For Immediate Release
9 March 2005
For More Information
Holly Gleason for Joe's Garage
Wes Vause for BNA Nashville
(615)-301-4300
 

Kenny's Old Blue Chair Painted Platinum
60 Days After Its Billboard all-genre Top 200 #1 Debut, It's Over One Million
 

        Nashville: No tour. No singles. No problem. Kenny Chesney follows up the three-weeks-and-gold success of his deeply personal Be As You Are: Songs From An Old Blue Chair with the news that the R.I.A.A. has certified it platinum, for sales of over 1,000,000 units. Though conventional wisdom deems that a man at the top of his game wouldn't release a project that's such a departure in the midst of a wildly successful studio record, Chesney followed his heart -- and the fans followed.

    "To say Old Blue Chair started as a crazy dream is almost too strong," says the soft-spoken superstar. "Because I don't think I even dared dream that this would be a record. I just wrote some songs about the way I live, the things I learned down in the island -- and the more songs there were, the more they seemed to want to be a record.

    "We had no idea how the record was going to do," he admits. "When we put it out, we figured the people that wanted it would find it, that it'd be grass roots, word-of-mouth. It was something to give the fans, a way of sharing my life. That it would end up the #1 album in the country the week it came out still kind of blows my mind."

    Having bumped The Game out of the top slot on Billboard's all-genre Top 200 Albums chart, the introspective singer/songwriter project sold over 311,000 the first week alone. And it has continued to weave in and out of the top position on the Country Album chart -- as it's made its way to platinum.

    With his Somewhere in the Sun Tour ready to kick-off and the bittersweet "Anything But Mine" -- from his nearly quadruple platinum CMA Album of the Year When The Sun Goes Down -- sitting at #5 with a bullet on both Billboard and Radio & Records' Country Singles Charts, there's plenty of good news for the man who had the second most attended tour last year. And for him, it all begins and ends with the music.

    "It really all starts with the songs. If you show people your life and they see their own, or you share the things you've figured out with people, they will respond," says the man who was the fan-voted American Music Awards' Favorite Artist of the Year over Usher, Evanescence, Outkast and Norah Jones. "I think what we try to do is pretty simple stuff: if you're at the show, leave your troubles out there; if you're listening to a song or record, maybe you can celebrate where you are, remember something you wanted to learn, be glad for what you've been given. It's not deep, but it's true."
   
    Nominated for 5 Academy of Country Music Awards -- including Entertainer, Male and Album of the Year, in addition to a pair of Vocal Events -- and 5 CMT Music Awards -- for Video, Male, Hottest and another pair of Collaborations, the man from Luttrell, Tennessee is gearing up for a busy spring. With appearances at both Awards shows, a show that's about to roll -- and concert dates that're selling out in most markets in anywhere from 20-40 minutes, it's gonna get crazier before it slows down   

 

##############