Kenny Chesney on Life Post-‘Revival’: ‘There’s This Double-Edged Sword’
It is likely that right now, somewhere off the coast of the Virgin Islands, Kenny Chesney is bobbing on the ocean and reflecting on his remarkable year.
“The last 15 years of my life, the very next day after the last show, I fly south and wake up and get on my boat, and I can hear the ringing in my ears from all summer,” he tells Rolling Stone Country.
The ringing may be especially loud this year. Chesney played more than 60 shows, kicking off with two nights at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on his birthday and ending last weekend with his two customary blow-outs at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
After taking a much-needed year off to recharge his batteries, the East Tennessee native admits that he had been anxious about how his latest album, The Big Revival, would be received by fans and whether they would kick off their flip-flops to rejoin No Shoes Nation this summer.
Clearly, he needn’t have worried. Not only did Revival spawn three Number One hits for the superstar—”American Kids,” “Til It’s Gone,” and “Wild Child,” bringing his total to 27— the fans came out in droves, with Chesney smashing attendance records at some of the biggest venues in the country: MetLife Stadium, Lambeau Field, Heinz Field, Target Field, Lincoln Financial Field and more. In Foxborough alone, he played to over 120,000 people.
“What I hoped would happen with my audience and this record and this tour and where I am in my life and my career. . . I felt like it couldn’t have gone any better, as far as people connecting with it,” says Chesney, sounding legitimately relieved.
In many of those places, the country icon was joined by openers Old Dominion, Cole Swindell and Brantley Gilbert. Eric Church hopped on several dates, and Chesney teamed with Jason Aldean for 12 co-headlining stadium dates. He knew they wouldn’t be easy acts to follow.
“My mentality is to give the fans the best possible day we can give them,” he says. “And to have Eric Church and Jason Aldean going before you? You sit on your bus and say, ‘Well, you’re going to have to step it up a little.’ I think that’s made me better, no doubt about it.” (Of Church in particular, Chesney says, “Eric is so authentically great. I can sit and talk and do a whole article on Eric Church about how much I care about him as a person and what I think he means to music.”)
“It would’ve been really easy to be at this spot in my career and go, ‘I’m just going to do what’s worked and not push myself,'” says Chesney of the sonically adventurous Revival and his mammoth tour. “But I’m really glad that we did and I’m even more thrilled that the anxiety that I had was validated — seeing all these people out here this summer — because if you don’t care, they won’t care. I really think about that with our audience. No matter what it is you’re doing, especially with music and songs, if your audience feels for a moment that you don’t care, why would you ask them to care?”