A few days before Kenny Chesney’s band kicked off its “No Shoes Nation” tour in Tampa three months ago, the younger generation’s Jimmy Buffett wanted to inspire his crew.
He called his close pal, “Monday Night Football” analyst Jon Gruden, who won a Super Bowl as coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, to fire up his minions.
“It was an opening-tour speech done in a way that only Jon Gruden can do it,” says Chesney.
Big is the only way Chesney knows how to play, and perhaps that’s part of the reason he has become so successful. He can play CEO and laid-back dude just as easily. His latest album, “Life On A Rock,” shows a side of the casual character who relishes happy hour.
“Pirate Flag” is the initial single from an album filled with breezy, easy-to-consume anthemic songs that are perfect for the beach. Chesney’s fondness for the Caribbean had an impact on “Rock.”
“The pirate life definitely had an influence on this album,” he says. “ ‘Pirate Flag’ reminds me of my favorite bar in the Virgin Islands. They ring a bell every day at 3 in the afternoon. At that time there, you let go of everything.”
Chesney, 45, will showcase some songs from “Life On A Rock” Saturday at Lincoln Financial Field, but he’s not going to inundate fans with new material.
“This is a very personal record for me,” he says. “This whole record is about my life and the islands. It’s my stories. It’s a very reflective set of songs.”
It’s an about-face from “Welcome to The Fishbowl,” an album that was released less than a year before “Rock” dropped. Chesney hardly wrote anything for that release, but his fingerprints are all over “Rock.”
The fresh tunes are emotional, direct and catchy.
“I think they’re also the rawest and edgiest songs I’ve ever come up with,” he says. “I just sat down with a pen and paper with no expectations, no deadline, and just went with it.”
Chesney claims that, at midlife, he’s never been more inspired.
“This is the most creative I’ve ever felt,” he says. “As a result, I had a really great song cycle. I want to keep on building on what I have done so far.”
What Chesney has accomplished is staggering. Fourteen of his 15 albums have gone at least gold. He has 22 singles that have climbed to the top of the Billboard Hot Country Song chart.
Chesney, who headlines stadiums around the nation, is arguably the hottest country recording artist on the circuit. But he wants to up the ante as a musician. Forget about the number of invitations he’s received to act.
“I don’t know why so many people want me to be in their films,” he says.
It probably has something to do with his star power. If you can sell out a stadium, then you might attract myriad fans to the movie theater.
“Maybe that’s it,” Chesney says. “I just have no interest in acting. I’m just going to keep on making music.”
Kenny Chesney appears Saturday at Lincoln Financial Field, One Lincoln Financial Way, Philadelphia. Eric Church, Eli Young Band and Kacey Musgraves open. Show time: 5 p.m. Tickets: $65, $105, $130 and $225. Information: 800-745-3000; www.ticketmaster.com.
Kenny Chesney keeps fans happy at the Linc
It's about time we call Kenny Chesney what he really is: a pop star in a cowboy hat. Sure, he's got some twang, and a song about a sexy tractor, but the most country thing about the 45-year-old Tennessean is that he appeals to such a massive swath of the population. Case in point: Saturday night's stop of Chesney's No Shoes Nation tour at Lincoln Financial Field was packed to the rafters with fans who'd tailgated like it was a Sunday at an Eagles game.
While the name of the tour is a nod to the Chesney hit about lazing in the Mexican surf, citizens of No Shoes Nation showed up in cowboy boots and flip flops, but also Asics, crisp topsiders, puffy Reeboks and thong sandals.
Chesney's embrace of both the everyman struggles of blue-collar Americans and Tequila-drenched Caribbean escapism has made him the Jimmy Buffet of the denim-clad set. And such mass appeal has made Chesney, who just launched his own rum line and was named "country's hottest guy" by People magazine, an industry unto himself. Into this hot swirl of adoration - stoked adeptly by opening act Eric Church's hard-edged country rock - Chesney launched his set with the bombastic, ego-stroking "Feel Like a Rock Star."
Across 21 songs and two hours, Chesney - straw cowboy hat curled just so, and rippling muscles and bulging veins on display in a blue sleeveless T-shirt - prowled the stage which extended with a T-shaped protrusion into the floor seating area, or "the sandbar," as the tour calls it. Chesney reached out to fans, offering high fives that were received like the laying on of hands. The set list tended toward hits ("Beer in Mexico," "Out Last Night") with just a pair of tunes from the new album, Life on a Rock (including the Church-aided "When I See This Bar").
"It's an honor to sing a song about football in a place where football means so much to so many," Chesney said to wild cheers before inviting coach Chip Kelly and several members of the Philadelphia Eagles to share the stage on set-closing gridiron paean "Boys of Fall." As safety Colt Anderson clowned on stage, Chesney plucked a young boy from the crowd and awarded him an Eagles helmet.
After a one-song encore ("She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy," naturally) Chesney worked the edges of the stage signing autographs for a good five minutes.
It's this common touch with common folk that keeps him uncommonly beloved.
