Chesney's country cuts a wide swath
Stadium shows were once chiefly booked by superstar rock bands. But more and more country acts are crashing the party. Last year, the only Gillette Stadium show was headlined by Toby Keith. This summer, Green Day will be at Gillette. The only other artist to snag a date at the stadium? Country singer Kenny Chesney.
''It's a dream to be able to come into a stadium," Chesney says. ''We used to set our equipment up at a fair. Now we're setting it up in the home of the Super Bowl champions."
Chesney comes to Gillette on July 23. His sold-out tour is the latest in a string of high-profile achievements. He has won the latest entertainer of the year honors from both the Country Music Association and the Academy of Country Music. And he's still on a high from his recent marriage to actress Renee Zellweger, an event that caught many by surprise.
''My friends were shocked, too, but they weren't shocked when they saw us together," he says. ''We obviously didn't date that long, but we didn't need a year and a half to know."
Chesney describes Zellweger as ''a great woman who likes all kinds of music -- and she loves AC/DC and Aerosmith, which I love, too."
Chesney, in case you haven't guessed, is a new breed of country singer, one who is heavily influenced by rock 'n' roll. The last few years have seen Chesney sell millions of copies of his albums ''No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems" and ''When the Sun Goes Down." He gets played on country radio, but his sound transcends the genre, and he's been able to attract far more young people to his shows than many of his peers do.
''Even though my songs are called country, it's not traditional country," says Chesney, a Tennessee native whose influences range from George Strait to Jackson Browne. ''Some people say, 'Well, you've got to make a rock record one day because you have such a mass crossover thing going on. But that would be stupid. I can't sing that way. When I sing, it comes out the way it comes out."
Chesney confounded Nashville bigwigs by recently releasing a mostly acoustic CD, ''Be As You Are (Songs From an Old Blue Chair)," compiled from a journal he kept on trips to the Virgin Islands. The album includes the song ''She's From Boston," about a woman who left the city to become a bartender in the tropics.
''It's crazy because no matter where I go in the islands, it seems like eight out of 10 people there will say, 'I'm from New England,' " he says. ''I've had so many people tell me how they appreciate having that 'Boston' song on the album."
Chesney's connection to New England goes beyond his music. ''It's no secret that I love the Red Sox and have loved them a long time before they won the World Series last year. I've got buddies on the team," he says. ''Jason Varitek is a friend of mine and so are Mike Timlin and Tim Wakefield."
Chesney is known for over-the-top stage productions, and he also pays tribute to beach troubadour Jimmy Buffett. ''One thing that I try to take from him is that people come to the show to forget about their life," Chesney says, ''and it's your job to make them forget about it even more." 