LOS ANGELES (BNA Records) - The chorus may promise, "In the morning I'm leaving, making my way back to Cleveland," but the pivot point for the video for Kenny Chesney's brand new "
Anything But Mine" is the quality of the surf footage. And so it was that acclaimed video director Shaun Silva headed to the California coast with a championship surfer and a noted underwater cinematographer for the B-roll to the performance clip of the reigning Entertainer of the Year - with Chesney and band captured at a shutdown amusement park in Myrtle Beach.
"One thing about Shaun," says Chesney of his video collaborator, "he is relentless in making things real. No matter what we're doing, he's not afraid to push a little farther, to strive a little bit more - whether it's that helicopter shot that closed 'There Goes My Life,' playing clown car with how many hula girls can you put in Uncle Kracker's VW bus in 'When The Sun Goes Down' or getting in the water to capture all that footage that makes 'Anything But Mine' as much a love song to a way of life as it is a song about loving someone enough to leave them where they belong, knowing your heart is going to stay there even after you've returned to where you're supposed to be."
In addition to using his usual DP Steve Gainer, Silva - who's been responsible for Chesney's CMT Flameworthy Award winning Video of the Year "Young," Hottest Male Video "Big Star" and Male Video "There Goes Mt Life" - enlisted Sonny Miller, who was one of the key shooters on the surf movie "Blue Crush," for the underwater and surf shots which define the Chesney video.
And to make sure the athleticism that marks surfing wasn't lost, Amy Cobb - the 2000 Eastern Surfing Association Champion who rides for Body Glove - was cast as the woman transfixing the song's narrator.
The Florida-based Cobb was also the subject of a 6-page Playboy pictorial in 2001.
"This is a song that's all about yearning, about the way people can live their lives sooooo in the moment, that they lose sight of the fact that the place and time they're in can come to an end. We wanted to show just what it was about that time that stamped both of these people with memories that were gonna be with them for the rest of their lives...
"And when it came time to shoot our performance, well, I loved the idea that those two kids were gonna go to some seaside bar to hear a local band... that the guy had just enough money to scrape up the cover 'cause lemme tell you, buddy, I've been THERE! I wanted us to sorta have that vibe... to be a little band playing on the boardwalk. Standing in front of that ferris wheel all night - and we were there ALL night, you could almost feel the pull of the salt air, the notion of falling in love for a vacation, being the band that gets to watch it all go down.
"Truth be told, it was like washing up in a Springsteen song - and getting to be the band. And there aren't many better roles to play in modern American music, so I think Shaun did a great job casting us like that."
With "Anything But Mine" exploding at country radio, the reigning Country Music Association Entertainer and Album of the Year winner and fan-voted American Music Award multi-genre Artist of the Year - over Usher, Norah Jones, Evanescence and Outkast - is getting ready to release Be As You Are: Songs From An Old Blue Chair Jan. 25.
Look for the man who played to 1.2 million fans this year to have a 7 figure reach Feb. 1 when he offers a song from his deeply personal singer/songwriter project on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno."
