Say what you will about Kenny Chesney sitting out most of last year’s concert tour season. This year, he’s back with another high-energy, power-packed show delighting audiences with favorite songs. With him on tour is Zac Brown Band, the red-hot Grammy Award-winning group.
“I just knew I’d had my foot on the gas for a long, long time,” Chesney said. “I’d gotten signed to BNA Records in 1995, and I’d never let up. I was able to do things I didn’t even know to dream, but in the work and the rush of it, things started to become a blur … and I knew it.”
| ONSTAGE |
| Kenny Chesney Goin’ Coastal Tour with the Zac Brown Band |
| » When: 4:30 p.m. Saturday |
| » Where: FedEx Field, 1600 FedEx Way, Landover |
| » Info: $29.50 to $249.50; 202-397-SEAT; ticketmaster.com |
Rather than keep going through the blur, Chesney opted to take a year off to work on personal projects and, of course, his music.
Now he’s back, and his fans can’t get enough of him.
“Chesney turned them to into Play-Doh,” wrote a critic for the Florida Times-Union, after attending a concert of his earlier on the tour. “I’ve never seen so much happy hugging at an arena concert. They seemingly knew every word to every song. He hadn’t been to Jacksonville since 2008, so they probably missed him even more than pickup truck drivers miss low gas prices.”
It’s likely the everyman appeal, front and center on the songs on his latest album, “Hemingway’s Whiskey,” that keeps the crowds coming back.
“Each of those songs is unique,” Chesney said. “There’s nothing else I’ve ever heard that sounds like it — and each one takes the sentiment and really pushes it. I can’t think of anyone who’s not survived a breakup doing everything in ‘Somewhere With You’ — they just don’t talk about it. The truth of ‘Round and Round’ most certainly applies: We’re never content where we are, it’s just how we are.”
The exception may well be when Chesney fans attend his concerts.
“There are your usual over-the-top country fans, hootin’ and hollerin’ and having a good ole time,” writes Lorilee Craker of the Grand Rapids (Mich.) Press, “and then there are Kenny Chesney fans, with beer cups and voices raised with equal gusto, stomping their cowboy boots (or flip flops) and swaying their hips to the music they love. His fans are truly, madly, deeply over the moon for him, and he seems to love right back.”
