Kenny Chesney

and but I just haven't. I just have not let myself reflect that much. And until I sat down with Holly Gleeson, and that's been like a year and something experience. So but I'm really glad we did it. You know, it's like almost like therapy. Every time, you know, in therapy, they had you tell the story over and over again, and every time you tell it, you remember something else. And that's that's a lot about what writing this book was Likeve.

we didn't get any light pollution, you know. So when it was when it was dark and clear, it was beautiful. And I was dreaming, Bob, But I didn't know what the dream was. I was just dreaming to dream, like I said in the book. But I was just so curious about what was past my county line, what was past the only roads I knew to go down with the roads to school, the roads to church with my grandmother, the rose to the ballpark, and that was about it.

And every Christmas, my grandfather would be the guy that goes, Hey, we're all going to get in the car. We're going to go to Knoxville to see the lights, right, And he was also the person that would sit there and go, Wow, I wonder what that lot bills costing them. So I

don't know. I think about that kid, and I think about the person that I am now, and I just think about how powerful my journey has been, about how many and how my life has changed, and how many how it changed the lives of people that have come along with me. And that's a very powerful, profound thing because we all came from different places, we all have different religious beliefs, we all have different political beliefs, but somehow we all play the same notes. And I think that's beautiful.

So it was a constant, constant, and I felt numb. I didn't feel like I was listening to music the same way. I didn't feel like I was creating the same way. I didn't feel like that I was. I just felt I didn't felt good or bad. I just felt numb. And that's not the way to make music. That's not the way to create. And I wasn't a

great friend. I wasn't a great son. I wasn't I just was just lost, you know, And I didn't I was really scared because I really loved what I do, but I could and I could just tell that I wasn't the same up there, and I wasn't giving like I used to, and I got really scared, and that's why I took all of twenty ten off. I just needed a break, and that's when I had already had Boys of Fall recorded, and we went when I had some time off that fall to start shooting. It was

a long form video for that song. And then when we got done with it, I went and played it. I met the guy who was ahead of things at ESPN at the time. His name was John Walsh. I met him with Jimmy Buffett at the super Bowl party a couple of years at a super Bowl party a couple of years prior, and he said, if you ever you know, told me if I ever wanted anything him

to look at anything, to call him. So when I had that long form video, I sent it to him and that was the beginning of a whole other chapter for me. That's when we all of a sudden, I am in the living rooms of Bobby Balden, Nick Saban, Bill Parcells. I flew to San Francisco and was in John Madden's. It wasn't his house. He had this big warehouse and he had big screen TVs all over it in a big kitchen, and all of a sudden, I'm in places like that interviewing these people that were very

that were giants in football. My dad was a coach. Sports was always very important to me. So walking into those rooms, I was like, Wow, this is this is really different. But it was feeding me creatively in ways that music wasn't at that time. And I spent all of twenty ten making that documentary and it was on ESPN for a good while about it took something different like that to feed me in ways that I never saw coming. I mean, I was in Joe NAMA's house

in Florida and we weren't talking about football. We were talking about life. We were talking about how life is not just to get you know, how football is at a game, and how life is a game egle. But life is the big game and you can't do it alone. You've got to have people around you. I didn't expect that stuff to come out of Joe Namas mouth. I was like wow, I mean, I was so inspired, and all of a sudden, there was a moment where I felt, Wow,

I'm back, I'm really back. And then I started listening. I started listening differently. I mean, my manager, Dell Morris, some of the best advice he gave me was there's a fine line between a groove and a rut. And you know what's really bad is when you think you're in a groove, but you're really in a rut. And I was in a rut for a minute. I mean you may not, you know, I see it all the time, and we all see it. You know, everybody keeps making

the same music. Well, they're in a rut. And I could have stayed and kept doing what I was doing, but the boys that year I took off and getting out of the rut Boys Will Fall helped me find my groove again. And had I not done that, I would have been off in an exhaustion oblivion.

this same neural pathway as I do. I think that's that's the thing, is creating different roads to go down in different neural pathways. And that's what I that I've been trying to do, you know, for a while now. But moving forward is I just always try to keep it, try to keep it fresh and write and be around. It's not doesn't always work out, but I mean there's there's some great new riters in town, you know, and that has a different They just have a different way

of thinking. And for me that's been writing the same way for a while. That's really good to create those neural pathways.

night and it was great. But I hadn't make a decision right around I don't know, about fifteen years about ten, fifteen years ago, if I was going to do that, or if I was going to do this, you know, if I was going to act like that all the time and do that. Because I realized that I couldn't do both. I couldn't live that lifestyle and give the

audience exactly what they deserved. And I didn't go down all these roads to mail it in, you know, And I just had a I don't know, I had to come into Jesus meeting with myself in a way you know where I said, no, you're you're going to give these people care about your music, they care about you, they care about the experience, and not only are they going to get all of you, they're going to get the best of you.

feel deprived. But look, I will tell you when I'm off the road, when I'm done. For the last how many years, we've ended our shows. Ended our tour with two nights in Foxboro and at Gillette Stadium, and I trust me, I make up for it as soon as that the next day for a while. And so but I don't know, just being I'm so driven, and so when I'm up there on stage, I don't it's I've

just built this. I don't know if it's a persona or whatever it is, and it's I don't even know how sustainable it is, to be honest with you, but that's the way I've done it. And but I wouldn't say deprived, but I I know I'm missing out, but I'd rather do what I do. I'll eat later.

a little bit, you know. So, But that's the way it's been for me, and it is every year. Around the second week of January, I flipped I flipped the switch off, and I go, Okay, now I start living my life almost like it's like it's through a straw, like this is all you see. And I work out, I eat clean, I create, and I'm like, when we're we already know right now that in June when we go play the Spear again, that we're going to have to change half that show. It took us a long

time to create that content. Well here we are almost, you know, almost the end of the year. And we're already working forward on that. So it's just a constant cycle. But you know, look, I love it, I really do, and I love being able to see what we can create up there. But but that being said, I have to sit there and go, Okay, now you're gonna eat at Christmas, you're gonna eat it Thanksgiving, you're gonna go to the Islands, you're gonna you're gonna get on a boat,

you're gonna, you know, do whatever. But it's second week of January. You've got to prepare to start being that person. And that has been the cycle I've been on for a lot of years.

a calm down from all of it. And you know, for years I've I took my band and crew, probably one hundred people all down more than that to the Virgin Islands after after every tour and let them jump in the ocean and just let us celebrate the life we get to live. Well, that specific year, I was just emotionally so tired, and it was the first time that I felt that emotional and mental release that hard.

And I don't know why, but it messed with me a little bit, you know, and it was it took it took about a month for me to go, oh, wait, where did everybody go? You know, because we're just all together for so long, and you live every day out there, and these people that have been with me have been with me for years. I mean, we're a family out there. But yeah, it's it's hard to say goodbye to that. To me, it's a lot like our last show of the year. Is a lot like when we were kids.

It was a lot like the last day of school, right. I mean, you're ready for a break, but you don't want to let go of it either because it's so great. And that's how it is for me, you know, I look forward to my summer vacation but I start to get antsy if I say it still too long.

don't live that lifestyle. I truly like now. I have an ice tub out outside my bus that my friend Lard Hamilton.

I call him? But I did, and him and his wife Gabby met us down at their barn right on the river in Kawai, and they let us go out on their paddle boards and when we got back, they had two open coconuts in our jeep and that was the beginning of our friendship. And I've been they have really been a positive impact on my life, you know, mentally and physically. I go up there and train with Laird and it's a grueling thing, but yeah, I mean I this goes to show you how powerful the universe is.

I mean, the kid from me Tennessee is not supposed to be friends with Larr at Hamilton, right, That's just the way it is, or even met all these people that I that I reference in the book. So but Laird, I spent countless days up at Laird's house, setting in

asauna and getting an ice tub. I went, wow, this is what I need out on the road, you know, because I beat my body up so much during a show that I went, well, I need to get an ice instead of acting like I used to, I need to set an ice tub and let my body heal and then go to bed. So that's basically what after shows look like now. And it's become a thing out there like now. Like I told you earlier, I take a lot of Bandon crew down to the Islands after

our tour. Well, one of the caveats is is they have to at least participate onints in the Cold Plunge, and if they don't get in the Cold Plunge, then they don't get to go. So it'll be okay. We got two weeks left in the tour, and there's I know exactly how many people haven't hadn't done it yet, and so so and I know who they are, and so if they want to go, they got to get

in that ice tub. And last day of the tour is always really fun because everybody has to pay the piper and they got to get that ice And it's taught me a lot about I know, I'm off the subject now, but it's taught me a lot about human behavior because you never know how people are going to react under pressure. Some react favorably, some react unfavorably, and it teaches you a lot about that person, you know. So it been it's so fun to watch them, to

watch that game in the ice it's great. But Lair taught me all that.

you don't you don't see. You don't see that coming, right, But it's just human behavior is a tricky thing, and some people that you think would flourish in that moment, they don't do well. And then some people that you think wouldn't do well do great. So I don't know, but it's for me. I like doing it because it's such a bonding moment for everybody out there on the road.

that I was playing stadiums. I was outside of the Pittsburgh Steed there was football stadium and I was looking at all this stuff, and I went, you know, who's paying for this? And I was like, God, I am And it really hit me, you know, so I tried not to think about. I don't like to be the boss. I really don't. I like to I like to be the kid the cabin I really do. But I know I'm the boss, but I let I delegate a lot of that stuff to Dave.

isolating enough. We're doing enough a good enough job on our own doing that, you know, or I do anyway, especially when I'm off the road. But when I'm out there, that's where one of the places that I feel actually comfortable in my skin and is communicating with everybody and having fun. Look, I've been doing this a while now, and I'm telling you, we have the fund meter out there for a lot of years has been all the

way over. I mean, we have had a lot of fun doing this, and I couldn't think of just isolating myself and I don't know, having some sort of this unapproachable persona. I just never understood that. I never understood people with you know, I'd go to friends shows and they would have all this this this over the top security with the microphones in their face, and you know that I just it's just I just don't do it

that way. I refuse to because it just it's I would go to shows that would make me uncomfortable, and I do this for a living, So you'd imagine what somebody that that's just back there for how they feel. So I've tried not to be that person.

how to do that. That's one thing. But over the years I've developed I would say, some sort of social anxiety, especially with the new technologies and all the devices that we have, and with all and how quickly an awkward interaction can go viral, right, and when you don't even mean it for it to like somebody, Oh, Kenny didn't say hi to me, he's an asshole, And maybe I'm maybe I didn't hear them, maybe I'm having a bad day. Maybe I was, you know what I mean. And so

it's that way. So I have developed social anxiety to a point. I'm not saying that I don't I do get out of the house. I I'm not painting myself into a room or anything. But it has changed out there.

and we were those kids. You know that that would take the pool sticks and play the guitar licks, you know, to Uh to the James Gang, or to Montrose with Sammy Hagar or I mean every Van Halen record that was ever made, we were we were doing that. So to think that you would be later on in your life and get being this place and you would be friends with those people on any level. The fact that they know who you are at all is one of

the most amazing things. That's That's about what's happened to me in my journey that I did become friends that one day out of the blue, Irving asof called me and he goes, hey, Adie van Halen's gonna call you. I went, yeah, okay, right, And next thing you know, I answered the phone and it was Eddie. I could tell it was Eddie. I I saw interviews I had, you know, and so the fact and then you fast forward. Then Eddie and Eddie and Alice come to our show.

I think we played the soccer stadium outside of LA and they came and showed up and got there early. And Eddie had his long hair and he had his shirt off and he was ripped and then all of a sudden here are It was like a it was such a Wayne's World moment or a Beavis and butt Head moment, you know what I mean. It was like we couldn't believe it. And everybody that was on the road with me loved that music so much, not just my crew, but every band that was on the show,

their crew and everybody. You could just see hundreds of people stage right and stage left seeing this moment. And my guitar player at the time, Clayton Mitchell, was one of those guys that sat in his that sat in his closet and learned every single lick of Eddie's. He tried to to copy everything. So to see that moment, it was, it was it was insane. So our communication, my communication with Eddie was back and forth a lot. Now with Sammy, it's it's that on steroids, you know.

I I love being around Sammy because he feels like sunshine to me. I just I love him. And the first time I went to play Sammy's birthday party in Cabo, I was thirty six years old, and I talk about this in the book, but it was a life changing moment for me, you know, in a way, because I was thirty six, and I felt like I had to. I didn't know where this this journey was taking me. I had just broken up with a girl at the time, and I was going, wow, like where is my life going?

You know? And that night I was like, we played almost three hours at Cabo Wabo and at Sammy's bar, and then I went back to the house the Samy god for me and I'm the guitar out and I thought, well, I don't have to figure out what's next. I just

got to go and just just live it. And that's the night that I I wrote very in Mexico, all of it that night, and that taught me a lesson too, about you know, creating and and just writing what you live and how you feel and not just some something that's made up in a a in a room with three or four co writers on a writing trip, you know. I mean, that was a real that was a real

soulful there was a glimpse into my soul. Really, people that listen to the people that I always saw that title thought it was a drinking song, but it wasn't. It was it was a it was a glimpse into my soul, like I said, and it was a turning of the page for me.

So we were just we knew that we weren't going to play past foot class high school. But Bob, I got to tell you, man, it taught me so much about the way that I do business today, and especially when you try to achieve something wonderful with a lot of people, and football taught me that lesson. You know, you can't everybody has to be on the same page, you know, whether whether you're on the road or you're

in corporate America or whatever. If not, ever, if everybody is not aligned, and what's the same thing, it's not it's not gonna it's gonna be really hard to achieve anything great. But I've also learned through sports that mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people that they want because their thought processes aren't aligned. They're not because the mediocre people think they're working hard, but the high achievers know they're not, and so it's

never going to be aligned. Ever. So that's what football taught me, and that's what thirty years of being on the road has taught me.

they're mediocre, and then they can overachieve. For sure they can, you could, but they got to want to be there. And so that's what that's I've tried over my career. I've tried really hard to look at that through a fish eye lens and just see how people react. It goes back to the ice cub in a way. It goes back to how they act and react and under pressure or when they're uncomfortable. That says a lot because it's it's it's it's it's really. Football also taught me this.

It's really people. Really, everybody reacts favorably when things are good. It's how when things are bad, when they see it, you start to see you start to measure human behavior. It's it's how people react under pressure is one of the biggest barometers of human behavior that I've ever seen.

cover of it. But this was different. I mean here I am me, my guitar on a stool, my piano player, and there's Bruce ten feet away from me, and Sting and Jackson Brown and Bruce's wife and this all these people in front of me, and I went, oh wow. I mean I really felt the gravity of that moment. I mean I was like, I don't know, I could feel sweat going down my nose. But I just took a deep breath and I just went, hey, just go be your authentic self. Do it just like you did

at Chucky's Trading Post in Johnson City, Tennessee. That's a Mexican restaurant I played at in college. And I would play One Step Up because I love that song so much. Well, I love the whole Tunnel of Love record a lot, and because I think it had a country soul to it, but especially one step up. All of a sudden, there I was, in my life in front of the man that wrote that song, and he's watching me say it, and I don't know. It was just one of those

really surreal moments, But that was that. That is the scariest and the most pressure I've ever felt as an entertainer in my life. If I look, I don't get nervous. I know this probably sounds cocky, but I don't get nervous doing the stadium shows because I have forgotten the words. I have fell off stage. I have, I've had fans come on stage, so those don't Those kinds of things don't make me nervous. But playing a really great song for one of your heroes right in front of you is really difficult.

to approve the cut of my performance. And when I'm done, they cut to Bruce and you can read his lips and he's whispering to his wife Patty. He goes, I loved it, and that made that validated my whole dream as good as it gets. I mean, that's as good and validated my whole dream. And so I'm glad I did it, even though I was I was under a lot of pressure.

You thought for a minute that it was going on, you know, because a concert is a lot like sex. You know, it has its ups and downs. It's kind of you know, it's it's flow. But I mean, it was a freight train. It was a freight train. I watched the drummer, and I watched how they played and how they interacted with each other, and it was just that's the best. That's the best. I walked away from there and I was on my way home going that's the best thing I've ever seen.

the Vegas line and the over and under on each game. Now, we've never paid each other. I'm not a gambler really, but I am with them and we've never paid each other. And it's all in fifty dollars bets, and so it's been a rolling amount for the last fifteen years. And I say it in the book and I'm right around the same thing. I'm about almost eight thousand dollars in the hole in fifty dollars bets right now to Jim Cogging, Knoxville, Tennessee.

It's crazy, but it's all about competition. There was a time where, you know, when college PlayStation came out and we had that football game in there and we played. I've held shows for fifteen to twenty minutes because we weren't done with the game. And I can do that because I can get ready to go on stage in less than five minutes. I got a T shirt, I got jeans, boots, straw cowboy had. Okay, I'm ready to go, and so I can hold it. But that's how that's

how competitive I am. And rolling down the highway were we were somewhere in Alabama and I had a terrible game, and I got so pissed off that I pulled the whole game out of the console, like the whole game, and threw it out the side, out the window, and the band just looked at me like I was crazy. I was that pissed off. I think I threw like five interceptions in the game. But that's how competitive I am. And I remember why I'm my piano player. I mean, he kicked my ass like it was almost like the

whole week. We played every day and he beat me by over twenty points. And we were playing rupp Arena in Lesington, Kentucky one night. We had these big screen TVs behind us, and why it had taken a picture without me knowing it of the screen of the score. And while I was introducing the band, they put that picture up there on the on the screen, and yeah, it really pissed me off. But I was like, that's how competitive I am. So that answered to you. That's

a long answer to your question. But I just loved I just loved being competitive, and I liked playing football because it it got me out of my comfort zone. That's what that goes back to Laird. Laird taught me a lot about, especially with pool training and being out in the ocean. Is you grow a lot as a as a human, and you get better when you're out of your comfort zone.

I mean, I can't tell you how many times I walked into the production office and just to say hi, people, you know, just say what's up.

I visit family. I it's just whatever, you know.

actually done playing music since since July. And once I got out, once I got done at the sphere this year, I went straight into the audiobook. And theo book is another animal. I don't know, but I'm telling you that's one of the most unpleasant things I've ever done in my life. It's the audiobook. But I'm glad I did it.

It was business. And you know, if I'm a fan, like we were talking about my friends and heroes, you know, if Sammy Hagar wrote, if he wrote a new book and put it out, I'm going to want to hear Sammy do the audiobook. You're not going to want to hear me do it. You want him to do it. And so I understand that it took me a month to read this book in the studio. It was just it was I was like I was like a week in and I was only like on chapter four and

there's forty nine chapters in this book. I was like, wow, this is going to take a minute, but yeah, this But now I think when I get done with the book launches because the guitar is going to come out of the case a little sooner than usual because I've been done playing music for a minute and I miss it.

was on the climb right. But these people didn't care. They didn't know, so they really got to know the real meat. And then they would come to shows and they would see what I do on stage and they would scratch their head and go, They're going, wow, we had no idea that this person that was down here constantly with us on boats and in bars does this for a living. They truly, I mean, they knew what I did eventually, but they didn't know that that was

our life at all. So it was really interesting, you know, to see them see that. But yeah, I'll either take my girlfriend down, or I'll go with my family, or sometimes, I mean we usually do it once a year, I'll take some writing friends down and we'll just go hang for a week and see what we can come up with and see if we can find something inspired in a different way. And I think as a creative person, that's really that's really good to do, you know, because

earlier we were speaking about neural pathways. As a songwriter, for me, I'm always feel like that I need to get out of my comfort zone and create somewhere else, because you can go down the same neural pathway that a room can make you create the same thing. And so it's always good to do that, especially after you make a record, you know, or while you're making a record. More importantly, I get asked for advice all the time about, you know, how I made my records and what I've

done over the years. And the one thing that I still do is in the process of making my record, especially when I think it's almost done, I'll take that in the sequence of the songs and I'll go listen to that in different environments, like I'll go to the Islands, or I'll go to easton a see because those are my people. Or I'll go to New England, or I'll drive across Mulholland in la or I'll just see how

it sits in every environment. And if it doesn't sit great in every environment, then I'll try to, Okay, well, what will make it sit? And that's exactly how you and Tequila came about that whole story right there, because I was I didn't have I did. There was this missing piece of the Hemming Ways Whiskey record, and I had no idea what it was. And Materesa Berg sent me you in Tequila. I was driving north at that time.

I was renting a house. There's this market in Malibu culture it used to be called Trapas Market, and I was reading a house north of there, and so I was just driving home one night and she sent me a song and I listened to it on the way home and it was just magic, the sun was setting, it was it was just a perfect, perfect scenario to

hear to hear that song. And once I heard that, I went, wow, Okay, this is the missing piece because I had listened to that what was supposed to be the heming Ways Whiskey record, and there was a few things missing and that was one of them.

How do you mentally deal with all that? Well?

with Mary Beckett. The business is not even recogniz as you know. You know, Barry taught me so much. But that's a whole other podcast.

and experience that experience. And I think as long as because I've seen artists get complacent, I've seen artists dollar in and they get to this weird point where they just don't care, and I've never understood it, I still care. And I think as long as my audience knows I care about them, and they care about the experience and still care about the music, then a lot of the other stuff I don't have to worry about as much, you know, well, you have a.

to fit now? Because sonically a lot of the things are different. They are and I've changed mixers and I've done a lot of stuff, but I can't sing what some of these people are singing about because I've already done it right, And so it's it's tricky. If if a brand new guy can go sing the next version of no shoes, no shirt, no problems, and he'd be and he'll be a genius, I can go sing the exact same song, and I'm repeating myself. So it's it's I got a thin target to hit and I know that.

And God, I mean, I am so blessed to say this, because not every act in the world gets to say this. But I've reached a point in my life and in my career where I'm competing with myself and I'm thankful for that. But it's hard. It's hard creatively, it really is. So that's why it takes me longer to get there, because I just can't throw anything against a blank page and it be accepted because I'm competing with myself and I know that I can't go do when the sun

goes down again, I can't. I don't even know if I can go do I go back again? So so yeah, it's harder, you know. So, But if I to answer your question, yeah, I still want radio success, but am I fine with it not having it. I don't know. I haven't thought about it yet, to be honest, But if you really want the honest answer, I haven't thought about that yet. But yeah, I mean, look, I'm not immune to what happens to every act in the world. It happened to Bruce Springsteak, for God's sake.

sacrificed son, we're talking about sacrifice earlier. I never fell a personal sacrifice, but it was really hard on a lot of people, honestly. But I don't think now though. I think now though, Yeah, look I think for me now in my life now, I'm not the same. And I I realized at one point about three years ago, three or four years ago actually, that I had given every decision and every choice I ever made, I had given to the persona not the person, and whether that

be good or bad, it got me here, right. And if I did make a personal choice. I had to check with a persona to see how it was going to affect all of it before I made that choice, and which is really hard, you know, But I didn't realize that until about three or four years ago because I was still so in the zone. You know, it was just so just grinding and creative and driven, and you're right to do it like we've done it, and to get to this place, it takes all of you,

it really has. And I'm not been great at balance, I'll admit I haven't.

You're what you've created is here. Your creative community is here, so and now. But that was before you know, we've realized we could get on a call a lot like this one in FaceTime. But still it's not the same. But that's not how you write songs. And so that was just one example, you know. Or I could go, hey, I'm going to live in the version iss I love getting on the boat every day. I'm going to but

that's not I can't do that either. So because you have to be present, you have to be available to what I felt like I had to be available to what I built and everybody around me. And it goes back to this. I mean, I truly do Bob feel a And I don't know the answer because I can just see you that's ask me why on this? But

I don't know the answer to it. But We've been able to achieve so much success, and I've had so many people around me to do this with me, that there is when you do it with all these people all these years, you feel some sort of sense of responsibility to them and to what you created. And yeah, so every decision you make you kind of go, oh, wow, okay, how is how is this decision you might want to make for the person going to affect the hope, and I deal with that a lot in my life.

but I can't say it right now. I didn't know, but it was a round. I don't know, but I didn't know that I was smarter than the average Joe, I don't know that I am now or not, but you definitely are, yeah, but I am. I don't know. I think that when I went on the road and I started to really dive into because there was a moment where when I first got started. There was years. Honestly, when I first got started that I was just trying to do whatever made sense. I was. I just wanted

my songs on the radio. Everybody was trying to be a B and C version of George Strait, and I was right in there with them. But I still felt like it was when I would go up there on stage and I don't know, I was wearing a belt buckle and I had these jeans, these certain genes on, you know, and I'm going it felt so disingenuous, right,

and I was, I don't know. And then there was ways that I wanted to create around us the the I don't know if this is the answer to me being smarter than the average Joe, but I felt very creative. And I saw everybody was doing their show, and it's a lot like I guess having kids and being a parent, Like you don't I don't know how to be a parent, but I know what not to do, I think. And so when I was trying to create my show, I'd watched how everybody did it that I didn't like, and

I was making mental notes. I was going, Okay, I don't want that, And then I would see things that I loved. One, Oh wow, if I ever get to do this. I'm gonna remember just a version of that and make it my own. And that's it was. I guess around then when I started to go, yeah, maybe I think differently than some people.

five years ago. And I look, I have not been my mother And I say, I think I say this in the book. I'm not sure if I do or not. But my mother This was when I was first starting. It was around two thousand and two, right when the Nose Shoes album came out, and things were different. They were just different. I've been on the road since, you know, ten years earlier, with my band and crew, but I was still available because I hadn't felt that that change yet. So I was available to my mother, I was I

was available to my friends. But when all that changed, I was like, oh wow, this is unbelievable, and that that dream that I was dream and that I don't know. It's this horniness to go and do all that and do experience that what we've experienced, and meet our heroes and collaborate with them. And the rush of the audience and building your audience was all a part of it. So it was all a part of this train that was taking me away, right And my own mother came up to me and she goes, I can't seem to

reach you. And you know what I did. I dismissed her. And if you can do that to your own mother, you could do it to anybody, anybody. I just wasn't available, you know, because I I dismissed her because I couldn't change it, because I was gone. I was gone on this I was gone on this journey, and there was nothing gonna there was nothing gonna pull me back. Nothing.

for the greater good of just being this person. And the answer to your question at forty years from now, whenever I'm at death's door, I mean, I'm going to say, wow, that was fun. That was a lot of fun. And I got to make music and I got to give it to people, and I got to give that to the world, and I got to create with my heroes. I got to know them. But I think everybody has that. I think everybody has their own. I'm a big believer in the universe big and I think everybody's got their

own path. Everybody's on different paths. You know. I talk about that specific thing in the book when I the night I wrote beer in Mexico. Okay, well, I'm thirty six. Most thirty six year olds have maybe have two kids. Here. I am a little buzzed at Sammy Hagar's pool he got for us writing a song. It just played, So my life was different. I just played Sammy Hagar's birthday party. I don't have two kids, but I have this amazing experience, and so no, I don't think i'll have that. I

hope I don't have that. Oh I wish I hadn't done this because I really got to do this and that is special. And but yeah, I mean I think what's great for me now is I'm learning how to be more available now in my life, and that's a good thing.

work ethic is insane. They love sports, they love food, they love family, and that's a lot. I mean, it's everything I grew up on and for I don't know. I can't speak to everybody else, but for us it's just been it's been such a strong connection, and I don't think they look at it north or South. For me. They made for some. I mean, look, if you got a bunch of corny songs, maybe you know what I mean.

I think speaking of corny songs, like the only station in America when it was out that didn't play she thinks my Tractor Sexy was the Boston Country radio statements. It's not for us it's not for us. You fast forward two years after the song had peaked. I think it peaked at twelve something like that. It wasn't even a top ten record. Two years later, I'm playing the big beautiful theater in downtown Boston. We hadn't we hadn't graduated to arenas yet, but we're playing a big theater

in downtown Boston. It's packed, and I go into Tractor and the place comes unglued right well. Jenny Brofy and Mike Brophy, who ran the Boston radio station at the time, were in the audience and they went, well, how are they hearing this? Because this is before streaming, This is before you could you could listen to anything by anybody at any moment that you wanted to. So back then, the only way you heard it is if you were if you heard it on the radio, or heard it

on an album cut, if you bought the record. And the next Monday and one of the one of the one of the surfaces where it was bill Boarder or you know, when R and R put out their magazine or whatever they called in the add and she thinks my tractor sexty two years after and they said in big letters, you probably find it. They said, the panel

is finally closed. And that's our joke. I mean, for years, you know so so, but but I get what you're saying, like, if you come with songs like that over and over again, there will be some sort of a disconnect regionally. But but thank god, there was more to me than that. Uh. Anderson Cooper. Anderson Cooper's first segment that he ever did on Sixty Minutes was on me and he brought that up. He goes, well, tell me tell me about she thinks

my tractor sex. And I told Anderson, I said, well, I was smart enough to record it, and I was smart enough to not record it again. So because for him, you know, his mom being Gloria Vanderbilt and his whole you know, New York lifestyle, he did not understand.

and so I was. I just loved it. It was the most universe. I felt like, Wow, this is really aspiring and it's all about love and positive energy. And I don't know. Years later, I got to collaborate with Junior Marvin and family Man bear Ashton, family man Beartt. I sat on the beach with the family man Barrett we were doing the video. I talked those guys, Junior Marvin and family Man and some of the other guys that were in the whalers to do the video for me on the north to do the video with me

on the North shore in Jamaica. One night. It was for the song Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but nobody wants to go now. And we were done with the video and me and family Man said right there on the beach and talked about Bob's life, how they met each other, and family Man said something that I take with me to this day. He goes, Reggae and country are cousins. He goes, they tell it like it is and uncut and that's I went, Wow, what a

great what a great thing to share with me. But Bob, we sat there on the beach and I have it recorded. I'll send it to you. That I asked him if I could record it. He said yeah, And that was one of the coolest things that's ever happened to me, and one of the coolest people that I ever met. And just to sit there and talk to him about his life and about what it was like, you know, with him and Bob when they were just getting started and everything they went through, and it just goes to

show you, like we all come from different places. We all, like I said earlier, have different political beliefs, different religious beliefs. And that's no more evident evident than being on the road with over one hundred people. Right, they all didn't go to Cedar four Baptist Church and electoral Tennessee, Right,

they have. So when you go out there on the road, you you get you get to see a lot of things, and you get to meet a lot of people who are just so so their heart is unbelievable and what that tell What that told me? And in collaborating with them and with you, look into the audience and all of it. We all come from different places, but we play the same notes. We really do. And that's what I learned from family man Bearrack. But we couldn't be more different. But we loved each other. And I felt

the same way with Bruce. The first time I met Bruce, I thought he was the coolest person ever. We played in Holmedewe, New Jersey at the Amphitheater there and I get a call from Louis Messina and Louis goes, Bruce Springsteen's want to come to your show tonight. I went, yeah, whatever, Louie, and he drove to the show on his motorcycle and we, I mean literally, somebody's knocking on the bus door and

I'm looking out and it's really Bruce, you know. And he comes up and we get we say our pleasantries, we say hello, and and it was time for me to go on stage. And my rod manager David, walked Bruce to the front of house sound mix and he, I mean it was he felt very comfortable there. And he walked out to the front of house board and watched our show and at the time we had I had a horn section. I thought I felt like I was wanting to be different and I had a horn section.

So I had Jim Horn, the famous saxophone player, and I had the trumpet. I had the whole thing. And Bruce came back on the bus after the show and he was he just loved that we had Jim Horn in the band. He couldn't believe it. But we sat there and talked for almost two hours, and that was

one of the coolest experiences ever. And he was so humble and real and I and you hope, you really hope that when and I felt this way about Jimmy Buffett too, Like you you build up in your head before you meet your heroes who you think they are. And when I met Jimmy. I met Jimmy at the Four Seasons in a cabana in Vegas. He was out hanging out by the pool with a guy named Mick Ramos, and he was reading the Wall Street Journal and he was just he was so cool and wonderful to me.

But he exceeded what I had built up in my head. Bruce was the same way. I mean, he he sat on the bus and we talked about songwriting and you know, and it was just amazing to hear it this come out out of his mouth. But he said, songwriting, you know, you can write a song on a half a piece of paper, and you can put that song in a drawer and you can come back to it two or three years later and pull that song out of the drawer and it'll still be there. He goes, Your life

isn't like that. Your life is way more fluid, So pay attention to things that matter, is what What was his point? But to get a life lesson like that from the boss, it was like, wow, I mean this is that was one one one of the coolest persons and one of the coolest experiences that I had because honestly, he didn't have to be there and he didn't have to care enough to give me that advice.

And you know, as they say, it's not only for Kenny Chesney fans.

mean I never saw that coming. I never would. You don't know, the dream of stuff. So the book is more about the dream of it all than it is about the actual experiences. I'm proud of the experiences, but this book, I mean, no matter what your dream is, if it's music, if it's whatever it is, the lessons are kind of the same. Just just just go do it. You know. People ask me all the time for advice

and I'll leave you with this. But I get people asking me for advice these new kids and whether they're in the genre or whatever, and they ask me how you know how to make it? And I'm going that eternal voice in my head right there. I don't want to tell them this because I'm thinking this to myself. And I would never I would never deflate them at all.

But I'm thinking these guests, guys are never going to make it because you don't do it to make it in this world of celebrity, you know, these talent shows on TV and people calling it is to a drives me crazy. But you don't do it to make it. You do it because it's what you do. And that's why forty years from now or whenever the Good Lord calls me home, I won't be that disappointed, you know, because I got to do what I loved and I got to I did it because it's what I do.

And it was the first song I ever wrote in my life, and I went, I want to write her a song, you know. So I did that and I gave it to her on a Thursday and it split it across the table. So I had to wait all weekend, okay, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and then to go back into class on Tuesday to see how she felt about it. Well, when I walked in, she was sitting in the furthest corner she could possibly sit for me, and I went, hmmm, I got my

songwriter has got to get a little bit better, you know. So, whether it's that, that was my first taste of rejection in the music business ever. And so whether it was that or who whatever, it was, my humble upbringings, whatever it was, it was fuel to do whatever, to keep the drive, you know, keep going.