
Here are the rest of Kenny Chesney’s Sun City Carnival Tour Dates:
July
18 - San Francisco, CA - AT&T Park
23 - Salt Lake City, UT - Rio Tinto Stadium
24, 25 - Cheyenne, WY - Frontier Days
29 - Lake Tahoe, NV - Harvey's
August
1 - Seattle, WA - Qwest Field
6 - Orange Beach, AL - Amphitheater at the Wharf
7 - Jacksonville, FL - Veteran's Memorial Arena
8 - Tampa, FL - Ford Amphitheatre
13 - Hartford, CT - New England Dodge Music Center
14 - New York, NY - Bryant Park
15 - Foxboro, MA - Gillette Stadium
19 - Ottawa, Ontario - Scotia Bank Arena
20 - Toronto, Ontario - Molson Amphitheatre
22 - Detroit, MI - Ford Field
28 - Syracuse, NY - State Fair
29 - Bristow, VA - Nissan Pavilion
30 - Raleigh, NC - Time Warner Cable Music Pavilion at Walnut Creek
September
10 - Biloxi, MS - Mississippi Coast Coliseum
11 - Tallahassee, FL - Leon County Civic Center
12 - Charleston, SC - North Charleston Coliseum
19 - Indianapolis, IN - Lucas Oil Field