Ray Waddell of Billboard recently caught up with Kenny Chesney to ask him a few questions as the Sun City Carnival Tour winds down:

So how do you feel now that the goal line is in sight?

Kenny Chesney: We feel really good. I’m exhausted, but it’s a good exhaustion, a satisfying exhaustion. We’ve been working on this tour — preparing for it, rehearsing for it — since last October. And that’s the kind of cycle of the last eight or nine years. It’s a good thing. When we’re in front of all those people, when they’re taking everything we give to them and giving it back, that’s why you do it. That takes away any exhaustion you could possibly have.

What was the mood like in the audience this year?

People are having as good a time as always. It’s almost as if they’re more appreciative that you’re there. We all know, if you watch enough TV, there are a lot of problems in the world, period. I tell the crowd every night that for at least a couple of hours we don’t have to worry about solving ‘em. And that’s about the loudest it gets all night. They don’t want to think about it, they don’t want to watch CNN, they don’t want to hear about health care. They want to play, have fun. That’s what I’ve seen from my perspective.

Are there any songs that you just have to play?

Any act has a song they have to play. I feel like it wouldn’t be a night if we didn’t play “Young” — we play that every night. I caught myself a couple of times this year not doing certain things I swore I could never do without. There were two nights this year we didn’t play “When the Sun Goes Down.” One, because of curfew, and two, because I just didn’t want to do it [laughs]. But I feel like “Young” was the song that kind of changed my life, even though I’d been around a few years. That’s the song that brings people down to the sandpit, and it’s the song I look forward to doing every night. It takes the show to a different level.

Read the full interview here.