Kenny Chesney held the top spot on the Billboard Country Singles Chart for two weeks with his latest single “Out Last Night” but has been displaced by Dierks Bentley’s “Sideways”.

We’ll have a full Chart Update on Thursday.

Didn’t attend the CMA Music Festival in Nashville a couple weeks back? Well you’ll be able to watch many of the performances, including some of Kenny Chesney’s act, on an ABC special in August.

“CMA Music Festival: Country’s Night to Rock” will air Monday, August 31st from 8:00-11:00 PM/ET on the ABC Television Network.

Filmed in Nashville June 11-14, the special has been expanded to three hours to showcase more of today’s most exciting Country Music stars. Kenny Chesney, Kid Rock, Lady Antebellum, Brad Paisley, Darius Rucker, Sugarland and Taylor Swift are the first performers to be confirmed, with more artists to be announced soon.

The annual CMA Music Festival is unlike any other, with four days filled with more than one hundred hours of live music, 30 hours of autograph signings by Country Music’s biggest names and up and comers, hundreds of artists and celebrities, and a party list of thousands of avid fans. This is the fifth time ABC will broadcast this special – which invites the whole country to America’s biggest Country Music bash – since the original Fan Fair(R) was launched in 1972. This year an average of 56,000 fans attended each day of CMA Music Festival, its biggest turnout yet.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has a review of Kenny Chesney’s concert last Saturday at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia: “Chesney caps five country acts”

Kenny Chesney’s stand-alone encore “Don’t Blink” tellingly capped his strong 20-song set Saturday night before a sell-out crowd at Lincoln Financial Field.

After a long program of five acts that began with Lady Antebellum at 4 p.m., the hugely popular country megastar offered 50,000 listeners an observation and a recommendation: Life’s fleeting, so keep your eyes open and take it all in.

That thesis of living now and looking back thoughtfully is a recurring theme in many of Chesney’s well-tooled hit songs – “There Goes My Life,” “I Go Back,” and “Back Where I Come From” played Saturday. Perhaps it is the true source of his appeal, far deeper than his good-timey, beachy-cowboy image as a Nashville version of Jimmy Buffett might suggest.

Continue reading here

Also view the set list from this show here.

LiveDaily has a slideshow of photos from Wednesday night’s Kenny Chesney show at Jones Beach in Wantagh, New York.

Check them out here.

(hat tip to Kay for passing this along)

The Virginian Pilot has a review of Thursday night’s Kenny Chesney show at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Virginia Beach, Virginia: “Chesney shows why he’s king of country”

Will there ever be a more exciting show than Thursday night’s Kenny Chesney Sun City Carnival Tour? Probably — when Chesney returns to the Verizon Wireless Virginia Beach Amphitheater.

The biggest moneymaker in the country music business has it all — excellent material, a very good voice, a very good band, and a personality that exudes pure joy.

The most super of the country music superstars can best be described by thumbing through a dictionary of superlatives.

Typical of most shows in the genre, the fans sing along. In Chesney’s case, they seem to do as much vocalizing as their idol, seemingly knowing every word of every song.

Thursday’s show was called the Sun City Carnival. That sounds like a senior citizen boat trip, but most of the audience were in their 20s and 30s, an over-enthusiastic bunch who greeted the star with a thunderous, deafening ovation.

The Sun City Carnival Tour continues Saturday with a show from Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia.

Kenny Chesney’s latest single “Out Last Night” remains at #1 this week on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart. It’s the second week at the top for the hit song.

“Greatest Hits II”, the latest album offering from Chesney that was released on May 19th, sits at #13 again on the Billboard 200 and at #4 on the Top Country Albums chart.

View Kenny’s full chart history here.

You can preview and download “Out Last Night” below:

Or pick it up at iTunes.

Tonight’s show at Jones Beach will be the first time that Kenny Chesney has played at the venue. Long Island’s Newsday has an interview with Chesney:

“I’ve never played Jones Beach, and I thought I’d played everywhere,” Chesney said, calling from his Nashville home during a short tour break. “The first time’s always the best, right?”

Q – New York country fans don’t get to see their favorites very often. Why did you decide to come out here this time?

A – When you’re doing the road like I have for so many years – I’ve been on the road for 16 years – we’re trying not to repeat markets and if there’s any places we haven’t played, we want to get to them . . . For me, [New York] is great. But I have a different audience. I have a very eclectic group of people that might not go see somebody else in my genre. I think a lot of people in our audience live by the rule that we live by on the road: We work harder and we play harder.

Check out the rest of this interview here.

Kenny Chesney’s 2009 Sun City Carnival Tour continues tonight with a show from the Nikon at Jones Beach Theater in Wantagh, New York.

Sticking with a northeasterly swing, Chesney will then play at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Virginia Beach, VA on Thursday. Then on Saturday it’s another stadium show as Kenny brings the Carnival to Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. Gates open at 2 p.m. and the concert begins at 4 p.m. Parking will be open at 9 a.m. and cost $20.00 per space.

Get great tickets for these shows here.

TouchTunes, the largest interactive entertainment network in North America, announces its TouchTunes Kenny Chesney Greatest Hits II Summer Soundtrack Sweepstakes. Fans can registers to win a fly-away trip for two to one of the high-impact, high-energy performances on Chesney’ssold-out Sun City Carnival Tour, that plays 12 stadiums, a series of arenas and a handful of amphitheatres this summer.

Beginning June 23, music lovers may enter the sweepstakes two ways: via interactive entry forms on TouchTunes digital jukebox screens at participating locations nationwide, or by going online at www.touchtunes.com/kennychesney. The promotion runs through the July 4th weekend, traditionally a very busy time of year for bars, restaurants and other places jukeboxes are found. Entry deadline is July 8, 2009.

“There’s nothing like a song on the jukebox,” said Chesney, the multi-platnum singer/guitarslinger/ songwriter from East Tennessee. “When your song comes up…you get a certain kind of rush. And no matter your mood, there’s always a song on the TouchTunes jukebox that can define it. So this is a pretty cool way to be part of the digital jukebox nation.”