Kenny Chesney continues his whirlwind media tour this weekend when he’ll join Lon Helton for Country Countdown USA.
Kenny describes some key moments in the movie, which also includes some archival video from Kenny’s past. Kenny also talks about appearing on Oprah last week. And he has stories about some of his friends, including Reba, Lady Antebellum, Zac Brown, and Brooks & Dunn.
The show has actually already been taped, and you can listen to the clips at countrycountdownusa.com.
Kenny Chesney appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on Thursday night to promote “Summer in 3D.” In case you didn’t watch, here’s a clip from the show:
You can watch the full episode here. Seek to the final segment to see Kenny perform “Old Blue Chair” with just his acoustic guitar.
Don’t forget to tune in to the Tonight Show with Jay Leno tonight. Kenny Chesney will perform acoustically and talk to Jay about “Summer In 3D.”
“It’s sorta strange to be going on ‘The Tonight Show’ with a movie coming out,” Kenny says. “It’s very different, the idea of showing clips and talking about the experience of making this film. But it’s something we’ re all — me, the band, Joe Thomas the director, all the guys who worked on it — are really proud of, and it’s definitely getting me out of my comfort zone.”
“This will be maybe my most intimate performance ever on television, just like the movie is the most in-your-face, in-the-Goodyear Blimp, in-the-Sand Bar, on-the-stage, almost-under-my-hat we could make it,” Kenny says. “Consider the contrasts, and enjoy both phases.”
Kenny Chesney was back home on Wednesday night, premiering his movie “Summer In 3D” at the Regal Cinemas Pinnacle Stadium 18 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Knoxville.com has the story, including video of the event:
East Tennessee-born country star Kenny Chesney walked the red carpet, signed autographs and welcomed a crowd of about 1,000 to the premiere of his new concert film, “Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3D,” on Wednesday evening at the Regal Cinemas Pinnacle Stadium 18 in Turkey Creek.
“This is the first time anybody outside of myself and the people who made it have seen this film,” said Chesney from a stage in the expansive Pinnacle lobby before the crowd went inside theaters to view the film.
Sponsorships and ticket sales for the event raised more than $130,000 for Variety — The Children’s Charity of Eastern Tennessee, the local chapter of which was founded by the Knoxville-based Regal Entertainment Group.
The crowd began arriving more than two hours before Chesney was scheduled to appear at the theater complex.
Inside Pinnacle, guests ate barbecued pork, beans and slaw furnished by Texas Roadhouse, along with beer, wine and soft drinks while the Chillbillies performed on a stage.
Chesney, for his part, seemed happy with the event.
Just before the screening Chesney told the crowd: “Growing up here allowed me to dream really big dreams … and this is the first time I’ve been able to show you what you guys helped create.”
Update – More from Kenny on “coming home” for the premiere:
“When you step back and consider how far you’ve come, in a lot of ways it makes you want to go back to where you come from,” said the high energy performer. “You realize how much the values you were raised with – and the support for crazy dreams – help you do things you would never consider. So who better to share a moment like that with? And to benefit Variety – which takes such an active role in making a difference in young people’s lives… that’s makes everything about this so much sweeter.”
“It’s heartening to know the people back home care,” Chesney explained. “I learned a lot about dreaming there. You wanna ground something this special in something that was that important. And, you know, it’s nice to know that that dreams matters just as much to the fans… cause to me, it’s their dream every bit as much as its mine.”
With only one week until “Summer In 3D” hits theaters, Kenny Chesney invited members of the media to a screening of the film in Franklin, Tennessee on Tuesday morning. Craig at CMT has a blog post up about it:
I can’t recall how many Chesney concerts I’ve covered — probably five or six — and watching this film is just like being pressed up against the catwalk at a Chesney show. You get to see his facial expressions and (surprisingly) even his tears. Plus, he sings several of my favorites, such as “Big Star,” “Living in Fast Forward” and “Anything but Mine.”
Chesney himself welcomed the small press corps to the theater, then politely ditched us because he wants to wait until Las Vegas to see it on the big screen. Sometimes I get nervous about how country music will be represented on the big screen but Chesney does us proud.
Kenny Chesney recently wrote a heartfelt letter to the people of East Tennessee. Born and raised in Luttrell, Tennessee (near Knoxville), the place still holds a special place in his heart. Knoxville Magazine published the letter:
You never know when you’re starting out, where a dream will take you – or what it might cost. You just know you can almost taste it, touch it, breathe it, and that’s enough to keep you going. I sometimes look back on growing up in East Tennessee and see, just like most people’s, how my life was; there was no reason to think I could get a record deal, let alone play football stadiums in Boston, Seattle, Indianapolis, Detroit and San Francisco, but somehow I did.
Well, it’s not something that just happens. You don’t wake up one day, going, “I’ll just set up my gear at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh.” It starts long before you even dare to dream something like that.
I wanted to play football. Obviously, when I stopped growing freshman year, football required a lot of commitment from me – and the coaches at Gibbs High. They saw that and showed me what to do to be able to make the grade. Hard work. Discipline. A lot of willingness to push beyond what all us kids thought we were capable of.
You’d be surprised how many times I’ve gone back to those drills, those plays, that conditioning over the years. Whether it was playing small clubs where no one really cares – and rather than giving up, pushing harder to connect… or watching a single die on the charts, knowing I was gonna have to make more calls, visit more radio stations, and possibly learn more about my craft… or putting in the hours as a writer, as a student of what it takes to create a good show, making the calls, doing the interviews, doing those all night drives for seemingly not very much reward.
But I learned: it’s all part of it. It doesn’t just happen; it grows and takes shape.
Growing up in East Tennessee, I also learned a lot about what matters, about having fun and being happy right where you are. When I got my record deal, I realized that a lot of music isn’t made from that place, but from some place people are trying to get to. The only thing is: I liked the friends I had, the things we did, the moments we shared – and I realized as I journeyed, those things hold up.
So that drove me to cut songs like “Back Where I Come From,” “Young,” “Down The Road,” “There Goes My Life,” “Summertime,” “When The Sun Goes Down” and “I Go Back.” Those songs, those memories are so real for everybody, me especially… and you’re not going to see them in the pages of People, but people recognize themselves in those songs.
To me, that’s the greatest thing about music: you can bring people together. You can party with 100 or 5,000 or 67,000… and even if you don’t know the person sitting next to you, you kind of do – because you both know what’s in the music. And that’s the most fun of all: realizing how much we have in common.
When some of the stars I really looked up to came out to see me and the guys over the last few years, they just showed up and hung out like one of us. They’ve figured out how to keep that part that wasn’t a rock star alive… and that really struck me. After the show, they always say kind of the same thing to us, “You know, you and your guys remind me of us when we were at our peak.”
Those are the things you don’t think about. You’re living your life; you’re chasing your dream; you’re trying to make it mean more, be better, create something special every time. Then someone you’ve looked up to, someone who truly has a “band of brothers” on the road, says that.
It caused me to stop and reflect. What was this thing we had created? Because you don’t think about stuff like that. But when someone you respect and admire tells you something like that, you have to step back and consider.
At this point, football stadiums are part of what we do. A dozen, 15 a summer. It’s what we do… and it’s what in many ways inspires us. But it’s that notion of “this is special” – the heart that I see every night when we’re onstage, looking out at the fans, the way the band puts it all out there every single night, the places we’ve gone, the songs that we sing and especially the stories I hear about people coming together every year for this show. It’s their rite of summer.
Playing Neyland Stadium was an impossible dream. But we did the work, and it happened. It’s one of the most special memories of my life… and thankfully, we were able to capture it. Looking around, I realized so many of these other moments might be lost, and we should document it for when it’s gone.
Country singers and kids from East Tennessee don’t make 3-D movies. That’s for the Rolling Stones and U2. But there was something there, and, like always, I figured, “I might as well dream…”
When we started shooting last summer, we all looked at the footage – and knew there was something there. Something you couldn’t describe, but you could truly see. It’s the energy and the passion from the fans as much as anything, and the songs that are those people’s lives, just as much as they’re mine… and it becomes pretty obvious.
When I was sitting on a barstool with a tip jar at Quarterback’s Barbeque, no one – including me – could’ve imagined what we saw. When I got to Nashville, knowing no one and thinking a gig at the worst bar on Lower Broadway was a break, this wasn’t possible.
But that’s the thing: if you do enough one-nighters, touch enough lives, make enough people smile or laugh or sing along, keep looking for better songs that say something that’s real to you, it all adds up. It all adds up.
I didn’t make the Gibbs football team because I was so great at the try-out; I made the team because I worked hard, I kept coming back… and I grew into the thing I wanted to do: play football. That’s how dreams are. That’s the thing you can learn wherever you are… I know I did.
Kenny Chesney appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show today, and a couple videos from the episode are available online at Oprah.com.
The first video is Kenny surprising one of his biggest fans. Watch it here.
The second is a great video of Kenny taking his grandmother on a flight in his private jet down to Key West. She had never been on an airplane before, and Kenny wanted her to experience it. Watch it here.
The latest issue of People Magazine has an interview with Kenny Chesney where he talks about the reasons for slowing down this year:
The country superstar spent several weeks this winter in L.A. editing his new concert film Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3D, and managed to squeeze in his first-ever Italian vacation.
“We went to Capri, Positano and a little town called Ravello,” Chesney says. “I ate a lot of bread, drank a lot of wine and ate some really good cheese. And it was great. It’s somewhere I’ve wanted to go my whole life, but I never afforded myself the time to do things like that. Now it’s one of my favorite places in the world.”
Though taking the time off “was the hardest decision I’ve ever made,” Chesney says, “I’m so glad I made it. I haven’t felt this content in a long time.”
The drive that had made the singer the biggest North American ticket seller of the past decade had also taken a toll on his personal life. “Someone said ‘You sure do give a lot of your life to this’ and I said, ‘No, this IS my life.’ There’s no room for anything else. And that’s gotta change.”
Step one has been spending more time with the people closest to him. “I’ve been getting reacquainted with people who you shouldn’t have to get reacquainted with: my family,” he says.
Chesney, 42, is also opening himself up to romance. “If I want a relationship, I have to give to it too.”
Not that the singer is racing down the aisle. Although he has been dating Nashville nurse Amy Colley since 2008, “it’s not like I’m taking a year off so I can get married again,” he says. ” ‘Cause that could or couldn’t happen. But I want to put myself in a position to do it if it did happen. I want to put myself in a position to have a relationship in my life.”
He also has more travel on the horizon. “I want to go to places I’ve never been,” he says. “China? The Pyramids?”
“Who knows? I want to go explore,” Chesney says. “I want to taste everything. I want to take a big spoon, dip it in and taste it all.”
People.com also has a video up with some scenes from the photo shoot for the article. Check it out here (scroll down the page to find it).
Some more details are now available for the Summer in 3D premiere that we told you about earlier this week.
The premiere will be held Saturday, April 17th at the Rave Town Square 18 Cinemas in Las Vegas. The red carpet event will be streamed live at 6 pm PT at KennyChesneyMovie.com and ustream.tv/kennychesney3d. Chesney will be on hand to present the concert film, which also incorporates archival footage, still pictures and unguarded backstage moments with his own reflections on the fans, memories made and the motivation he draws on.
There’s also a special chance for Fan Club members to see the movie before everyone else does! In the cities that the movie was filmed, fan club members can purchase tickets to a showing of the movie on Monday, April 19th at 7 pm in Seattle, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, and Indianapolis.
Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3D Special Package
Enjoy the new Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3D Movie two days before everyone else!
View the movie with Kenny Chesney Fan Club members only!
Receive your very own, limited edition Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3D laminate
Each package contains a 11.5″ x 17″ movie poster
Each package contains an official Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3D Baseball cap
Six (6) lucky winners – one (1) from each event will receive a signed movie poster and gift certificate to Kenny’s online store – announced at a later date
One (1) fan will win a signed pair of Kenny’s Jeans (announced at a later date)!
All tickets will be will call and you will pick up your VIP package items at the venue the night of the show.
Kenny Chesney continues his whirlwind media tour this weekend when he’ll join Lon Helton for Country Countdown USA.
Don’t forget to tune in to the Tonight Show with Jay Leno tonight. Kenny Chesney will perform acoustically and talk to Jay about “Summer In 3D.”
Kenny Chesney was back home on Wednesday night, premiering his movie “Summer In 3D” at the Regal Cinemas Pinnacle Stadium 18 in Knoxville, Tennessee. 
With only one week until “Summer In 3D” hits theaters, Kenny Chesney invited members of the media to a screening of the film in Franklin, Tennessee on Tuesday morning. Craig at CMT has a 
Kenny Chesney recently wrote a heartfelt letter to the people of East Tennessee. Born and raised in Luttrell, Tennessee (near Knoxville), the place still holds a special place in his heart. 
The latest 
Some more details are now available for the Summer in 3D premiere that we told you about earlier this 
