Kenny's Big Football Easy

NASHVILLE, TN. (Kenny Chessney Fans website) - Sure, it's the middle of New Orleans' hippest, happenin'est event, the Jazz & Heritage Festival, but the only way the reigning CMA Entertainer of the Year could make up his cancelled show with scheduled acts Unkle Kracker and Gretchen Wilson was to land smack dab in the middle of it... so he did what a man's gotta do: show up during a landmark cultural event.
Not that it was too traumatic: Chesney still sold out the New Orleans Arena - and a few of his famous friends stopped by, too. In addition to a handful of PGA Professionals seen hanging backstage, the man with the No 1 song in the country for the 2nd week with "Anything But Mine" was joined onstage by Eli and Peyton Manning, local boys who've landed at the New York Giants and Indiana Colts, for a crowd-rousing rendition of Chesney's signature "Back Where I Come From."

"Those boys grew up down there, so when they walk onstage with me to sing THAT song in THIS town, it REALLY means something," says the man with 5 Academy of Country Music nominations - including Entertainer, Male, Album and a pair of Vocal Events. "And what's funny is that even though those are two of the biggest names and most talented guys in football, they not only lived every line of that song, but they believe in what Mac (MacAnally) was saying just as much as I do."

Chesney will wake-up and perform three songs on the "Today Show" tomorrow morning, then immediately jump a get to continue his sold-out Somewhere In The Sun tour in Biloxi. With three stadium shows selling pretty aggressively, Washington, DC, Boston and Pittsburgh will be getting a way-larger-than-life songwriter from Luttrell, Tennessee, but the regular dates have been earning rave reviews wherever it's decamped so far.