For Kenny Chesney, the reigning CMA Entertainer of the Year - and a man who sold more concert tickets than anyone other than Prince and more records than anyone other than Usher and Norah Jones last year, the ocean has been a refuge for years. Whether it was Daytona Beach with his family, Myrtle Beach with his college friends or St. Somewhere as a grown man, there's always been something comforting about ocean's tides and the waves to the East Tennessean's soul.

     "I always loved the feeling of getting out of the car with my parents," laughs the fan-voted American Music Awards Artist of the Year. "You could smell it. Even though we were from the Smoky Mountains, I just felt at home there. I'd be out in the water from sun up until the sun went down and my Mom made come in. It reminds me of that joke about the guy who gets to the ocean, shakes his head and says, 'I thought it'd be bigger than that…' Not me, I always knew it was huge.

     "And it's funny, because I always believed that there was something more to it, whether it was religion or something else. I always felt whatever that is more when I was on the ocean. I always felt more something, and I didn't quite knew what it was - just that it made me feel better, more settled."

     Indeed, it did. For a man who lives his life in the spotlights, running hundreds of miles each night to the next city and trying to capture moments in the songs he finds and writes, it's when he strips everything away that he can center on what he needs to say. When the dust had settled on his Margaritas'n'Senoritas Tour in 2003 - a tour that saw him top 1,000,00 fans for the first time, headline Knoxville's high temple of football UT's Neyland Stadium and broke attendance records everywhere - Chesney came to earth on a strangely boat in the middle of the Atlantic.

     "It took three days for my ears to stop ringing and the sound of the crowd cheering from that show to die out," says the soft-spoken singer/songwriter. "And I just drifted around all these little islands, getting something to eat, picking up more beer, thinking about everything that had happened. It was a very heavy thing to think about 'cause you don't realize when it's going on just what's happening. But when you take the time to understand… you start to feel really honored that all these people spent their summer with you, brought their party to your show, told you how your songs were their life…

     "We'd started working on the next album already (the now triple platinum and 2004 CMA Album of the Year When The Sun Goes Down) and I realized that there was so much that I wanted to tell those people, to share with them. Maybe because it was so quiet… you know, you could really think about all that… and when I realized there were all kinds of pieces missing, I took out my guitar and started writing about my life in a way that I hoped would reflect their lives as well."

     Chesney ended up with the music-being-touchstones-for-life-changing-events "I Go Back," which ended up trapped behind good pal Tim McGraw's "Live Like You Were Dying," the good time romp that celebrated the right now thrill of college "Keg In The Closet," the aching traditional waltz "Being Drunk's A Lot Like Loving You" and an acoustic-based tribute to Chesney's real anchor "Old Blue Chair."

     "I've read a lot of books, wrote a few songs/ Looked at my life where it's going, where it's gone/ I've seen my life through a bus windshield/ But nothing compares to the way that I see it when I sit in that old blue chair…" offers the chorus to a song that chronicles sunrises over the water, praying for forgiveness, relinquishing the pain of broken hearts, catching fish, hangovers, mosquito bites and a newfound perspective. In a lot of ways, the song was the gateway to Be As You Are: Songs From An Old Blue Chair.

     "The thing about the islands is that I've been writing songs about what it's like down there, well, almost as long as I've been going down there," concedes the almost bashful superstar. "I just never thought I was writing them for anyone much other than me and some of my friends… You know, the idea that these songs would ever mean anything to anyone other than the people who were living in these moments with me.

     "Heck, I wrote the first one ('Sherrie's Living In Paradise') because literally the girl the song is about refused to believe any of us were musicians or songwriters or anything like that. We'd pestered her to death, but I wanted to defend my honor… So I wrote and wrote and it took me about a week, but in that time, I realized that a lot of these people are pretty good stories waiting to be told."

     Indeed, all the characters on Be As You Are are real walking, talking people, characters who inhabit Chesney's world beyond the footlights. And in a lot of ways, the people who helped the burgeoning superstar come to terms with who he was far beyond the name that was on the marquis.

     "Like I've said a bunch… I didn't know whether I was chasing something or running to something, but I was definitely chasing and running when I started going down there - and to this day, I'm still not even sure what it was," he admits candidly. "But that's the thing about the Caribbean and the Bahamas, everybody down there's like that, especially in the beginning. The people down there may not even remember why, but they were or are doing the same thing, so you have that in common.

     "So for me, running away from a relationship that had blown up, a career that wasn't working the way I wanted it to, I was trying to get away from a whole lot. It was a very painful, pissed off time… When I went down there, though, and met all those people, I just fell in love with them. They were so generous, so giving, so easy - and it was just what I needed."

     And so, Kenny Chesney country star was able to make friends with people who didn't much care that he made his living with a guitar. There's Jerome, who's a cook from Ireland, a slew of friends from Maine who fill the tourist-necessary occupations, West Indian fishermen, bums, bartenders, bar owners, marina rats and all kinds of people in between.

     "When I first got down there, I found this native guy who was going out on his fishing boat all by himself. I asked where he was heading, and he just said, 'Fishing…' I bought a big bottle of rum, gave him $50 and asked if I could go with him. He said, 'Sure…' and we talked about life and love and the ocean, the fish, when he was little. That was a turning point.

     "Every time I'd come back, everyone would say, 'Welcome home…' And it wasn't my home, but emotionally, it became a resting place for me."

     Certainly Sherrie - who now lives somewhere in Southern California, the girls he knows who work the season as waitresses who inspired "Boston," his beachcomber/part-time bartender friend who inspired "Island Boy," even the bartender who had the vacation affair that remains etched on the weather "There's Something Sexy About The Rain" are all people that Kenny Chesney calls friend. For him, the people and the island way of living offer acceptance of people as they are most simply.

     "Suddenly, I wasn't running anymore. I was peaceful. I was content. Whether it was a couple of West Indian bartenders who know my name, but have no idea about what I do - and we'd sit and talk about life, the tides, how many fish were brought in, the storms, whatever, or the folks who took me in and made me one of their own, it's just easy…

     "It's really basic. Deep down, I'm a very basic person. I like places that're simple - and people who can fun just being. They do that in the islands in a way I've never seen anywhere else… I joke that I can lose myself, find myself and in a crazy way, strip down to just being another guy."

     There's a tug that comes with island living… something the locals call "toe roots." They often put themselves down during vacations: suddenly someone doesn't want to return to the mainland, and the next thing they know several years have past. "There are NO expectations, no deadlines. You just exhale… and it's so easy. You just let down your guard and watch the days go by.

     "We have a friend from North Carolina who went down for spring break and spent three years. Her family kept after her that she needed to move back home. It lasted six months," Chesney recounts with another laugh like rolling waves. "They just get stuck in the sand. We've had so many friends leave, and then they just keep showing up 'cause they can't really adjust to 'the real world.' The pace and the people and the allure just draws 'em back in."
Obviously the fetid tropical climate has its own impact, as do the rhythms inherent in nature. For someone who lives their life to the time signatures of the songs he sings, the islands both opened up a whole new world - and reminded him about the importance of the way things move.

     "There are just different rhythms down there - and maybe being a songwriter I notice it more - but you can walk through you day and just listen to it all. Lying on the front of my boat, listening to the ocean slap against it as the sun moves across the sky… Or you're walking down an alley between two streets and the rhythms of a couple local bars spill out into the night, get tangled in each other, the bodies kind of drifting through. Everything has a rhythm and they all come together - and if you're listening, it gives you all kinds of music."

     And if you're Kenny Chesney, that music turns into songs, insight, people, places, life. And it permeated his life to the point where even a snowed out show in Austin, Texas was enough to set his soul adrift to the aquamarine waters and turquoise skies so much closer to the equator. "Somewhere In The Sun" is about being shipwrecked on ice covered dry land - and recognizing that even when you're far away you keep a little piece of the islands with you.

     Yes, there is the confective tropicalyptic "Guitars and Tiki Bars," the naughty but nice pleasure of "Key Lime Pie," even the old school cocktail eau de the tradewinds "Magic," but at its heart Be As You Are is a scrapbook in song. The way he feels, the things he sees, the people he loves and the peace that he's found, often lost in thought in a cracked blue wicker chair at the edge of the water. More a classic singer/songwriter record than any of the turbo-charged big country that Chesney's known for, it's a record that came into being almost by accident.

     "I had the songs, but that's all they were," Chesney explains. "I didn't think 'Oh, I want to make an ISLAND ALBUM,' because these songs were just to capture the moments like polaroids might. But as I started playing the different songs for people, it was obvious that they wanted to be together… and the more people beyond the immediate people I played them for, the more people would ask if I was ever gonna record them. It didn't occur to me, because they were so personal, but they're also who I am when you strip everything away.

     "In a lot of ways, when I'm in the islands time stands still. I can go there, spend a month or even two, then take 6 months to hit the road, but when I get back, it's like I've never left. That's pretty special. It's like Carribbean time, I like to call it, where a minute can feel like an hour if you're just lying in the sun - feeling the heat all the way through you, watching the clouds move across the sky - and then there are moments that just rush at you so hard, so fast, they leave you completely out of breath - and what felt like a few minutes may be a couple hours cause you're tearing around the ocean, having fun and slamming on the waves. You can surrender those moments - rage like AC/DC on stun - and know you're going to be okay, cause the pace of life takes care of you.

     "When you can live like that, you have nothing to worry about. It's all there: every thrill, every chill, every sensation in the world. All you have to do is show up and be ready to experience the day. That's what 'Be as you are…' is all about, and when I got to thinking about it, it's everything I hope the people who listen to my music can find for themselves: that peace and intensity, but especially that joy."

     Maybe you can't find joy in a CD case. Though music has always been a way to calibrate one's emotions. If Kenny Chesney were probably able to offer his fans one thing from this music, it would be the idea that wherever they are, whatever they do, they manage to find that one place where they can Be As You Are, whether it's an old blue chair, a high rise view or a backporch somewhere. And, as Lester Bangs once told William Miller in Cameron Crowe's Oscar-winning "Almost Famous": "All you've gotta do it listen."

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