Kenny Chesney will sit down for a candid question and answer session with Billboard in June:
Country superstar Kenny Chesney will sit down for a candid Superstar Q&A at the second annual Billboard Country Music Summit in association with the Country Music Association (CMA).
The event, set to take place in Nashville on June 6-7 at the Renaissance Nashville Hotel, will gather today’s top country music executives and other artists to network and discuss all aspects of the Country Music business. Chesney will be joining another one of the most successful entertainers in country music today, Carrie Underwood, who will also participate in a Q&A.
Billboard’s Ray Waddell will conduct the rare public interview with Chesney, who is among the elite artists in country music history, by any measure. His tours have raised the standard for country music in terms of production and ticket selling, moving more than a million tickets every time he embarks on a tour.
“As someone who has followed Kenny Chesney’s career since he was playing in clubs, I have a huge appreciation for all he has accomplished in country music,” says Waddell, executive director of content and programming for touring and live entertainment. “His insight into how his career has developed, his musical vision, and his successful outside projects will make for an informative and entertaining session for Summit attendees.”
Kenny Chesney was Lon Helton’s guest this week on Country Countdown USA. They have some interesting conversations covering a wide range of topics.
Perhaps the most interesting was a story he told about Taylor Swift. The first year he was sponsored by Corona was a year that Taylor was supposed to tour with him. But the legal people decided that a 17 or 18 year old shouldn’t be on a tour that was sponsored by an alcohol company. So Kenny had to call Taylor and tell her that she couldn’t be on the tour, and to make it up to her he gave her “a lot of money”. The next year Taylor wins Entertainer of the Year and as she was celebrating backstage Kenny gave her a hug and said “I want my money back.” Listen to this clip here.
Lon and Kenny also discuss how he spent Christmas, the day that Kenny and Uncle Kracker recorded “When The Sun Goes Down,” and this year’s tour, among a few other things.
In an interview with The Boot, Kenny Chesney lets us in on what he asked for for Christmas:
The superstar explained his mother’s annual quandary to WSIX/Nashville radio host Gerry House this morning. “Every year, my mom asks me what I want,” Kenny said. “She asked if I wanted the new George Bush book, but I already ordered it on my iPad. So I’m getting what I got last year: canned green beans. My mom and grandmother can green beans themselves. I love it, because it’s what I grew up with.”
For Christmas, the ‘Somewhere With You’ singer is headed back to where he grew up in East Tennessee, a place that a certain song takes him back to every time he hears it, if he could only remember the name of the song. “The one that is almost annoying,” he tried to recall. “It’s like on the cusp of being really great or really annoying. It’s a girl that sings it … in East Tennessee the radio station plays it all the time. Every time I hear it, no matter where I am, that’s where I go. Vince Vance and the Valiants’ ‘All I Want For Christmas is You,’ that’s it. They play it all the time when I go home.”
In the November issue of People Magazine, Kenny Chesney reveals ten songs that have changed his life:
1. JOHN MELLENCAMP – SMALL TOWN
This song is a perfect description of how I grew up, the dreams I had back then and the values that shaped my life.
2. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN – BORN TO RUN
This song is all about freedom. It reminds me so much of the freedom I felt my first couple years on the road. We had 14 people on a 12-bunk bus, and I didn’t think it could get any better.
3. BOB MARLEY – STIR IT UP
I have spent a ton of great days at sea watching sunsets to this song. No matter where I am in the world, when I hear this song, I am in that place.
4. THE EAGLES – TAKE IT EASY
It’s funny now that I live this song how I understand every struggling, conflicted emotion of it. As a kid I had no idea what it meant; I just knew I loved it! But now it is scary familiar, true to my life.
As Kenny Chesney told The Tennessean a couple weeks back, he scratched the first draft of his new album after last year’s tour:
“I put it in my CD player and listened, and I called Buddy back before he’d even left the studio,” the country star said. “I said, ‘There’s 11 songs on this album, but we’ve really only got four.’ I wanted so bad to be finished, but it was a moment where I had to do some soul-searching as an artist. The songs sounded good, but they were passionless, and I knew in my heart that we didn’t have it.”
In an interview with Mix, Kenny fills us in on what those songs were that he kept and carried over to Hemingway’s Whiskey:
“Seven Days,” “The Boys of Fall,” “Live a Little” and… wait, there are only three actually. There was another song I was thinking of that we recorded that didn’t make the record.
So, we had to go to work again. I wrote “Reality” after that, and I was able to make this record pulling back from everything and not being on this cycle that we get so used being on of making records and touring. I had been going on the road on Thursday, Friday, Saturday night, coming home on Sunday, being in the studio Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. When we started over and made Hemingway’s Whiskey, I was off the road. Buddy and I were able to really dig in and work with the songs, work with the musicians and talk about the music and what it meant. It gave us a chance to sonically spend time on it. I think we spent more time mixing this record than any record ever, and I wasn’t doing it after flying in from somewhere. I had not really had that luxury since we made the No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problems album.
Pollstar has a good interview with Kenny Chesney. They’ve only released Part I of the chat that covers the new album and his next single “Somewhere With You,” which Kenny says is his favorite song on the album.
“Somewhere With You” is going to be my next single. I think it’s the most different record I’ve ever had.
One of the reasons I’m excited about Hemingway’s Whiskey is because I think it pushes my audience but it doesn’t do it to the point where I’m not still myself. And I think that’s good. I think that’s why it took so long to record the album. And regarding “Somewhere With You,” I think we all have that one person in our life that is not with us, but they’re not really gone either. You could be with someone else, you could have moved on with your life, but that person is still there. Saying goodbye to someone isn’t necessarily letting go of them. And that’s the whole idea behind “Somewhere With You.” When I heard that song, it made me think of my person that’s left but is still in there.
So I knew I had something with this song. Aside from it being a very melodic song. I could see Dave Matthews doing this song. It’s so melodic; it’s like a lava lamp. It’s so different but I still felt that it was really me. I felt melodically it was completely different and sexy.
I think about weird things when it comes to songs. How does this groove? How is this tempo? How is this cadence going to fit with all of the songs in my set at my show? And I don’t have anything like this song, so I can put it anywhere in the set. So, yeah, that’s probably my favorite song on the record and then I’d probably go with “You and Tequila” with Grace Potter.
Check out the full interview here to read Kenny’s thoughts on Grace Potter and “You and Tequila” among other things. Part II will discuss touring… we’ll bring it to you when they post it.
Kenny Chesney will sit down for a candid question and answer session with Billboard in June:
Kenny Chesney was Lon Helton’s guest this week on 
In an interview with 
In the November issue of 
As Kenny Chesney 
Pollstar has a good 
