I've lived like a lot of guys listening to my
music live... And I think that's why people buy my records, because they can related to the guy singing those
songs. They feel like the
songs are about their lives because they're about my life--and I'm not that different from them, even now. Kenny Chesney, the pride of Lutrell, Tennessee, is actually quite a bit different. With back-to-back double platinum records for Everywhere We Go and Greatest Hits, multiple week chart-toppers and career definers with I Lost It, How Forever Feels, Don't Happen Twice, She Think My Tractor's Sexy and Fall In Love, the launch of his first true major headlining tour, he's the Everyguy who proves that dreams can come true. No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems finds Kenny Chesney again holding a mirror up to himself--and all the folks back where he comes from. If the 12
songs contained herein are a little older, a little wiser and a little more aware, they still capture the unbridled joy of being young, life lived for the pure feeling of it and the unburnished emotions of people who prefer to experience rather than analyze what's happening to them. From the opening notes of Young, a
song that celebrates the thrill of all the things you can do before you know what you can't--tempered by the acceptance that comes with the wisdom of being grown, No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems is a record that looks at the phases of youth coming into their own. Whether it's the haunted yearning of the Conway-esque I Remember, the tortured understanding of Bruce Springsteen's conflict of faithlessness and jagged hearts One Step Up, the make-it-happen-in-spite-of-what-you-can't feel-good anthem Big Star or the tropicali attitude adjustment that informs the
title track, Chesney understands the phases and stages of growing up, the thrill of football and falling in love, the pain of loss and regrets. I think I was strong enough to put more of myself in these songs...because it's scary to put yourself out there like this, the man deemed
Country's hottest Bachelor by
Country Weekly confesses. To show people your doubts, your hurts, and even your mistakes, to be willing to show people that part of yourself, the part that's so human and raw and aching--well, it's the hardest thing about this. But if you truly have the audience I believe I do, then you owe them that. After all, I can't imagine giving them less than the truth--and since the last album, I lived a lot of life and learned a lot of lessons. It's all here, if you listen.
(less)