New York, NY (SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT) - Having practically sold out entire NFL football stadiums in
Detroit and Seattle on Saturday,
Kenny Chesney - the Luttrell, Tennessee Every(young)man - does the unthinkable again: selling out New York City's Madison
Square Garden in an hour. With last year's tremendous success of Somewhere In The Sun Tour - featuring sold-out NFL stadium plays in Washington, DC,
Boston and Pittsburgh, which anchored an ABC primetime special - Chesney's brand of easy-going songwriter-driven country music infused with the energy that marks the best of rock is connecting in a way it's never before - as evidenced by the lightning fast ticket sales, especially in places like Manhattan.
"I remember when we sold out Manhattan, Kansas for the first time," remembers the man who shared the cover of Billboard with Mick Jagger and Bono as the three most successful acts in pop music last year, "and I thought, 'Well, this is the biggest Manhattan for a kid like me… 'cause even though you dream of New York City and the most legendary venue there is, you know not to set yourself up to be let down, because it's New York and they've seen it all and just don't really care.
"But, you know, the thing about dreams… they can't come true if you don't dream 'em. Probably Neyland Stadium, which was crazy in its own right, seemed more attainable, even though it was 67,000 people… because it was my hometown. But once you do something like that, have the success we had in Boston, in DC, in Pittsburgh, well, it makes you either brave - or crazy. I'm probably more crazy, truth be told, but this morning I'm sure glad we decided to do something that seemed like a wild idea."
Chesney's sell-out is the first country sell-out since the Dixie Chicks played the legendary venue four years ago. With his second Gillette Stadium show in Boston in two years already sold out four months prior - and over half a million tickets sold with only half of his concerts on sale, there is a fever pitch around the reigning Academy of Country Music Entertainer of the Year that is so intense, it's almost hard to understand.
"When I got the call were sold out in New York City in an hour, I thought it was a joke," confesses the man whose The Road & The Radio was certified double platinum in less than 6 weeks. "People don't do things like that, but the tour marketing person was like, 'Yeah, well… get used to it.' And it's almost surreal - because what we do know is the sound of the tail-gating at the shows in the afternoons, the way 'Anything But Mine' sounds so great when we stop playing and let the fans sing it back to us, the way they roar when the lights drop and get louder when that spot hits us. THAT'S what's real… the rest, well, it's numbers and some pretty big math… and that was never my best subject."
Coming off three weeks at No 1 with "Livin' In Fast Forward," a song about the sound of the speed of superstardom, Chesney is back on the road after a six month break. With 9 stadium shows and a full slate of dates that include Dierks Bentley with Sugarland then Carrie Underwood, it's gonna be another scorching summer, indeed.
