For Immediate Release
4 February 2005
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Kenny Goes "Late Night" In An Old Blue Chair
With #1 All-Genre Top 200 Album,
CMA Entertainer of the Year Does "Conan" Feb. 16
 

    Nashville: With Be As You Are: Songs From An Old Blue Chair poised at #1 on Billboard's all-genre Top 200 with no single or tour, Kenny Chesney is taking his most personal album to date to New York for "Late Night with Conan O'Brien." With rehearsals for Chesney's Somewhere In The Sun Tour underway, the reigning CMA Entertainer of the Year will take a break in the ramp-up to appear on the late night talk show Feb. 16th.

    "Every time we do 'Conan,' the energy is great," says Chesney. "It's one of those shows where they let you do things that aren't obvious, but kinda fit their audience. We did 'No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems' there almost 8 months before it was a single -- and it really let us see how well that song connected. And they're just cool people."

    Given "Conan's more progressive bent -- and the fact that there's no single -- it's anybody's guess what song Chesney's going to perform from the album that sold 310,655 copies last week alone. Certainly the more singer/songwriter project is a departure on many levels, but they all bear witness to the way the man who sold 1.2 million concert tickets last year had his life changed by the time he's spent in the islands.

    "I've said it a million times," Chesney allows. "If it wasn't for that old blue chair, the people and the piece of mind I found down in the islands, I might never have found myself in a way that would let me do what I'm doing now. That's the truth. I went down there running from something without even realizing what I was really doing was running to a place where I was comfortable to just be Kenny.

    "Once I did that, everything -- the music, the career, the show -- seemed to fall into place. And all I had to do was be willing to work hard and be the person I really am."

    On the heels of a standing-ovation performance of "Old Blue Chair" on the "The Tonight Show" and "Kenny Chesney: Be As You Are," an hour live special on CMT, as well as features and reviews in USA Today, People, Entertainment Weekly, Redbook, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, plus the covers of Country Weekly and Billboard, Be As You Are is a fan-based record, selling through word of mouth. The Feb. 16th "Late Show" appearance will most likely mark the last time to see this material performed on t.v.

    "This is so totally not the way you do it," laughs the man who beat Usher, Outkast, Evanescence and Norah Jones for the fan voted Favorite Artist at the American Music Awards. "When I told my label I wanted to do this, they thought I was crazy. When they saw I was serious, they said they'd help me figure out how. And the beauty of it is, they're also continuing to support (Kenny's current full-on studio project and CMA Album of the Year) When The Sun Goes Down as a major priority. We've got a single going up the charts with 'Anything But Mine' right now. So, they're getting it in ways that're shocking and gratifying. Getting to do 'Conan' for this album, though, is like the cherry on top."

 

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