Country Star Kenny Chesney On His Music and New Memoir

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Now, to a country music legend. The American singer-songwriter Kenny Chesney has sold 30 million albums worldwide and racked up dozens of number one singles. And just last month, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. Now, his memoir, “Heart Life Music,” takes us back to where it all started, growing up in a small town in Tennessee, dreaming of stardom. He joins Walter Isaacson from Nashville to discuss how country music changed his life.

 

WALTER ISAACSON: Thank you, Christiane. And Kenny Chesney, welcome to the show.

 

KENNY CHESNEY: Thanks for having me, man. I really appreciate it.

 

ISAACSON: At the beginning of this wonderful memoir, you talked about lying on your back in the grass and looking at the stars. Tell me what you learned from that.

 

CHESNEY: Well, as a child, I lived with my grandmother. My mom and I lived with my grandparents while my stepfather was in Vietnam. And you know, when you live that far outside of Knoxville, you know, there’s no light pollution at all. So on a clear night in the summer, you can see forever. And I would, I don’t know why I did it. I would just go out. It would just make me feel good. I would go out and lie out in her backyard and stare up at the sky. And now, as an adult looking back, that’s where this curiosity for life started.

 

ISAACSON: And you also talk about the fact that, you know, that every other kid in every dot in the map is probably doing the same thing. 

 

CHESNEY: I would like to think so. I can’t be the only one. Right? So I but I only knew, you know, I had three roads that I went down as a kid. I knew the road to church. I knew the road to school, and I knew the road to the ballpark, and that was about it. But I was always really curious as to what was past my county line and what else was out there in the cosmos, you know? And so it wasn’t necessarily dreaming of music, it was just dreaming to dream. And it wasn’t that I wanted to leave, it was just that I wanted what was out there.

 

ISAACSON: And when you’re aged three, they give you a plastic guitar. Yeah. <Laugh> and a little microphone. Did they know at age three?

 

CHESNEY: I don’t know. I, I just, you know what’s crazy is I look at that picture that’s in the book. And if you look at pictures of me now at 57, I stand the exact same way as I did as a three-year old with that guitar. It’s crazy. But –

 

ISAACSON: And then you said that you automatically got your left hand…

 

CHESNEY: I automatically knew. Yeah, it was, it was unbelievable. But you know what? I felt like that over the years, early on, I had no idea music was gonna be my life, but it was always kind of – whatever higher power you believe in, it was always, it was as if God or whatever was touching me on the shoulder with music. Now I wanted – sports consumed my life, but there was always music in it here and there. Never knowing that one day that I realized that I could be creative and creativity just consumed my life when I figured that out.

 

ISAACSON: You know, where I come from, New Orleans, we talk about the spirituals and the marching bands and all flowing together to create jazz. What was flowing, what rivers were flowing together to create your music?

 

CHESNEY: There was bluegrass early on, and then there was – in my mom’s kitchen. And, and on the way to school, I heard a lot of country music. But once I got into high school, I realized there was a group called Van Halen. And then I realized there was a group called Lynyrd Skynyrd. I realized there was AC/DC. And then when I got into college is when I realized the genius of Bruce Springsteen, of Jimmy Buffett and Bob Marley and the Wailers. Now, if it’s possible to put all those acts into a stew, that would be my music because I’m a true believer that the music that you digest as a child and as a young adult, when you become an adult and start making your own records, it’s only natural for the music that you make as an adult, what comes out of you as an adult is the direct reflection of the music that you digested early on in life.

 

ISAACSON: Well, let’s unpack all that, music you digest and how it fits in. You mentioned Jimmy Buffett, right. And there’s a gulf island inflection to your music. I think you did something what, “Waiting for a Hurricane” or something with him. 

 

CHESNEY: Well, when I first started in this business, first of all, Jimmy was the first one that taught me that it was possible on any level to paint pictures with words. And I didn’t know that was possible, right? I was a kid from east Tennessee, but Jimmy created space just like Bruce did, and other people. In a way, Jimmy created space for my dream. Like Jimmy showed me, Jimmy had a really big dream, and it showed me that, wow, I could have a big dream too. And that’s when I was starting to get really creative and never knowing that I was going to have a place in the US Virgin Islands and spend a lot of time down there. But when I did do that, I met a lot of people from a lot of different places. Different religious beliefs, different political beliefs. They just didn’t grow up like I did. A lot of them were from New England and from all over the world. And the longer I was down there, the more that I realized that I just don’t have to make music for people that are in my, in the genre of country. I could make music for everyone. And that’s, that’s how much of a profound impact it had on me as an artist, as a creative person. And it really changed my life in a lot of ways.

 

ISAACSON: I find that fascinating because different types of music are either very diverse and they bring things together, and inclusive. I always thought, and forgive me for saying it, that country music didn’t have quite as much diversity. But you’re saying you are able to bring all that in?

—

 

CHESNEY: Well, not all of it does. I mean, it, that’s true. But for me, when I was first getting into the business, I was just trying to get my songs on the radio, and I was trying to do what worked. Right? I was just trying to get into the business at all. But I did that. And, but at the core of it, I knew that I wasn’t making music that was truly authentic to me. And I truly believe that all of us, when we hear music, we like it to be authentic. And we’re, and when it comes to music, we’re all pretty much suckers for the truth. So when I was able to do that – around 2002, I’ve been on the road since 1993, and I was doing exactly the same thing that everyone else was doing up until around 2001.

And that’s when my life changed. That’s when I started being very authentic and, and realizing that, oh, wow, I didn’t have to make music just for these people, I could make it for everybody. And that’s when my music truly changed. 

 

ISAACSON: Well, what happens in 2002 is you come up with this great album, you know, “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem.” 

 

CHESNEY: Yep.

 

ISAACSON: And it also has a Springsteen, you cover a Springsteen song on it. Did you –  Is that where the change happens?

 

CHESNEY: Yeah. yeah. That, it was that album, the “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems” album. And when I was in college, I heard Bruce’s “Tunnel of Love” album. And I always felt like that it, that it spoke to me in a lot of different ways. And so I love the song “One Step Up and Two Steps Back”. I absolutely, I still love it. It’s one of my favorite songs. So I, when I got to that place in my life that I was recording the “No Shoes” album, I felt like that it was possible that I had lived enough, maybe, to make that song authentic to me. And so I went in and recorded it. I was, I was proud of it. But my friend, who, and my, the person that I co-wrote this book with Holly Gleason, she’s been in my life a long time, and she urged me to send Bruce a copy of the song. And so I did and never expecting anything. And about two weeks later, I got a, I got an unbelievable letter from Bruce thanking me for the care of his song. And, and that started a friendship with Bruce over the years. And, and that, that was just, it, it was just such an amazing thing because the fact that he even heard it at all was, was really thrilling.

 

ISAACSON: We’re speaking now right before Thanksgiving, and I think one of the greatest memories in your book is the Thanksgiving Day, where suddenly your family is saying, your mom is saying, and others are saying, let’s go to a concert. When I read about the concert, I went, whoa, that was a concert. Tell me about it. 

 

CHESNEY: That was, yeah. So we always have Thanksgiving during the day, you know, and at night there’s really nothing to do, which I’ve always thought was a genius thing for a concert promoter to have a concert on Thanksgiving night, because everybody’s looking for something to do. But that specific night we went to see George Jones, Merle Haggard, and Conway Twitty, all in the same show, all in our town of, you know, of Knoxville, Tennessee. And we went, and I was, I was a kid, you know, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was playing basketball and baseball and football. I thought I wanted to be an athlete. And then I went and saw those guys. And I gotta tell you, man, something changed inside of me. I went, oh my God, that’s what I want to do. I don’t know how I could ever do that, but I saw the connection between the artist and the audience, and how the audience reacted to the artist, and just the synergy between the two. It was,  I don’t know. There was something, it – that’s another way. It was, it was God tapping me on the shoulder going one day, maybe, you know. So, but I had no idea how, but I remember that night, I was going home going around one day, hopefully.

 

ISAACSON:  I think lightning is what you call it.

 

CHESNEY: Oh, I, yeah. I – to see, to see that show, and look, one of the things that, that I’m very thankful for close to Thanksgiving, is that as a young person, you have all these people that you look up to and that you try to emulate and learn from. And then one day you become actual friends with them on some level, you know, and create with them and share the stage with them. And there’s a lot of those moments in this book, you know. But that just, that, just like I said, when I got into high school, I loved Van Halen, I loved George Strait, I loved Joe Walsh, I loved Steve Miller. I loved even the Wailers, like later on I got to know a lot of those guys. And not Bob, obviously, because he died in the eighties. But my career and my, my musical life has been filled with people that I loved early on that I got to meet. And not everybody can say that. I mean, it was just, there’s so many people that championed me in a small way that I never thought would even know me on any level. And I’m very thankful for that.

 

ISAACSON: You write something about songwriting, which I’m gonna quote you if you don’t mind, which is “the job is to take a slice of life, write all about it, slice it down to what matters, then cut that feeling wide open.” Is there a song of yours that you think exemplifies that?

 

CHESNEY: Well, that’s a hard thing to do. I talk about it, you know, and it’s there was, there’s several songs that, that I wrote. And the, the, there’s a song called “I Go Back” that I wrote on, on a bus rolling through Colorado one night. 

 

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CHESNEY: And that’s one of my favorite songs I ever wrote. I wrote it by myself. The one that I truly am proud of, though, and a lot of people think just because the, of the nature of the title, it’s called “Beer in Mexico.” But they think it’s a drinking song, but it’s not.

 

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CHESNEY: Some critics would dismissed it because they thought it was just a drinking song. But that was a true snapshot of my soul at the time. Sammy Hagar, I met Sammy on a night off in Columbus, Ohio. Van Halen was playing the same arena that we were playing the next night. And I met Sammy, he was great to us, and he invited me to come play his birthday party later on that year. And so we did. And, but there was something that was stirring inside my soul. Now this is an example of how you write songs as you live them. You know? I was, something was, I was 36 years old. All of my friends had their thought, they had their life figured out. They had family kids. I did. I wasn’t there yet. And I was like going, okay, well, is there something wrong with me?

And then I went back to the house where Sammy got us a a place to stay. I pulled my guitar out and a and a notepad, and I just started writing down all the things I was feeling. And by the time the band got back, I had written, I’d almost finished “Beer in Mexico.” And it was a true snapshot of my soul at the time. And that’s one of the few songs that I’ve written where that was that authentically true. A lot of stuff is that we hear on the radio, and I’ve done it is made up and it feels good. It sounds good. And, and I like that. But “Beer in Mexico” was one of those, an example of what you were talking about, of just shred, shredding it all down and giving people a snapshot of your soul. 

 

ISAACSON: You know, you toured almost nonstop, but you hit a wall, I think in 2009. 

 

CHESNEY: I did.

 

ISAACSON: And there was, during the final song “Better as a Memory,” I think it was, you began to cry. What happened?

 

CHESNEY: I had just been going nonstop since 1993. And I had, my life – during that period from 1993 to 2009. There was a lot that had happened in my life. There was a lot of change in my life. There was a lot of loss in my life. There was a lot of just me coming to terms with being this person. And all of a sudden, earlier that year, in 2009, I started to feel numb. Numb to music, numb to life, numb to my friends. Numb…just numb. And I didn’t feel great. I didn’t feel bad. I just felt in the middle, this middle gray. And it was just, there was, I just felt numb. And that’s no way to make music. And it’s no way to have connection with an audience. And that last weekend, I think I was in Indianapolis playing the Indianapolis Colts’ football stadium. And I went into that song and it just hit me. I thought, wow, this might, this might be over for a while. I didn’t know if it was gonna be two months or two years, or 20. I had no idea. But I was, I knew I couldn’t go on feeling like that. And it just hit me like, it was just such an emo– like the dam broke inside of me.

 

ISAACSON: How, how’d you pull out of it?

 

CHESNEY: Well, I didn’t, I pulled out of it. I didn’t that night, you know, luckily that was the last song, you know, of the show. But I took, I took all of 2010 off, and then I started making a film for ESPN called Boys of Fall. And all of a sudden I was in the living rooms and I was the interviewer. I was interviewing Bobby Bowden, Nick Saban, and Bill Parcells and John Madden, all these people that meant so much to the sports world and to me and my father ’cause we watched a lot of football. And all of a sudden I felt it back. I felt, Oh, this is inspiring me in ways that nothing else could at the moment. And all of a sudden, man, I was, I felt this creative energy and, and this, it was a godsend, and I needed it so bad. And after that, I felt creative again. I felt happier. I felt lighter. I was a better son. I was a better friend. I was a better songwriter. And it, I really needed it. I really did.

 

ISAACSON: Tell me about being inducted in the Country Music Hall of Fame.

 

CHESNEY: It was…being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. I, it still blows my mind. I mean, I, for a long time, it took me a minute to accept it, honestly. I have been so busy for so long, and I’ve never took the time to sit in accomplishment that much. I don’t, I just don’t do it. And for them to, to get that call. And not only did I get the call, they came to my house to tell me it was, it was almost like winning the lottery, I guess. You know? They came to my front door and told me and I just, I, it took me forever to accept it, even to the day of the induction. And all of a sudden though, there’s something about walking into that rotunda where all these plaques are on the wall of some of your friends and a lot of your heroes, people that inspired you.

And when you walk into that room and they say your name as a Hall of Famer, it hits you. I mean, I promise you it hit me. And then you take a group shot with all the living members, and all of a sudden you’re in that group. And I promise you, it hit me then. And I promise you, that picture is gonna be really big in my house, I still can’t believe it though. I can’t. But one of the things that was really great, you know, I was, I’m 57 and I was able to sit right beside, I had my mother and my father sitting right beside me. And that was a gift. That’s a real gift, you know? And, and I was that’s one of the few pictures that we actually have together, and it’s a great one.

 

ISAACSON: Kenny Chesney. Hey, thank you so much for joining us. 

 

CHESNEY: Man, thanks for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity.