NASHVILLE, (Sony BMG) - There was no single. There was no tour. Only a collection of introspective songs written mostly on the CMA Entertainer of the Year's boat over the last four or five years that go straight from his soul into the hearts and lives of his fans. And with that, those fans turned out in droves to make Be As You Are: Songs From An Old Blue Chair the #1 album in the country.
"It's humbling," says the soft-spoken singer/songwriter. "This is a collection of songs that were Polaroids of different moments in my life, the people I met… and I never wrote them for anything more than to remember where I was. That these songs grew up and turned into a record was a big enough thrill… the idea that so many people wanted to share that aspect of my life with me is humbling."
Aside from CMT's live "Be As You Are" and features in People, Entertainment Weekly, USA Today, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe and the current cover of Country Weekly, this has been a low-impact release for the fans. Though unconventional in its approach, Be As You Are was a direct line from Chesney's life beyond the footlights to the fans who love his music.
With first week sales of more than 300,000, Chesney dethroned rap sensation The Game to take the top of the sales chart. It marks the fan-voted American Music Awards' Favorite Artist of the Year - over Usher, Outkast, Evanescence and Norah Jones - third time to bow at No 1 on Billboard's Top 200 chart. Both his quadruple platinum No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems and his triple platinum-and-counting CMA Album of the Year When The Sun Goes Down entered the sales charts with nearly a quarter of a million sales on the former and topping 550,000 on the latter.
Obviously taking his music to the people works for the man from Luttrell, Tennessee. His Margaritas 'n' Senoritas tour - which included a highly emotional homecoming show to more than 67,000 at the University of Tennessee's Neyland Stadium - played to over one million fans, while last year's Guitars, Tiki Bars & A Whole Lotta Love Tour with its 1.2 million tickets sold was outdrawn only by Prince's Musicology Tour.
"This may be the most gratifying thing I've done in my career," says Chesney earnestly. "I wrote these songs for me, for my friends, for nothing more than the moment... But this is, every bit of it, my life and the realization about where I am and how I got here. There's a lot of truth in these songs about the changes in my life, the way my view of the world shifted - and the peace I was able to find that let me dig in and shift even harder. And to think… it really, truly did start in an old blue chair."
Chesney heads back out for the final weekend of his stripped-down, college barn-storming Keg In The Closet Tour, then heads back to Nashville for rehearsals for his Somewhere In The Sun Tour. The full-on Chesney tour has already sold out its first two nights in Green Bay on March 10-11 in two hours, as well as that weekend's show in St. Paul. More shows to go on sale shortly.
