With over a million tickets sold before the first note was even played, Kenny Chesney’s 2015 The Big Revival Tour was easily the year’s biggest country tour – with 22 stadium plays, several arenas, a few festivals and a couple amphitheaters for good measure. Given ABC’s Good Morning America’s position as the leader in morning news shows, they wanted to find out what the buzz is all about.
So July 10, Robin Roberts brings two camera crews to Lincoln Financial Fields, home of the Philadelphia Eagles, to see what goes into putting on the kind of show that’s made Chesney the only country act on Billboard’s Top 10 Touring Acts of the Last 25 Years. Having already set up a time lapse camera on Monday – to get the ground-up build – Roberts will see the light trusses, sound tweaks and quite possibly take part in soundcheck with the man The Wall Street Journal deemed “The King of the Road.”
“When they asked, I thought they were kidding,” Chesney said. “Nobody ever wants to see the sweat, or the aching backs, or the amount of steel and flooring that goes into setting one of these big shows up. But they said they did, and we figured, ‘Why not?’ Good Morning America has been along on this ride with us for the last 10, 12 years – so they wanted to see what goes into bringing the music to the No Shoes Nation, c’mon!”
With three No. 1s for the first three singles from The Big Revival, including Grace Potter’s first No. 1 with “Wild Child,” the songwriter from East Tennessee has hit a new creative peak – and it’s showing in both his music and his massive two hour shows. Ten years into headlining stadiums, Chesney is still hungry to push the envelope and create music that moves beyond what he’s already done.
“One of the reasons I love talking to Robin, she recognizes that my fans see their lives in my songs, that they’re not just here because it’s fun and says ‘let’s party’,” Chesney continued. “Obviously, I want my music to make you feel good – that’s why ‘Save It For A Rainy Day’ is the new single – but I also have always wanted it to represent how people actually live their lives, the things they feel and how they make their memories. Robin got that from question one, and I have always felt like she’s looking deeper when we’re talking. When you have that with someone, well, you’re always willing to open up and talk about what the music means or how we bring 50,000 people together to share a night.”
Having broken his own attendance records in Pittsburgh and Green Bay, Chesney’s not slowing after Philadelphia, either. Slated for two nights at Minneapolis’ Target Field July 18-19 and Foxboro’s Gillette Stadium August 28-29, as well as stadium plays at Denver’s Sports Authority Field at Mile High August 8, East Rutherford, NJ’s Met Life Stadium August 15 and Detroit’s Ford Field August 22. The man The Dallas Morning News quantified “Two parts Mick Jagger, one part Bruce Springsteen, one part Billy Graham” will become the first country act to ignite Pasadena, California’s Rose Bowl on July 25.
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