How to Hire KENNY CHESNEY For Your Event!
aka: Kenneth Arnold Chesney
Hire Kenny Chesney:
Kenneth Arnold Chesney (born March 26, 1968), known professionally as Kenny Chesney, is an American country music singer, songwriter, and guitarist.
He has recorded more than 20 albums and has produced more than 40 Top 10 singles on the US Billboard Hot Country Songs and Country Airplay charts, 32 of which have reached number one.
Many of these have also charted within the Top 40 of the US Billboard Hot 100, making him one of the most successful crossover country artists. He has sold more than 30 million albums worldwide.
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Chesney has received twelve Country Music Association Awards (including winning their top Entertainer of the Year honor four times) and eleven Academy of Country Music Awards (including four consecutive Entertainer of the Year awards from 2005 to 2008), as well as six Grammy Award nominations.
He is one of the most popular touring acts in country music, regularly selling out the venues in which he performs. His 2007 Flip-Flop Summer Tour was the highest-grossing country road trip of the year.
Chesney collaborated with one of his personal heroes, Jimmy Buffett, on a remake of Hank Williams’ single “Hey Good Lookin’ (with Clint Black, Alan Jackson, Toby Keith, and George Strait), and a second song “License To Chill”.
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Chesney grew up in Luttrell, Tennessee (the birthplace of Chet Atkins) surrounded by country music but listening to “everything from old Keith Whitley and Ricky Skaggs bluegrass records and George Jones to Lynyrd Skynyrd and James Taylor.”
“No matter how good a song is, I just can’t make it believable if my heart’s not a hundred percent into it, and ultimately that’s what I have to go on,” he explains of his arduous song-screening process. “I’ve passed on songs that I knew would be hits and later became big hits by other artists. But that’s okay, because I know they wouldn’t have been hits for me, because my heart wouldn’t have been in them.”
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“I’m not one of these guys who can sit here and tell you that since I was four years old, I knew I wanted to be a country singer,” Chesney laughs. “I think it’s often b.s. when people say that anyway. To be honest, I never dreamed about being a singer as a kid. I never once gave it a thought. I was mainly just growing up and playing sports.”
“I didn’t know what I wanted to do until I was in college at East Tennessee State in Johnson City. “Even then,” he adds, “it wasn’t like I just woke up one day and decided, I’m gonna be a country singer!’ It just happened; it just evolved into what I do.”
“I was in college, I got a guitar, I learned a lot about it. Then, all of a sudden, I’d written a few songs, then I was out playing clubs and making a little money here and there. And ya know, about another year after that I was doing it all the time. It wasn’t till I got out in the clubs that anyone ever said to me, ‘Man, you really oughta try to do something with this.'”
Kenny Chesney became a fixture at prestigious Johnson City area venues – a Mexican restaurant called Chuckie’s Trading Post and Quarterback’s Barbecue. “The scene up there then was mostly blues, rock, and folk,” he recalls. “I was about the only one doing George Jones and Hank, Jr. I got to where I had a pretty good following.”
An awakening of sorts came when he went into the Classic Recording Studio in Bristol, Virginia. Backed by several musicians he knew from college who are now the core of Alison Krauss‘ band, he recorded an album’s worth of songs he’d written. When he pressed up a thousand copies and sold them all at his shows and made enough to buy a new Martin guitar, he realized he was onto something.
Setting out to meet as many people in the business as he could, Kenny Chesney made one steadfast ally: Clay Bradley, head of publisher/writer relations at BMI. After countless turndowns by publishers, Bradley, in 1992, set up an audition with Acuff-Rose, one of Music City’s oldest and most venerated song mills. Chesney came out of the audition with a songwriter’s contract.
A year or so later, an appearance one night at a songwriter’s showcase led to a recording contract with Capricorn Records, which had recently started a country division. “The whole Capricorn deal was a very big emotional roller coaster ride,” Chesney remembers. “Of course, for that matter, the whole music business is the biggest roller coaster ride in the world.”
“I’d be lying if I told you there wasn’t a lot of frustration at first because I wasn’t getting much airplay and was kind of perceived as an independent artist,” Chesney acknowledges. “But my real goal in this business is to treat people good and build the kind of relationships so I can stay around a long time. Ten or even twenty years from now, if I’m still lucky enough to be having hits, or even if I’m not, I still would like to be able to go out and tour all year long.”
“Well, I don’t know how long the good Lord’s gonna let me be in this music business, or even be this successful at it,” he adds with a warm, measured smile. “So, while I’m here I want to enjoy every minute of it.”
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