Kenny Chesney still can’t believe how far his life has come. The 57-year-old reflects on his journey, one he shares with the world in his HEART*LIFE*MUSIC book, out now.
“If you would have told the kid, laying on his back behind his grandmother’s house in the yard, looking up at the East Tennessee sky, that I would be in the Country Music Hall of Fame, I would have told you … you’re crazy,” Chesney tells Newsweek.
Chesney grew up in the tiny town of Luttrell, Tennessee, with a population of around 1000 people. It’s a childhood Chesney is profoundly grateful for, especially now.
“I lived in an area of the country where we didn’t have a lot to draw on, but we had a lot to lean on,” Chesney explains. “We leaned on church, we leaned on family, we leaned on school. When I was a kid; we didn’t even have cable where I lived, much less devices, and the whole world at our fingertips. I’m so glad I grew up like that.”
Chesney also credits his father, who was with him at his Country Music Hall of Fame induction, with giving him the ability to have – and sustain – his current career.
“My father was a coach,” Chesney shares. “And he instilled a certain kind of work ethic. A discipline that it takes to do what I do at the level that I do it. And I learned that discipline from where I grew up, and my family. I’m very, very proud of that.”
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Kenny Chesney Recalls Falling in Love With Country Music
Chesney was still a child when he first began falling in love with country music, long before he could have ever imagined the career he has now.
“I grew up and lived with my grandmother and grandfather for a while,” Chesney recalls. “It was in their kitchen and in their living room, before I would go to elementary school with my Aunt Missy that I first heard country music. And it makes you think about those intimate details of your life that set you on a path that, now that you look back, you think about it. ‘Oh wow, had I gone down a different hallway …I wouldn’t even be doing any of this.’
“I think that there are moments in your life; this book has taught me these things that happened to you in your life, they may not mean anything to you at the moment,” he adds. “But those small moments were really big moments, and they meant a lot more than you actually thought.”
Kenny Chesney’s Induction Into the Country Music Hall of Fame
Of all of Chesney’s accomplishments, of which there are many, he admits that likely nothing will ever top his becoming a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame.
“I have to tell you, walking into that rotunda, and they say your name over the speakers, ‘Country Music Hall of Famer Kenny Chesney,’ and every living member is in there, you get to a place where it hits you in that moment,” Chesney tells Audacy. “The gravity of that moment is truly unbelievable.”
“It was emotional,” he continues. “It really was. It was to have all my friends there and the people that have been on this journey with me, and a lot of people — there’s been a lot of ups and downs over the years, and to be standing there in that spot, it was just so insane.”
Chesney is on the cover of the latest edition of Newsweek, available now.
Photo Credit: Danny Clinch