(EBM) Take one East Tennessee songwriter/superstar, several million fans, hundreds of songwriters, coaches, characters and heroes, an award-winning journalist and almost 200 hours of interviews in California, Key West, the Islands, Tennessee and beyond and you have the recipe for HEART*LIFE*MUSIC, Kenny Chesney's first book. Written to capture the road from small town dreamer to every aspiring songwriter and artist who moves to Music City, from so many young male acts signed to Nashville labels in the '90s to emerging superstar to Country Music Hall of Fame Class of 2025 electee, Chesney's story captures places long gone, a creative soul that is the manifest of personal expression and the drive (and fun) that allowed him to colonize No Shoes Nation.
To celebrate the book's completion, Chesney and co-author Holly Gleason are going to engage in a spirited conversation about the Nov. 4 William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, release via TalkShopLive. Not only will the 2024 National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards' Independent Journalist of the Year lead a conversation with Chesney, she will take questions from the people watching the livestream - and pose them to the man the Los Angeles Times called "the People's Superstar."
"We have been working on this since last fall," Chesney said, "and we've been so busy doing the work of bringing this book to life, neither of us has slowed down to really think about what it means. So now that we're in the final phases of HEART*LIFE*MUSIC, it seems like a great time to not just talk about it but respond to the people's questions about this story.
"I always said I'd never write a book, and now here we are. And I have to admit: I'm really glad I did it. I remembered moments, connected dots and laughed a lot about some of the places I've been. When you're so busy going forward, you don't always realize. Being in the revision and copy-editing part of the process, I am so grateful and fired up for the journey."
Known for commanding the largest stages across the nation, HEART*LIFE*MUSIC ventures to places long gone, makes unexpected music in Jamaica, the Kremlin, New England and Cabo San Lucas, drifts across the waters of the Caribbean, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Beyond encountering and collaborating with heroes, forging transcendent friendships in the islands and beyond, Chesney's introspective look at the songs and sound that defined No Shoes Nation offers the intimacy of sharing a slow afternoon on the water.
"Now that we're done, I wanted to talk about it," Chesney enthuses. "I wanted to tell people, but even more, I wanted to know what they wanted to know or were thinking about this book. TalkShopLive gave us an opportunity to have a two-way conversation and share how genuinely excited I am.
"I've known Holly a long time. Nobody pushes me like she does, so she was the perfect person for this job - and we can't wait for Tuesday night to share the experience, as well as see what the people in No Shoes Nation are thinking about this. After months in silence, we're ready."
Nine No. 1 all-genre Billboard Top 200 Album debuts, 17 consecutive No. 1 Country Album debuts, 5.9 billion on-demand audio streams and over 985 million on-demand video streams is a lot of music made, played and ingested by a fan-base that Variety proclaims "a concertgoing community rivaled perhaps only by Parrotheads and Deadheads." Moving at what seemed faster than the speed of sound, Chesney for the most part eschewed celebrity to keep his focus on the fans with songs that would resonate with them and a show that would not only give every bit of energy he and his band had, but provide a space for No Shoes Nation to converge, have fun, make new friends and revel in the glory of being who they were. Tune in on Tuesday at 7PM ET here
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