For Immediate Release
24 July 2005
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Kenny Chesney Rocks Almost 51,000 at Boston's Gillette Stadium
Hands Down, New England's Biggest Country Show EVER


   Foxboro, MA: The day couldn't have been any more beautiful -- or the fans any more ready -- when Kenny Chesney and his band lunged into the opening lines of "Keg In The Closet," the 6th single from his quadruple platinum CMA Album of the Year When The Sun Goes Down. And when the scrim featuring a sultry blond riding Marley, the tour mascot marlin, like a bull rider dropped, the energy level was through the roof for Chesney's second stadium show of the season.

   "As crazy as D.C. was, this was a whole other animal," says the man whose Somewhere In The Sun Tour has sold more tickets than any other North American tour for the first half of the year, besting the next most successful tour by U2 by over 200,000. "There's something about my music and New England that just hits a whole other level -- and I could really feel it Saturday night."

   With demand for tickets being so fever-pitched, a last minute adjustment of the stage -- back 20 feet -- and production elements -- the side video screens were hung tilting back from the stage rather than flush -- the promoters were able to add several more tickets. And when the disc jockeys took the stage to introduce the reigning Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association Entertainer of the Year, they were quick to inform the audience of 50,860 that they were part of history for being part of the largest country music audience ever in New England.

   Certainly Chesney's deeply introspective self-penned Be As You Are: Songs From An Old Blue Chair -- which marked the third time the young man from Luttrell, Tennessee debuted at #1 on Billboard's all genre Top 200, this time without a single or a tour and contains "She Came From Boston" -- celebrates his connection with the people from the New England area. During his rendition of Mac McAnally's "Back Where I Come From," the American Music Awards fan-voted Favorite Artist -- over Usher, Outkast, Norah Jones and Evanescence -- intercut local footage, including taking batting practice with the World Series champion Red Sox and being inside the scoreboard at the Sox' sacred ground Fenway Park.

   "When you spend time in the islands, it seems like every other person you meet is from Boston, or somewhere up that way," admits Chesney with a laugh. "Maybe it's the winters, but it sure makes them passionate people who pull together behind the stuff they love. When people from New England are passionate about something, you know it. For one night this year, I sure felt like it was me!"

   Chesney's final stadium show will be this weekend, July 30 at Pittsburgh's Heinz Field, where the Steelers play - and that show will be shot for inclusion in Chesney's first network television special "Kenny Chesney: Somewhere In The Sun," which airs Nov. 23 on ABC. Having just signed on for Farm Aid, Sept. 18 at Tinley Park, IL's Tweeter Center and a sold-out tour that runs through September, Kenny Chesney is going to be plenty busy between now and the release of The Road & The Radio, his new studio album on November 8.

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