Kenny Chesney

Kenny Chesney is a country music singer and songwriter. His career has been defined by over 30 chart-topping country hits, including “She’s Got It All,” “When the Sun Goes Down,” “There Goes My Life,” “Don’t Blink,” and “The Boys of Fall.” Since his 1994 debut, he has released 20 studio albums, sold over 30 million records worldwide, and won multiple CMA and ACM awards, including Entertainer of the Year. As one of country music’s most successful artists, Chesney was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2025. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: AG1 https://DrinkAG1.com/tetra ------ Athletic Nicotine https://www. AthleticNicotine.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://DrinkLMNT.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Lectio 365 https://Lectio365.com ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Rick Rubin?

  Tetragrammaton.

• 0:23Speaker 01

  I have a love-hate relationship in Vegas. You know, because I don't act like I used to.

• 0:29Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 0:30Speaker 01

  You know, so now, once we're in there, playing, it's great.

• 0:34Rick Rubin?

  The Sphere's not like any other gig. It's totally its own thing.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  No, it's its own thing. And the thing that I loved, you know, I didn't know how I was gonna like it, but they did a tribute concert to Jimmy Buffett at the Hollywood Bowl. And then I was there and Irving Azoff says, "I want you to go to Vegas with me and watch the Eagles." And I went with them to see it. There hadn't been a country guy do it. "You need to do it." And I said, "It looks great," you know, and so that's how that started.

• 1:04Rick Rubin?

  It's only been U2 and Phish, right? Are those the only two other artists who've done it?

• 1:09Speaker 01

  And Dead and Company. Yeah. I think, no doubt, just finished.

• 1:14Rick Rubin?

  Oh, really?

• 1:14Speaker 01

  But the stuff I've seen of Phish on there, you know, is just been unbelievably creative. I loved it. But I really loved the process of putting that all together. For the creative brain, it is, it was a bit overwhelming at first, but,

• 1:30Speaker 01

  man, when you're in there, it's very unique, you know? And for me, who has built an audience, you know, part of my mojo is, okay, all night, right? It's human behavior. You can't help it. People that are in there, that thing comes to life and everybody's going, and then, "Oh, wait, wait, the band's down here."

• 1:49Rick Rubin?

  Even where the artist is positioned is a weird place to relate to the audience.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  It's, no. But, I mean, after a couple of shows, I was, I was really able to reach across the fence and bring them over to us. And once I, once I got comfortable with that, I loved it. Because people that have lived with this music for a while, they come there and they experience it in a completely different way, in a completely different state of consciousness. And I loved it. I loved it so much that we're going back.

• 2:18Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  You know, and so, and to, to stay at one spot, when, look, I went on the road in November of 93. So to stay in one spot was really great.

• 2:31Rick Rubin?

  I don't think anyone understands how hard life on the road is.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  I got so used to it. It's a beautiful addiction, life on the road. Not to say I wasn't, didn't get tired.

• 2:42Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  But this has been a good break for me of, for sure, hearing the constant hum of a generator. You know, in my life, I needed a break. My soul truly needed a break. Even though I wanted to stay connected, and this allowed me to do that, you know?

• 2:56Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was really good for me.

• 2:58Rick Rubin?

  I'm glad you took the time to do it.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, because honestly, not everybody's afforded the opportunity to do it differently. You know, you get caught in this cycle and you, and you just keep doing it. I've watched from afar, a lot of my friends and people that I love and respect, that's how they start to hate what they do.

• 3:18Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, and they also forget who they are. They only know who they are on the road.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Oh, wow, that's...

• 3:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, that...

• 3:31Speaker 01

  There's a saying, you know, and I, I think it happened with me a little bit. Like, you almost become emotionally frozen in the moment that you became, that your life changed, or yet you, that your music started to happen, or people started paying attention to you, or you become semi-famous on any level. You almost become emotionally frozen in that moment and stuck in it as a human being. I've tried really hard not to do that. And my life out here, and you and all of our mutual friends here, really helped me as a human being to, okay, wow, now, you don't have to be that persona all the time. I spent my whole life trying to be that, you know, to get into this space.

• 4:15Rick Rubin?

  To live up to that.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  To live up to that.

• 4:17Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  And it's a made up thing. And I also realized that one of the things that helped me, and when people ask me for advice, they do now all of a sudden.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  You know? So... Is to try to separate that as much as you can.

• 4:35Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  I got to a place where I realized that every decision that I ever made as an adult, and once I got on this path, every decision that I made... Was for the persona and not the person.

• 4:52Rick Rubin?

  The guy on stage.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Yes, that's weird. It's a weird thing to say. Like every life decision, who I'm friends with or where I'm gonna go on my off time. Everything was on a schedule and it had to fit in the life of that persona on stage, not the person. And I realized that was making me really unhappy.

• 5:10Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  At some point, it does. And, and that's not a-

• 5:14Rick Rubin?

  Because the person needs some attention and love.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Well, it needs nurturing.

• 5:19Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  And there's, I mean, so there was years where we would, you know, be in a different town, which is great. This is not complaining at all. I am so grateful, but for the person-

• 5:28Rick Rubin?

  It's just the reality of the situation.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  The reality of the situation and for the person to be nurtured. I realized, I was like, well, I was like, I wasn't really unhappy, but I wasn't happy. It was just this existence where it made me realize that every decision that I ever made was for the persona and not the person.

• 5:47Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  And that's changed a lot in the last four or five years and I'm much happier, you know.

• 5:54Rick Rubin?

  Was it a decision? How did the change happen?

• 6:01Speaker 01

  I did a couple of journeys in plant medicine.

• 6:05Rick Rubin?

  First time in your life?

• 6:06Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. I was very scared of it. You know, I, I went, mm, I don't know. But I think that, I was just numb, I was numb, nothing really, you know, back in the day, especially when you're on the road and there's really like, okay, you know that the next year is planned out for you, then there's no not stopping this. There were certain things that I would-

• 6:31Rick Rubin?

  And it's a lot of work.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  It's a lot of work.

• 6:33Rick Rubin?

  And you have to sing every night.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Every night and create.

• 6:37Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  And there were, there were certain things that I would run to, to make, that would mask whatever that was. And we all know all those things.

• 6:44Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  I think we've had a conversation about this when I was in that. I've never been one to do drugs, you know, but whether it was alcohol, you know, partying after shows, women, whatever it was that I thought was making all that okay.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  And music, right? Or writing songs or, or, or cutting a record that you're excited about. Always fed that thing that, that made it okay. When none of those things worked, including music, which music is supposed to help you get out of that.

• 7:18Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  And creativity. When none of those things worked, I had this oh shit moment. And I had a really good friend of mine out here introduce me to what we're talking about. And some of the things that draw you to plant medicine or either inspiration or desperation. And mine was a little of both. And it, it truly made me realize that I wasn't taking care of myself for 30 years.

• 7:44Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the first experience.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  And it was something that has really changed my life. It really has. And it, it, it made me realize how just unavailable I've been. Not, I mean, to my parents, to friends, but to myself.

• 8:03Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  As an individual and.

• 8:05Rick Rubin?

  You think it was just because you were driven and focused on.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Focused, but also not wanting to fail and loving music so much and growing up how I grew up. And I wanted to, I don't know, there's, there was always this, I, I, I'm not sure. Maybe it was because I was undersized as an athlete and I wanted to succeed but couldn't. And I'm still working on the why.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  But, but yeah, I mean, it made me, within that space, it tore my heart open enough to where I could actually look in there and take a peek. For the first time ever, and it was amazing. And the songs I wrote, I mean, and all of a sudden I loved being on stage and I, I was just available again. As a person, as an artist, as a son, as a friend, as all of it.

• 8:57Rick Rubin?

  That's amazing.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  And so when I met you for the first time, I mean, I was, I wasn't in that space yet. I was still.

• 9:05Rick Rubin?

  Felt like there was something you wanted to do that you didn't know how to get to.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  That's exactly right.

• 9:10Rick Rubin?

  That's what it felt like.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  So I'm glad I went through that and glad I'm in that experience, you know, because that just made me realize how and when you're on the road and when you're in a different place every day and you got a lot of people in front of you and they're responding to your music and what you've given your whole adult life to. You don't think about the idea of intimacy with someone else that much. You don't have to like because you're getting fed, you're getting stimulated.

• 9:40Rick Rubin?

  There's so much love coming at you.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Like I never thought about having a child because music has always been my baby.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  But it got to a point also where I was like, hmm. I realized within all of that, even though I could stand in front of 50,000 people and make love to them all night. And that's intimate, that's a level of intimacy, but I get to leave in two and a half hours. It's not real intimacy.

• 10:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Right? So the person that I was being constantly paralyzed me when it came to intimacy. And I'm really happy I'm out of that space and I'm working on it.

• 10:17Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. So yeah, I'm much happier out there doing what I do now in the creative space. I feel really good.

• 10:25Rick Rubin?

  And songwriting?

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, you know, like I fell out a lot with songwriting because it just, it didn't. I don't know.

• 10:33Rick Rubin?

  You've also been doing it your whole life.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  My whole life, yeah.

• 10:37Rick Rubin?

  And even something you love, when you're scheduled to do it, it's a job.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 10:44Rick Rubin?

  You know, it's like, yes, you love it and if I don't show up, a lot of people are in trouble.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  Especially when you know that there are people building houses and having babies based on you not getting sick.

• 10:57Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  All of a sudden, it's still fun, but it's, that's when you know it's work.

• 11:01Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:03Rick Rubin?

  We thank God for success and it's not what you think it might be when you're a kid looking at it.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  That's exactly right.

• 11:09Rick Rubin?

  It's a tremendous amount of work.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  It's a tremendous amount of work. I love the work. I do. I think I'm more grateful now.

• 11:18Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Because when it's all, when you're in the middle of it and it's all happening. I mean, you're grateful, but I think at this point in my life, when I look back on what happened to me and the audience that we were able to build, it was rare and I'm so just insanely thankful for that, that this kid in college picked up a guitar and wrote a song about a girl, ironically enough, I wrote a song, there was this girl in my persuasion class in college and I was, I worked all semester trying to persuade her to pay attention to me and go out with me on any level. And I was like, okay, I've never written a song before, but I'm gonna write a song for her. And it was back in the day when you had, you

• 12:03Speaker 01

  had the recorder and you hit play and record on the tape recorder, right?

• 12:07Rick Rubin?

  That's cassette recorder.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, cassette recorder. And I, I wrote her a song and I gave it to her, but I made the mistake of, it was, the persuasion class was on a Tuesday, Thursday class. And so I made the mistake of giving, giving it to her on Thursday, which meant I had to wait Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday for any kind of response whatsoever.

• 12:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 12:29Speaker 01

  So the Tuesday, I just, you know, it was that time for me to walk in and get some sort of response from her. And look, all semester, she sat right beside me. When I walked in, she was sitting as far away from me in the back corner as she could possibly get. And I went, okay, this tells me two things. My songs have to get a lot better. And this was the first time that I was gonna taste, what I was gonna taste a lot of in the future, was the first taste of rejection in the music business.

• 13:03Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  But for some reason, it didn't bother me. I said, okay, you gotta get better.

• 13:07Rick Rubin?

  Do you remember the song?

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Her name was Amy and I can't remember the song.

• 13:11Rick Rubin?

  Okay.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  But it was, it was-

• 13:13Rick Rubin?

  I'd love to hear it if you-

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Oh my God, I don't even have any, I'd love to hear it.

• 13:16Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, wouldn't it be great?

• 13:17Speaker 01

  It would be great to hear it. But that was the first song I ever wrote. I was a, I was a sophomore in college at East Tennessee State University. That's where this whole creative thing began.

• 13:28Rick Rubin?

  But you had no plans of becoming a singer or-

• 13:30Speaker 01

  No, well, I was in college and Rick, I was playing, um-

• 13:36Speaker 01

  At a Mexican restaurant called Chucky's Trading Post. It was on this big river where people. If you've ever been whitewater rafting. Okay, well, at some point they'll stop. And you'll get off and have lunch or whatever. Well, I was playing at a Mexican restaurant halfway down this river called the Nulla Chucky River. And people would get off and they would drink some beers and whatever. And I would be the guy up there playing. And that's the first place I ever felt any kind of connection.

• 14:03Rick Rubin?

  Was it more like a job or more like the beginning of your career?

• 14:05Speaker 01

  I didn't know it was going to be this, obviously, you know. But it was more me in college and I was playing there. And then all of a sudden, there was a couple of bars at ETSU, what's called the Tree Streets. And there was a place called Quarterbacks BBQ. I played there three nights a week and at Chucky's. And then in Johnson City, I kind of graduated. There was a couple of guys that when I joined a bluegrass band at ETSU. I mean, it was like a real class. And it's still one of the only classes in the country where you can take bluegrass music as a accredited class. And it was great. And that's the first time I learned how to play with a band. And there's a place still today in Johnson City called the Down Home.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  And the Down Home, every bluegrass band in the world plays there. I mean, I've seen James Taylor there, Alison Krauss and Union Station. I mean, all these people played there. And every Wednesday night, they had a thing called the open hoot, which means you could sign up for 30 minutes and get up and do anything. And it's a place where you drink beer and have chips and salsa and you watch people get up for 30 minutes and play. And me and a guy named Marcus Smith and you know, the guy named Sean Lane. We would get up every Wednesday night and play for 30 minutes. And we'd play songs we wrote, you know, by that time I was writing a few songs and some bluegrass songs. And that's where this started. But the creative part of it was for that girl in my persuasion class. And then after that, it just kind of, I went, oh, wow, like, you know, it wasn't all the time.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  Because I didn't know this was going to be my life. But it was just kind of a slow burn and like this seed that was sown, you know, in college. And that might be a familiar story. I would imagine that a lot of guys who started playing guitar was to impress a girl at some point. Maybe.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  A lot of my friends that I know that do this, I have that in common with them. But that's how it started for me.

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• 18:18Rick Rubin?

  When you started writing, was it always with a guitar?

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:22Rick Rubin?

  The music is what would start it and then you'd start singing to that?

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would always have stuff written down. I would have notebooks, it's just stuff, you know? I didn't know what they meant. And then eventually I would, I would, you know, put something with it and, and then every now and then I would be, I'd have enough courage up there to play an original song, you know, in the middle of all the covers of my heroes and stuff and, you know.

• 18:47Rick Rubin?

  What would have been the covers you would have been playing back then?

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Oh, well, I would have played Tom Petty, I would, I would play Johnny Cash, I would play Jimmy Buffett, I would play Alabama, I would play Lynyrd Skynyrd, I would just, I had so much music swirling around in my head growing up in East Tennessee because we heard, it was, it was unlike the way it is today. Today, we can listen to anything, anytime we want, wherever we want to.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  In East Tennessee, you heard what was fed to you, either on terrestrial radio, or at church, or at school, or you'd hear it at the ballpark. But growing up, I, I loved Van Halen. I had Steve Miller's greatest hits in my car on the way to school and on the way back. I loved that music. I had Tom Petty, I had Lynyrd Skynyrd, I had AC/DC. I loved, I still love that music. It was rock music, what's now known as classic rock. But I had the Eagles, I had, I don't know, I had Montrose. I knew Sammy Hagar at Montrose.

• 19:49Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  And then on his solo stuff, I loved that. I loved Joe Walsh. But then again, I had this country bass because I, me and my mom lived with my grandparents while my stepfather was in Vietnam. So I heard all the country stuff. I got all the church stuff twice a week because in, in high school and as a kid, I didn't understand the genius of Bruce Springsteen or Bob Marley, right? But when you go to college and you start writing your own songs and you're all of a sudden up there playing, you realize, wow, this is, what Bruce was doing was really great. And the first time I really listened to one of his records was the Tunnel of Love album. And there was a song on that record called "One Step Up and Two Steps Back"

• 20:33Speaker 01

  that I had the balls enough to record on my record. I mean, looking back, I probably shouldn't have done it. But I did. Thinking I could bring something new to you, whatever. But I did, and I sent it to Bruce and he wrote me this unbelievable letter back.

• 20:49Rick Rubin?

  What'd he say?

• 20:50Speaker 01

  And I could tell that he, that he listened. I mean, he really listened. And he said he knew his song was in good hands before he heard it. And he always felt like that the Tunnel of Love album had a country soul to it. And it was really great that I decided to do that. And I'm not saying that we wish each other a Merry Christmas every year, right? But we're friends. We've been friends since then. You know what I mean?

• 21:14Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. And you brought his song to a different audience.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  To a different audience.

• 21:17Rick Rubin?

  Which is beautiful.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. And the first time I saw that, right, and heard that in college, it just created space for me and my dream. I didn't know, I didn't know what the dream was yet. It's ironic that I'm holding this guitar, but in high school, I wanted to be an athlete. And so I went to North Carolina, at the University of North Carolina. Their basketball coach is named Dean Smith. Dean Smith had a basketball camp for youth kids every year, and I went to it. And we were in this big cafeteria, you know, in between games and whatever. And I remember we were drinking Gatorade and eating a bunch of fruit. And it was just this massive cafeteria on campus. And they had a TV and I knew about MTV,

• 22:03Speaker 01

  but I didn't have it at my mom, my grandmother's house. I had it at my dad's. When I'd go visit my father every other weekend, I would see MTV and ESPN on cable. So I knew of MTV, but I didn't know that much about it. When I was at Dean Smith's basketball camp, I saw Tom Petty's video where he had the top hat.

• 22:24Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  "Don't come around here no more."

• 22:25Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  And I remember just staring at it. And for some reason, paying attention to the guitars and the way it was recorded and, and thinking, wow, this is so different. You know, looking back on when some of this dream started, you know, and not really knowing what it meant. That's one of those moments because that also created space for me.

• 22:47Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  It's funny because I think that There are moments when we're young and we don't even know it at the time, right? That seem really insignificant because that moment, I saw that and it passed.

• 23:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  That moment passed and I went on to shoot free throws and I went on back home and but I kept it back here.

• 23:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it just showed you a possibility of something different. Because if you think about bands before that video, you probably thought about what the Beatles looked like or what AC/DC looked like and that video wasn't like that.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  No, but not only but the the sound was like that sound, I know that it was rock.

• 23:22Rick Rubin?

  It was new then.

• 23:23Speaker 01

  It was on MTV, but the accent, the music, it spoke to me.

• 23:27Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  In ways that some other things didn't. So, so in college, I would be playing that. When I got to, when I got guitar in my hand, I would be playing that. I would be playing Lynyrd Skynyrd, I would be playing everything. But it was always, I was always drawn to singer songwriters like Buffett and Steve Miller and and especially when I got older, Bruce. The people that did that were the people that I was really drawn to and still am to this day.

• 23:55Rick Rubin?

  And then early on, you had a whole series of hit records before you really became who you are.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:01Rick Rubin?

  Is that correct?

• 24:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, it was really strange. It still is like I was, like when I first moved to Nashville, I got a publishing deal with Acuff Rose Publishing pretty quickly. And then Phil Walden, who was, had Capricorn Records, was my first record label. He's the first person.

• 24:23Rick Rubin?

  I didn't know that.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:24Rick Rubin?

  That's amazing.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Phil Walden signed me in 1993. So I was on the label with like.

• 24:31Rick Rubin?

  Allman Brothers.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Government Mule. I was at Allman Brothers. They were doing a record on Hank Jr.

• 24:37Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  They were doing a record on Lynyrd Skynyrd, this blues guy from Austin named Ian Moore. They were doing it with Colonel Bruce Hampton and, yeah, and 311 at that time was on the label and me. So I was, it was really eclectic, interesting time for me.

• 24:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. It also suited your taste though, because you liked a lot of rock.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  I loved that music so much, you know? And I was always drawn to lyrics with hard drums and rhythmic guitars, always.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  But that was my first record label. But we didn't have any hits on that. But it was a lot like for me, and I didn't realize it at the time, but it was a lot like being in AAA baseball. I was learning, I was on the road. Looking back, it was just a huge educational experience. We had a lot of fun, we laughed a lot. And it was, it was great, you know?

• 25:34Rick Rubin?

  Were you open for a lot of artists?

• 25:35Speaker 01

  I was opening for a lot of country artists, yeah. I was, I went out there with Alabama, which was great. Because one of my, the first concerts I ever saw was, was them in a field about eight miles from my house. And all of a sudden, I'm out on the road with these guys.

• 25:49Rick Rubin?

  So cool.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  It was just so cool.

• 25:51Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  And honestly, I looked at my band and I said, we made it. Right?

• 25:57Rick Rubin?

  Because you get to do it, you got to make music.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was doing it.

• 26:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  I was not on a stool at East Tennessee State playing for enchiladas.

• 26:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, and you didn't have 30 minutes at the open mic night?

• 26:07Speaker 01

  That's right, I wasn't in an open hoot in Johnson City. I was, I was out there. And all of a sudden, we started having some hit records, but nobody knew.

• 26:15Rick Rubin?

  What was the first hit?

• 26:16Speaker 01

  The first hit was a song, it was a ballad called "When I Close My Eyes." And that was my first one. See, I had, I had, I had a 17-song greatest hits album. And nobody knew who I was. Like, they knew the songs.

• 26:32Rick Rubin?

  So the songs were hits, but no, nobody knew you?

• 26:34Speaker 01

  But they were disposable hits.

• 26:36Rick Rubin?

  Remember the first time you heard yourself on the radio?

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Yes, I was with my manager Dale Morris at the time, who managed Alabama. And he lived down in Florida in, you know, in the winter. And I was down visiting him, and he loved to show off his boat. So we'd pull into some yacht club, and we're sitting there with him and some of his buddies I'd never met. And Dale had the stereo turned up. And I've always thought that Dale somehow manipulated this so I'd hear it on the radio. You know what I mean? But whatever reason, I heard it, and I went, damn, that sounds familiar. And I went, oh my God, that's my record. And I jumped up out of the table, went to the boat, and turned it up so the whole yacht club could hear it.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  It was great.

• 27:18Rick Rubin?

  It's an unbelievable feeling, right? You can't believe it.

• 27:21Speaker 01

  No, because all of a sudden, that's not Jackson Brown on the radio, that's me.

• 27:24Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, you're in the club.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's wow, this is great. I still get that feeling.

• 27:29Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it's such a great feeling.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  I still get it. But there was a moment where I had 17 of those. And nobody knew who I was. I would go play a state fair or a club or whatever and they would go, oh, that's the guy that sings that song. And that's the guy that sings that song and that song. It wasn't until 2002 when we released the No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems album. And that's when it all took off.

• 27:53Rick Rubin?

  How many years in was that?

• 27:55Speaker 01

  13 years.

• 27:55Rick Rubin?

  13 years?

• 27:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:57Rick Rubin?

  It's a long time.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Long time. You know, I was making records, Rick, to fit a formula in a genre that was the definition of success. And the reason people didn't know who I was because there was a lot of people singing the same songs, mixing their records the same way, dressing the same way. And I was just trying to fit that formula. I was in survival mode for a long time.

• 28:19Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, you were trying to fit in.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  Trying to fit in and just trying to.

• 28:23Rick Rubin?

  And you succeeded at doing that.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  I succeeded at doing that, but during the time that I released my greatest hits record that had all the radio hits on it, I had about two and a half years of nothing, of not releasing music. And it afforded me the time to really take my time. And it was also a period of my life where I was changing.

• 28:44Rick Rubin?

  What do you think allowed that to happen?

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Well, I went to the Virgin Islands to shoot a video for one of those disposable songs. And then I spent a lot of time down there. And all of a sudden, I had a completely different family there and a group of friends that I didn't have anywhere else in the world. They all had different religious beliefs. They all had different political beliefs. They all grew up, nine times out of 10, they were from New England. And after three or four years of that, I went, wow, you know, not only could I make music for the people that I've been making it for, which fit in this formulaic style that I was doing, this narrow thing. I realized, oh, I can make music for these people too.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  And all of a sudden, the idea of who I've become, Kenny Chesney, that's where it all started to change. And it changed stylistically, it changed musically, it changed emotionally, mentally. All of a sudden, my heart was more open to new experiences, to new people, to different way of mixing my record, to everything. And that's where it all changed.

• 29:53Rick Rubin?

  It's interesting how just being in a different place is enough to just open your mind.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Had I not done that, had I not met all those people, I would probably still be out there doing it at some level, you know?

• 30:05Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  But I would never have built an audience that was as universal of an audience that we did. Because I think that-

• 30:14Rick Rubin?

  Just met different kinds of people.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Just because you were exposed to different kinds of people, who thought differently, who truly did. I mean, like, in the nature of the business, the life today with social media and everything, I don't know, if you gave me that same scenario today, I'm not sure that my heart would be as open, and I would be as open to new experiences and new people. Because one of the negative things about being at this place in my life is that I don't meet a lot of new people, and I don't like that. I don't let myself, I'm not as open as I was going to the Virgin Islands in the way I'm talking about now.

• 30:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  And I wish I was, but-

• 30:55Rick Rubin?

  There's also something about island life that's really open and free.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Yes. If you meet someone like in Hawaii or whatever,

• 31:05Speaker 01

  there's something about a level of acceptance.

• 31:08Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 31:09Speaker 01

  And you feel closer to them than you would if you met them anywhere else.

• 31:12Rick Rubin?

  There's a connection to nature that's inherent in us.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's very primal.

• 31:18Rick Rubin?

  That they keep and that many of us have lost growing up in industrialized places.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Because I was so on fire. When I went down there, I mean, before I made the No Shoes album, when my life really changed, I was so curious as a human. And I was on fire with creativity. And I knew my life was changing, I just didn't know where it was gonna take me, but I was just-

• 31:44Speaker 01

  I said, "Come on, break it off!" And it was great, right?

• 31:47Rick Rubin?

  Such a great feeling.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  So, yeah, and I don't, I mean, I get that, I still get that. I don't say that I don't, but it's...

• 31:52Rick Rubin?

  First time is different, though, because when it's a new experience, it's amplified in some way.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And when you've been doing this for a while, you run it, your first gets smaller, which is fine.

• 32:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah. It's just the nature of life, I think.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's true, too.

• 32:14Speaker 03

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• 33:48Rick Rubin?

  Where would you say songs come from?

• 33:52Speaker 01

  Wow. For me, it's just, I get inspiration from...

• 34:00Speaker 01

  It's just other people, but creativity for me is one of the best gifts. The thing I love about creativity and where songs come from, wherever they come from, like, you take something and you give the world something today that didn't exist yesterday.

• 34:18Rick Rubin?

  It's the best feeling in the world.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  It's the best feeling ever, and to know, it's almost like you have the answer to the last question that nobody else knows, you know what I mean? It's like you have a secret. Like, you and I could write a song right now, and we would, only us would know that it exists in the world until it comes out. I love that.

• 34:35Rick Rubin?

  And before that, it doesn't exist.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  And before that, it's nothing.

• 34:38Rick Rubin?

  After, there's a song you can sing. It's amazing.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the thing that always... I'm not comparing creativity to golf, because I don't, I don't love golf, I don't play. But when I did play golf, it's like you spend all day out there hitting shitty balls, and then you hit one that's perfect. That's the thing that keeps you coming back.

• 34:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  I've always said writing songs is a lot like fishing. You can go out there one day and not get anything, but there's that one day where it's just magic.

• 35:03Rick Rubin?

  It's not in our control.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 35:05Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. We're at the mercy of whatever.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  Whatever it is. You know, so that's where songs come from for me, whatever that source is, you know? And these, you know, these people going to writing camps, and I get that. And, you know, they're, "Okay, we're gonna make an appointment to write a song." I get that. But the best songs come when they're lived.

• 35:25Rick Rubin?

  The writing camp sounds more like your earlier career.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  That's exactly it.

• 35:28Rick Rubin?

  Of the songs that fit.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Well, I can tell you that we were on the road, I forgot, I think it was 2006, and we were playing Ohio State's basketball arena. And we had a night off, so we were there early. On that night off, Van Halen was playing, the same arena. And Louis Messina, who had worked a lot with Van Halen and with Sammy especially, was promoting my tour and still is, but I said, "Louis, I gotta meet Sammy Hagar." So we went, he worked, you know, worked it out for me and the band. All of a sudden, we go backstage, and there's Eddie without a shirt, you know, with hair, you know, doing his stuff, and here comes, here comes Sammy Hagar in this yellow jumpsuit and his red shoes and his blonde hair.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  And it was as if I had known him my whole life. And you take my real manager now, David Farmer, who we were kids. We were in his garage with pool sticks, acting like they were guitars, listening to Montrose. And then here comes that guy. So me and Sammy became pretty instant friends. And then he invited me to come play his birthday party he has every year in Cabo. And I said, OK, we're coming. So we play, we do, I think we play three and a half hours.

• 36:43Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  And then there was a club next to it called Squid Row. And me and the band went to that. Well, when I was in that club, I just felt restless. I felt uneasy for some reason. Everybody was having fun. And I was looking around at all, a lot of the guys in my band and some of the guys that I grew up with. And I don't know why I had this feeling, but I was going, you know, they've all got families and they've all got the lives they're building. And I started not feel bad about, for myself or whatever. I said, that's not, that I'm not doing that. And, and I just kept feeling like I needed to leave that club. And I left the club and I went to the house that Sammy got us overlooking the lights of Cabo.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  And I pulled out a notepad and I pulled my guitar out of the case and I sat out. I can still see the table. It was a glass, a round glass table at the pool deck. And I was out there by myself, trying to figure out what it was I was feeling. I was 36 and I said, I don't have to figure all this out right now. Whatever you're feeling in the club, you don't, you know, it's just OK. It's OK to play at Sammy Hagar's birthday party and this be what you're doing right now. And I just started writing down everything I was feeling. And that's where I wrote Beer in Mexico. I wrote it completely by myself in about a three hour period. And by the time the band got back to the house that Sammy got us, that song was almost done. Now, that's an example of where songs come from. It's lived.

• 38:11Rick Rubin?

  Can you play it?

• 38:13Speaker 01

  It's like, "Sit right here and have another beer in Mexico. Do my best, waste another day. Sit right here and have another beer in Mexico. Let the warm air melt these blues away."

• 38:42Speaker 01

  That's where I started pushing the choruses too. I didn't really push until the end, you know. I'm a sucker for pushing, but you know, sun comes, sun comes up, the sun sinks down, and I've seen them both in this tourist town. Up for days in a rage, just trying to search my soul. For all the answers and the reasons why I'm at these crossroads in my life. And really don't know which way to go. So I'll just sit right here, have another beer in Mexico.

• 39:09Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  You know, so that's an example of, I would have never have written that song. Let's just say that you called me one day and hey, let's write a song. Here's, we're gonna make an appointment and then we're gonna sit in a room.

• 39:21Rick Rubin?

  Wouldn't have happened like that.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  I would have never have written it, ever.

• 39:23Rick Rubin?

  It was based on the experience. And hearing you tell the story, I hear the song as being therapeutic.

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 39:31Rick Rubin?

  In that moment.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  No question. There were some years that, you know, some less generous critics would have just looked at that title and went, oh, this is just a Kenny Chesney party song.

• 39:43Rick Rubin?

  Write it off.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, whatever. But it was a true portrait of my soul at the time.

• 39:46Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  You know, it really was.

• 39:48Rick Rubin?

  It feels so personal in the moment, but other people feel like that too. And that's why it translates. We all have feelings, turns out.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  As it turns out, we all have feelings, yeah. You know, we spend all this time trying to find commonality.

• 40:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  And sometimes, sometimes we make it harder than it has to be. You know, because if it just, songs come from lived experiences.

• 40:09Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  And I have written songs where, you know, it's been an appointment and some of them made my record. Some have been hits, but real commonality, it's hard.

• 40:19Rick Rubin?

  Do you still spend much time in the Virgin Islands?

• 40:22Speaker 01

  Not as much as I used to, some. I still love it, but you know, with social media, a lot of stuff changes. You know, it's just like, ah, what used to be a place of real peace?

• 40:31Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  It's not the same. I still, I take what I want from it.

• 40:34Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  If that makes sense.

• 40:35Rick Rubin?

  Are you writing songs all the time?

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Not all the time. I wrote some a little bit in Vegas because I'm still, but it's really hard for me to ride on the road.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  I have to be off that, out of that space to really write. You know, some people can do it, I can't. I, I used to could.

• 40:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  I mean, I wrote a couple of songs on the road, uh, but I have to be out of that space and more in a quieter space for me.

• 41:02Rick Rubin?

  Also, your shows are very, I'll just say, high energy.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:07Rick Rubin?

  I don't know if the high energy lends itself to the going inside and feeling what you need to feel to write.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and when you're like, and you wake up the next day and you, I go to the gym and the next thing you know, it's two in the afternoon. And the next thing you know, it's just, ah.

• 41:23Rick Rubin?

  Lot of energies being put out.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  And this anticipation.

• 41:25Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  Which I love that energy. I'm so thankful for my adult life because it's, live music is one of the most amazing things we have in our, in our world, you know? And to be able to be a person that gets to do that, that gets to give the world that. But the thing I love about it is that no two nights are ever the same, ever. Now, I eat, I eat really early when I'm on the road. I'll eat around 4:30. And then I'll, I lay down for a couple of hours and then I, you know, you gotta say hi to who you gotta say hi to.

• 41:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  And then the next thing you know, it's showtime. Those things are the same, but every night is different. The shared experience.

• 42:01Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  Is what I love so much.

• 42:03Rick Rubin?

  How did the live show develop? From the early days when you were writing the songs to fit in.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:09Rick Rubin?

  To what it's become? Was there like a moment when it changed?

• 42:13Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, when my song "Young" came out, that was the first single off the No Shoes album. That just took us to a different place. Now, had that been my first single, things wouldn't have changed that much. But I have, remember, I had 17 hit records.

• 42:28Rick Rubin?

  And 13 years.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  Out of 13, 13 years of building a fan base. But, so when "Young" hit and then everything else came, we already had a show.

• 42:37Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  We already had recognizable music. And people were coming to the show to hear "Young", but they went, oh my God, he's got two hours of material. And so, Rick, it was on.

• 42:49Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  It was, everything that we did was based around the show. And that goes, goes back to what I was saying earlier. I couldn't help but feed the persona. I couldn't stop it. And all of us, everything we did, every morning we woke up was to feed that energy. And I'm glad we did. I mean, it's fantastic, but I'm learning now that.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  That I gotta take care of the person too.

• 43:14Rick Rubin?

  So. You also want to be able to do it for a long time.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:17Rick Rubin?

  The thing that stops that is not taking care of the person.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. Yeah, so you know, I'm very particular about what I put into my body now. I'm very particular honestly about who I hang out with.

• 43:30Rick Rubin?

  Just energetically.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Energetically, it's just, I want to be available for everyone. But so if you give energy to people that drain that energy for everyone else, it's, I'm learning how to navigate some of that.

• 43:44Rick Rubin?

  How would you say your relationship to music has changed over the course of your life?

• 43:50Speaker 01

  I think that my first producer was Barry Beckett. Barry Beckett produced my Capricorn record and my first couple of records after that. And I played in so many clubs that I just played hard and sang hard, you know, because of the nature of it. And I got into the studio and I was singing hard in the mic. And I, one of the things that I take with me, and I still, I mean, man, I miss Barry, you know? And, and one of the things I take with me is Barry came into the vocal booth one night and he, he goes, I want you to think of, you know, you're, you're doing it right. He goes, but I want you to think about the world out there hearing this song. He goes, how do you want them to feel hearing this song?

• 44:35Speaker 01

  He goes, I want you to do what you're doing, but I want you to back off the mic some and I want you to put a smile on it. And I've tried to infuse that moment into all of my music. Now, I didn't know how to do it. Like I, I did it, you know, especially on those early songs. But I think for me, having Barry Beckett in my life early. By the way, have you ever seen the, the Rick Hall documentary? What the Muscle Shoals thing and like Barry's, Barry Beckett was one of those players.

• 45:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  You know, and I mean, I wept because making music in the studio has been my whole adult life.

• 45:13Rick Rubin?

  This console came from that studio. This was the original Muscle Shoals console.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  That's unbelievable. So my relationship with that was, was, was really intense. But for me, I mean, it's, it's been a struggle because I do like to make records that feed that energy we were talking about on stage.

• 45:33Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  And the machine of it all, but I'm also, I've made a lot of records that I wrote on my boat. That's very acoustic and over here, which early on confused my audience. We thought you were this guy, but you're this guy. I'm well, I'm both. It's just another part of me.

• 45:50Rick Rubin?

  And it makes a two and a half hour show more interesting. If it's all the same, it gets boring no matter what it is.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  So my relationship with that, and I don't know, I don't know when that kind of record's coming. You know, it's always in the works, but creatively, you know, I sometimes I've, I've, I've learned not to. But early on I edited myself to a fault, always thinking about, okay, the live show, what's this going to, what's this going to mean? How are people out there in the grass in the amphitheaters going to respond to this? Not the season ticket holders, the grass. So I thought about that all the time and that can, that can edit your relationship with your music some.

• 46:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it's just a limitation of like, they all have to do this one thing.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  Yes. So when I made my Be As You Are album, I didn't know I was making the record at the time. But it's still one of my favorite records I ever made because I wrote it over a five year period. Not for any album cycle. I was just writing my experiences and I was writing about characters I've met down in the islands and their stories. And, and none of those songs, none of them fit on.

• 46:57Rick Rubin?

  Any of the other albums.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Any of the other albums because Joe Galante heard that and he goes, no, no, no. Right? That doesn't fit with all the stuff. They only fit together. And so that became the Be As You Are. It was called Songs From An Old Blue Chair. But that was a true portrait of my soul, which is a whole other relationship with my music.

• 47:17Rick Rubin?

  You want to play one of those?

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Sure. I was in the Virgin Islands, New Year's Eve. This was, what's the guy that predicted the end of the world, 2000? Nostradamus. And that like, they say like, you know, the world's going to end in the year 2000. So everybody was kind of antsy, right?

• 47:33Rick Rubin?

  Y2K.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like, and um.

• 47:38Speaker 04

  I was really drunk on the beach one night. And I was sitting in this old blue chair. And I had one of those Tervis tumbler cups, about that tall, full of rum and Coke. And it was probably 2:00 in the morning. And I was on the beach and I put that glass between my legs and laid back. I fell asleep. And I woke up with the sun coming right over Tortola, right? And I had mosquito bites everywhere. I went back to the house. I slept a couple hours and I got up and started writing this song. And again, I would have never written something like this unless it was lived. So.

• 48:18Speaker 04

  A minute, minute. There's a blue rocking chair. Sitting in the sand. Weathered by the storms. And well-oiled hands. It sways back and forth. Where the help of the winds. It seems to always be there. Like an old trusted friend. I've read a lot of books. Wrote a few songs. Looked at my life, where it's going, where it's gone. I've seen the world through a boss windshield.

• 49:01Speaker 04

  But nothing compares. To the way that I see. To the way that I see. To the way that I see it when I sit in that old blue chair.

• 49:20Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful. Beautiful song.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  But that's not Hammer Down on Stage, Kenny Chesney. That's a whole other relationship and a long answer.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  That's a whole other side to my relationship with my music. And I love that side.

• 49:35Rick Rubin?

  For sure.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  But if you're playing SoFi Stadium in LA, I don't know that you pull Old Blue Chair out. You might.

• 49:42Rick Rubin?

  You might, in the middle.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  In the middle.

• 49:43Rick Rubin?

  You might.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  And it's quick, though. I mean--

• 49:46Rick Rubin?

  Get a little stage in the middle of the audience. It's a good vibe.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the relationship with my music is a little-- like, I love being that person, but I also love being the other person. So I've had numerous people ask me if I'm ever gonna do just a show of that kind of stuff. And I might.

• 50:04Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 50:05Speaker 01

  You know, I think it'd be really great. I mean, I saw one year The Stones did it, and I thought it was really brilliant. Not that I would steal from them, but I thought the idea was great. In the same calendar year, they did clubs, they did theaters, they did arenas, and they did stadiums, all in the same year. And I would imagine that every one of those shows in those environments were different.

• 50:25Rick Rubin?

  Totally different.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  And I just, I love that idea. And I think I might-- I'm gonna go ahead and apologize to the guys.

• 50:31Rick Rubin?

  It's such a cool idea.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  But you have to have a scope of a catalog to do it, to pull that off. But maybe we'll do that one day.

• 50:50Speaker 05

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• 51:29Speaker 05

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• 52:17Rick Rubin?

  You said you went to church growing up?

• 52:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:19Rick Rubin?

  How did that influence your life?

• 52:21Speaker 01

  Well, my grandmother was very religious. We grew up in an area where we had, just in the nature of our community, we leaned on certain things. We had school, we had sports, we had our friends, and we had church. And I went to Vacation Bible School every summer. But it was the first time in church that I heard three-part harmony.

• 52:45Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  And I went, "Ah, wow, what's that? This is great." You know? One of my first memories of hearing that and how connected I was to it, you know, I didn't know I was going to be that disconnected to it, but it was the first time that I heard music that made me feel something.

• 53:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  I didn't know what it was.

• 53:03Rick Rubin?

  It seems like magic.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think as a child, you're so impressionable, and things you experience young set such an emotional blueprint for the rest of your life.

• 53:17Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  Like, I don't have kids, but I always said, there's a singer-songwriter that played in Jimmy Buffett's band, his name is Mac McAnally, and Mac's just a... My favorite singer-songwriter ever. And he has this amazing voice. He's a great, great player. And I've written a lot of songs with him. But I always, I always said, because of what I'm talking about, that if I ever had a child, now, of course, the mother would have to be okay with this. But I would have wanted Mac in the delivery room. Because the first thing I want that child to hear was Mac McAnally playing music and his voice singing in the room.

• 53:53Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Because it sets such an emotional blueprint. Like, if you're born into chaos, you're probably gonna have chaos in your life. If you're born into peace and positive energy, then it just sets in such a different tone.

• 54:08Rick Rubin?

  It's also something that happens when people are singing devotion. It's got a different energy to it.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  It's got a different energy to it.

• 54:16Rick Rubin?

  It goes through you.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, and, and I'm very spiritual. I don't think you can do what I do and not be spiritual. My relationship with the religion has changed.

• 54:26Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 54:27Speaker 01

  But it was in church that, that I was first touched by music that said something. It spoke to me, where it wasn't so, right here, all of a sudden, you heard the bottom third and the top third. It goes, ah. That's beautiful, right? But I was in church a lot. You know, you're taught a certain way as a kid. And we, I grew up Southern Baptist. And you're taught, this is the way. Everything else is wrong.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  Then you go on the road. And you have 120 employees, all from like, a lot like the Virgin Islands. You, you meet this, this melting pot. It's, it's this really eclectic group of people that you, all of a sudden, living life with. And, and like I said, when I was talking about the Virgin Islands, all with different political beliefs, religious beliefs. You know, there's, there's people from all over that have traveled much different journeys to be on the road with you, going down together.

• 55:23Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  Well, over a period of a lot of summers, you get to know and love these people.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  It's like, okay, what if something happened and we were all killed the same night? Am I to believe that they're gonna go to hell because they have the wrong religion? No, that's my point on religion. So that's, it's crazy. Like where I grew up, within the same county, there were churches fighting other churches because they believed differently. And within the same 20 miles, I was like, mm.

• 55:54Rick Rubin?

  And two Christian churches that just had slightly different beliefs.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  Slightly.

• 55:58Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah. Different interpretations.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  And we couldn't hang with those kids at school. We couldn't, it was like, ah. See, I don't think that's how it was originally, in my opinion, designed. I think there's something much bigger than all of that, that is full of positive energy, light and love, and I want to believe in that. You know, I have a whole other, a whole other thing, but with.

• 56:20Rick Rubin?

  Tell me.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  With people, well, I don't like TV preachers.

• 56:23Rick Rubin?

  None?

• 56:24Speaker 01

  I don't know. I just think like they've all like, especially when physical product was a big deal. You know what I mean? Maybe they have.

• 56:33Rick Rubin?

  They were selling something?

• 56:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're always like, they're making millions of dollars off the, off the insecurities of all these people. Now you buy my DVD and we're gonna change ya. I don't know. I mean, it's good. I mean, God bless them, I guess. I mean, but I always felt really weird about that.

• 56:48Rick Rubin?

  Would you say if you didn't have your church upbringing, you wouldn't be the same person?

• 56:55Speaker 01

  But there's that.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  So there's something.

• 56:59Rick Rubin?

  So it served you in your life?

• 57:01Speaker 01

  It, it's still serving me, I guess, because my parents, my grandparents, it keeps you from being rudderless, and I'm thankful for that.

• 57:10Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  But I don't know. I guess I've always had a problem, especially in my adult life, and especially after I went on the road and traveled the world and met all these wonderful people full of love and light. They all can't be bad.

• 57:23Rick Rubin?

  No.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  And I would have never have met Rick Rubin had I not expanded my life, you know, and been in the music business. And I would have never met Barry Beckett. I don't know Barry Beckett's religious affiliation at all.

• 57:38Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  We didn't care. We made music together. We loved each other.

• 57:41Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  So, I don't know. I think what they're selling is certainty, and I'm in the corner of, I don't really know. Right? I just know I feel, I know love when I see it and feel it.

• 57:53Rick Rubin?

  How would you describe the spiritual side of your music?

• 58:00Speaker 01

  I think, first of all, I mean, early on, you had to find that part of yourself. Like, for me, it was all just so formulaic, right? But the song I just played, "You Old Blue Chair," that is a, that was, that came from the heart. That came from a lived experience.

• 58:16Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  I think there has to be, to take your audience down, or to build one, or to connect on any level, there has to be some sort of commonality somewhere along the way. And you have to dig in a little deeper. It can't all just be "Beer in Mexico," even though that was a

• 58:33Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 58:34Speaker 01

  deeper song than the poster says. But I would like to think there's a spiritual side to a lot of it.

• 58:39Rick Rubin?

  Well, I imagine to connect to that many people, there has to be something going on bigger than the human Kenny.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 58:48Rick Rubin?

  There's something bigger happening in that room.

• 58:50Speaker 01

  Right. I would like to think that the music that we've made over the years, that it had a positive impact on our life. And you can tell, Rick, when people come to our shows, that something in there touched them somewhere. Aside from, "Yeah, this is really loud. We feel the kick drum coming through our chest. This is really fun." It has to be something more than that. And I'm not sure which songs did that, honestly. But I can tell when I'm looking out into the audience that this has meant something more to them than just hearing it on the radio. I mean, they've lived with it. And there's a spiritual part of that that I never knew existed

• 59:32Speaker 01

  at East Tennessee State, or when I was in the Bluegrass Band, or my first 13 years on the road.

• 59:38Rick Rubin?

  It's a communion.

• 59:39Speaker 01

  Yes. There's a connective tissue that I would like to think that is spiritual in nature.

• 59:44Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 59:45Speaker 01

  Like a common thing they all felt.

• 59:48Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about how you become the person you are on stage. Does it happen automatically? Or do you have to do something to get into that state?

• 59:57Speaker 01

  I know people that it takes for them to go on stage at nine o'clock. They have to start getting ready at two in the afternoon. And I don't know how to explain this, but I can be ready to go in four minutes.

• 1:00:09Rick Rubin?

  Wow. You can turn it on like a light switch. Wow.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  And I could let it go like that. Like, I'm so thankful, like I talked about earlier, that I don't carry that persona with me in my everyday life. It just wouldn't work for my life now. I've let that ego part go. Thanks to a lot of nights in the jungle. So that ego part of me is gone. Now, I had a really good friend, Drew Brees, who played for the Saints, okay? And Drew is one of the best guys in the world off the field. Now, you get him on the field and he's got just enough ego to want to kill you.

• 1:00:43Rick Rubin?

  And that's what it takes to do his job?

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  That's what it takes to do his job. Now, for me to be up there, I've got to have enough of that to be great at what I do. But I'm telling you, back in the day, I got three or four friends with me on the road that I went to high school and college with. Two of those guys run my merch company out there and the other guy is my road manager. For years, we would play college PlayStation football on the road and we were addicted to it. And I've held shows before so we could finish a game. And it's time to go on, you know, we're 10 minutes late from going on. I'm back, not even my show closed yet. I'm back there playing PlayStation football, trying to win. So I can, there's, I know of at least 10 times that happened.

• 1:01:30Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  And the audience is going, well, Kenny, nervous? What's going on? I'm back there going.

• 1:01:36Rick Rubin?

  That's so funny.

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  Right? But I could quit that and look.

• 1:01:40Rick Rubin?

  You're really lucky.

• 1:01:42Speaker 01

  Very lucky. And I can put a pair of jeans, boots, shirt, my palm leaf straw cowboy hat, and all of a sudden, I walk to the stage and it's like that. And I'm laser focused and ready to go.

• 1:01:57Rick Rubin?

  Did you travel anywhere interesting while you were in college?

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  No, there was three or four of us. And that bluegrass band that had never been out of East Tennessee ever. Like now, I went to, on vacation, I went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina with my family, and to Daytona Beach, Florida. But other than that, I'd never went any further than church, the ballpark, and school. Never. All of a sudden, here I am, a sophomore in college. And one of my guitar teachers in college named Jack Toddle, he says, "We've been invited to come to Moscow for this music festival."

• 1:02:32Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  And it was just a bluegrass band we were, you know? And so, we went to Moscow. And there were other groups there from other countries. There was a Russian group that was, it was a little different. It was folkier. It was, it was still acoustic instruments, but it wasn't traditional G run, bluegrass, you know, that we were playing. And there was a group from Italy, and there was a group, I don't know, just from other countries. And there was about 10, 10 of those groups there.

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  And we, we had interpreters, but it was really broken communication, right? For the first three or four days, we were there for 10 days. And for the first three or four days, we, we kind of stayed in our group and kind of stayed in our zone. Little by little, we started jamming with the other players. And little by little, we all formed our own groups within that. And we were learning from them, and they were learning from us. And all of a sudden, we had written a few songs together. And all of a sudden, we were friends. We still couldn't speak the language.

• 1:03:37Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  But we played the same notes.

• 1:03:41Rick Rubin?

  So beautiful.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  And that is the power of music. That was the first time that I ever felt how strong that was and how connected that made people. And I remember thinking how blessed I'd been. But by the time we left.

• 1:03:53Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:54Speaker 01

  In this bus to go to the airport, I mean, we didn't want to say goodbye to anybody because we knew that that was the last time we would see them. But for seven or eight days in Moscow, in this really shitty university dorm room, I mean, in any hour of the night, you would see different people in there playing music and writing songs and jamming together.

• 1:04:14Rick Rubin?

  So cool. Great experience.

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  That's the power of music.

• 1:04:19Rick Rubin?

  What makes a great record?

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  Spontaneity.

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  My opinion. I've been guilty of making it too perfect. I've been guilty of, like, another Barry Beckett-ism. Barry taught me early on that sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes you can mix the hit out of it.

• 1:04:37Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, overdo it.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  Overdo it, you know? And I've been guilty of not knowing when to walk away. I've been guilty of maybe sometimes walking away too soon. Especially in the middle of exhaustion and making really important decisions in the middle of exhaustion. But, to me, what makes a great record is when something just shows up out of nowhere and it's just the spontaneity of it all. And you've been there, it's just magic. You can't explain it, it's a gift. And you can't plan that. You can go in with a great artist and songs and you can mix it the way you want, but it's... Sometimes it sounds like it's got 100 pounds of bricks on its back. And sometimes it sounds like magic.

• 1:05:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  That's the best way I can explain what's happened to me. I mean, yes, you gotta have great players and you gotta have, you know, the song. The songs have to be solid or whatever, but we've all taken great songs with great players into the studio and it didn't make a great record.

• 1:05:35Rick Rubin?

  And also sometimes songs that you don't think that much of, when you record them, all of a sudden blossom into something you couldn't imagine.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that wouldn't even...

• 1:05:42Rick Rubin?

  It's a miracle.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  Yes, that's not even... That you didn't even have for the record.

• 1:05:47Rick Rubin?

  No.

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  Right? I've been in the process of making this record on a friend of mine named Kat Higgins, who's a great songwriter. She's written a lot of songs for me and we've been in the process of making her record for a while. And we were in there, she wanted to recut a couple of things, which we did. And it was a good decision. But, and it goes to this point about not overdoing it and magic happening in the studio. I said, "What's one of your favorite songs when you were growing up?" And she goes, "Blue by You by Linda Ronstadt." I said, "Perfect. Perfect example."

• 1:06:20Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  And we went and listened to it, and it's not perfect, but it's magic. I mean, if you sat and listened to that, as someone that's mixed a lot of records in his life, there's a lot of things that I, in the moment, I would have probably done different.

• 1:06:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  But it's magic.

• 1:06:34Rick Rubin?

  Caught a moment.

• 1:06:35Speaker 01

  It caught a moment, and that's what makes a great record. And there's a lot of records that I, that, you know, you and I both grew up on. If we go back and analyze them now, my own records, like, I can't listen to anything, you know, that was early because I just, I'm too inside it.

• 1:06:51Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  And there's so many things I would have done different. And not overdoing it makes a great record.

• 1:07:01Speaker 06

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• 1:07:44Speaker 06

  Emerging in early monastic life, it engages scripture through four gentle movements: reading, reflection, repetition, and rest. A short passage is read, a single phrase is held. Silence becomes part of the practice, creating space for insight to surface naturally. Lectio 365 brings that ancient rhythm into the present moment. Designed for modern life, it offers brief, guided scriptural reflections throughout the day, to begin with intention, pause at midday, and wind down at night.

• 1:08:32Speaker 06

  The readings are less about information gathering and more for returning to wisdom again and again, letting familiar words meet new moments. A modern way to keep biblical wisdom close, quietly present, steady, and alive within everyday life. Lectio 365 is a free resource. Find inspiration there, now and always. Learn more at lectio365.com.

• 1:09:16Rick Rubin?

  How important are lyrics to you?

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  Well, I grew up in a very lyrical town. And I got to Nashville when some of the songwriters were bigger figures than the artist. I feel very fortunate to have started my career as a songwriter at a cuff rose with a bunch of people who were true craftsmen of songs. So lyrics have always been very important to me. The first time I heard you in tequila, right? I didn't write that song. But the first time, my friend Matressa Berg and Deena Carter wrote that song. And she'd sent it to me before, but it was a female singing it. It was Matressa singing it. And I said, well, send that to me with a male singer. I just want to hear it.

• 1:09:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  And I'll never forget it. I was, well, it was the year I met you. I believe it was 2007. And I was in Santa Monica and I was driving home. It was magic. It was sunset. And it's just one of those drives. And you go, oh, this is why I live here. And I put that song on. And the lyrics of that song, like, it was just unlike, hearing a male sing it, I went, oh, I can do that. That's the power of those lyrics. Because a lot of people collab for marketing and duets and awards and just stuff, you know, for different reasons. I haven't done a ton of them, but the lyrics and the song has to be there first. So I had, I left Malibu and I went back to Nashville to record You in Tequila.

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  And I had the track for a little while, but I didn't want someone that people would have just, okay, yeah, that's, we would expect that person to sing within the format or whatever. I had to have a specific voice and I didn't know who that voice was yet. Well, my friend Holly Gleason sent me a live record of this girl named Grace Potter from Burlington, Vermont.

• 1:11:06Rick Rubin?

  She's amazing.

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  And I put it in my, in my computer and it was on my iTunes. And Rick, I could, at the time, and it's even more now, I could hit shuffle on my iTunes and it wouldn't repeat a song for a month. I had so much music in there. Well, I was at my house in the Virgin Islands. It was a clear night. I was looking up at this endless beautiful sky and I heard this voice on my pool speakers. And it was Grace Potter singing a song called Apologies. And I went, that's it. That's the voice. And it was sent. I mean, I'm telling you, it was like, without being cliche, the stars were aligned. And I called Holly the next day. I said, this Grace Potter person singing this song, I said, that's the, that's the voice for You in Tequila.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  Grace was in Europe and she had just landed in the States. I don't know where. But we had sent her my version of You in Tequila. Now, all Grace knew of me was she thinks my track was sexy. And then they played that in Burlington, Vermont. And that's all she knew of Kenny Chesney. So when she first heard the name, she was like, I don't think so. But going back to the lyrics, the song, she listened to it. And she said, I'm gonna do this. And the next day, she was in Nashville. It was on my birthday. And we went into the studio to sing You in Tequila together. And we went to dinner that night after.

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  And we had some drinks, a big dinner and celebrated my birthday and the fact that we just sang a great song together, never knowing that it was gonna end up being a live friendship. That's the power, again, of music.

• 1:12:44Rick Rubin?

  Let's listen to that song. You play first and then we'll sing.

• 1:12:53Speaker 04

  Baby, here I am again Kicking dust in the canyon wind Waiting for that sun to go down

• 1:13:06Speaker 04

  Made it up my hollering drive And hell bent on getting high High above the lights of town

• 1:13:20Speaker 04

  Now you and tequila make me crazy

• 1:13:27Speaker 04

  Run like poison in my blood

• 1:13:34Speaker 04

  One more night could kill me, baby

• 1:13:40Speaker 04

  One is one too many

• 1:13:44Speaker 04

  One more is never enough Never enough

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  Now you put Grace Potter's If you want to play it, like, you listen to Grace Potter sing that song? It takes it to a completely different place.

• 1:14:00Rick Rubin?

  Let's hear a little of

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  I mean

• 1:14:02Rick Rubin?

  Of you and Grace.

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  But, see, Grace was unexpected.

• 1:14:11Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  Her voice hadn't been burned within the format.

• 1:14:19Speaker 04

  Baby, here I am again Kicking dust in the canyon wind Waiting for that sun to go down

• 1:14:33Speaker 04

  Made it up my hollering drive Hell bent on getting high High above the lights of town

• 1:14:47Speaker 04

  You and tequila make me crazy

• 1:14:54Speaker 04

  Run like poison in my blood

• 1:15:01Speaker 04

  One more night could kill me, baby

• 1:15:07Speaker 04

  One is one too many One more is never enough.

• 1:15:22Speaker 04

  Thirty days and thirty nights, Been putting up a real good fight.

• 1:15:30Speaker 04

  There were times I thought you'd win.

• 1:15:36Speaker 04

  It's so easy to forget The bitter taste of morning love.

• 1:15:44Speaker 04

  Swore I wouldn't go back there again.

• 1:15:51Speaker 04

  You and tequila make me crazy.

• 1:15:58Speaker 04

  I like poison in my blood.

• 1:16:05Speaker 04

  One more night could kill me, baby.

• 1:16:11Speaker 04

  One is one too many.

• 1:16:15Speaker 04

  One more is never enough. When it comes to you, All the damage I could do.

• 1:16:26Speaker 04

  It's always your favorite sin

• 1:16:30Speaker 04

  That do you in.

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  Well, that's a cool song, but it's not the same without Grace.

• 1:16:45Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:16:46Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:47Speaker 01

  So that's a... The lyrics had to be there, you know? So it's like, that's an example of... That's not marketing. That is...

• 1:16:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it's just what it needed.

• 1:16:55Speaker 01

  It is what it is.

• 1:16:56Rick Rubin?

  I love the story of how you came to know her Just by hearing her voice.

• 1:17:00Speaker 01

  Just by hearing her voice.

• 1:17:01Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:02Speaker 01

  And see, that's an example Of kind of what I talked to you about in Russia. Like, I didn't know Grace. I didn't know anything about her. She didn't know anything about me Other than she thinks I act too sexy. We joke a little bit about... Because she had this kind of... She had a much different audience than I did. Well, I had this core country audience, And I was building it, and it was wider than most, right? But still, A lot of her fans In her world Wasn't coming to the normal Kenny Chesney Show.

• 1:17:30Rick Rubin?

  No.

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  Ever. So, When we did this, And we joke about it, like, a lot of... A lot of my fans were going, "Who the fuck?" And all of her fans were going, "Why the fuck?"

• 1:17:47Rick Rubin?

  That's really funny.

• 1:17:48Speaker 01

  And it's really true, though.

• 1:17:49Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:49Speaker 01

  But once they heard it, they went, oh, OK, this makes sense. It works. They played the same note, as it turns out, you know?

• 1:17:57Rick Rubin?

  Makes me want to hear a whole album of you guys singing together.

• 1:18:00Speaker 01

  We thought about it.

• 1:18:01Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it'd be beautiful.

• 1:18:02Speaker 01

  No, and she wants to, I want to, it's just getting it there. But yeah, something that organic and wonderful.

• 1:18:08Rick Rubin?

  Just beautiful.

• 1:18:09Speaker 01

  And, you know, I don't know if we lock ourselves up and write all the songs. I don't know, but maybe, or we just find great songs.

• 1:18:16Rick Rubin?

  I don't think it matters.

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  I don't think it matters, but...

• 1:18:18Rick Rubin?

  As long as the songs are great, you know, it doesn't really matter.

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  As long as the songs are great.

• 1:18:21Rick Rubin?

  You don't get extra credit for writing it yourself.

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

  No, no, it's like, wow, thank God. If I had insisted on writing all the songs, there is a third of my life that it wouldn't exist in my life. I get asked advice, like I said, a lot now. I don't know how I am with advice, because I just know how I did it. And the way I did it, there's a piece of it that a lot of people don't want to hear, and that is work.

• 1:18:46Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about some things that you learned about the music business, being in it this long.

• 1:18:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:50Rick Rubin?

  What would you tell your 18-year-old self about the industry?

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  I would have definitely have tried to teach him patience, because it's only human behavior to want it all at once.

• 1:19:02Speaker 01

  And I did. I am so thankful that I didn't get it when I wanted it.

• 1:19:06Rick Rubin?

  It wouldn't have worked the same way.

• 1:19:07Speaker 01

  I wouldn't have had the skill set.

• 1:19:09Rick Rubin?

  No, it's perfect the way it happened.

• 1:19:10Speaker 01

  Everything that's happened to me, it would have crushed me. There was a reason that I was in double A and triple A baseball for 13 years. That kid didn't know patience, he just wanted it all at once. The music business taught me patience. It forced me to have it. But even though that's all, I mean, so much of it has changed, because everything today is so automatic. Going back to Springsteen, he told me that him and the guys, you know, early on would take a train from Jersey to New Orleans, do a gig, and take a train back, right? I mean, this is early on, I mean, like...

• 1:19:40Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, but still.

• 1:19:41Speaker 01

  That's wanting it, that's having, willing it to happen, and getting better at your craft and...

• 1:19:47Rick Rubin?

  Whatever it takes.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, but truly loving it so much, that's just what you do. I'm proud of being on the road that long, this long, because I sincerely believe that if my life hadn't have turned out the way it has, and I would have been fortunate enough to write some songs and record some songs and do what we do, I would still be doing it somewhere. I'm convinced of it. It's like an inherent need. I need to do this.

• 1:20:11Rick Rubin?

  It's what you were born to do.

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:20:13Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about the Hall of Fame.

• 1:20:16Speaker 01

  Wow. I'm from East Tennessee, and there are some people that are from East Tennessee that were in the Hall of Fame that to me were bigger than life, mythical figures. I mean, like, it was, you know, Dolly Parton's from East Tennessee. Chet Atkins is from East Tennessee. Chet Atkins, I could walk from my grandmother's house to Chet Atkins's front door. On the same street. And one of the best songwriters and one of my best friends now is named Dean Dillon. He wrote so many great songs, and he's in the Country Music Hall of Fame. All those people are from East Tennessee. So for me to add my name to that list, I never thought it was even possible, right? I was told in February of last year that I was gonna go into the Hall of Fame, so I had all the way to October to think about it.

• 1:20:58Speaker 01

  And it didn't really sink in. It didn't hit me. And honestly, I don't know that I truly accepted it. And I had gratitude, but I'm not sure in my brain that I accepted it just yet.

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  The night of the induction.

• 1:21:13Rick Rubin?

  Where did it take place?

• 1:21:14Speaker 01

  In Nashville, at the Country Music Hall of Fame. And there's a theater there where they do that. But before that, they have this induction pre-ceremony. And the only people that are allowed in the room are the living members of the Country Music Hall of Fame. It's like, they welcome you in. And like I said, not to say that I didn't appreciate it and didn't have gratitude towards it, I just didn't accept it that much until that night, until that moment. Because they walk you into the rotunda where the plaques are held. And every living, there's only 100, I was number 158. So there's 158 people in the history of this format that are up there.

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  And when you walk in, they say, ladies and gentlemen, Country Music Hall of Famer Kenny Chesney. What that does to you.

• 1:22:03Rick Rubin?

  It's surreal.

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  In that moment.

• 1:22:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:07Speaker 01

  I, it was real.

• 1:22:09Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:09Speaker 01

  It was real and surreal and I was still having a hard time accepting it, but I was like, I was looking at everybody and all of a sudden I was in that room and I get emotional thinking about it because that was, that's, I had a lot of heroes and friends in that room and I was.

• 1:22:27Rick Rubin?

  Did you know most of the people in the room or no?

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  No, no. Willie Nelson's in that room.

• 1:22:31Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:35Speaker 01

  It just, it just seemed unbelievable.

• 1:22:37Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  You know, but when they say your name in that moment, it does something to you. I mean, it was, I was so emotional and I was so thankful that we go back to, you know, it goes back to me being in church here in three part harmony. It goes back to the trip to Russia. It goes back to every Friday night that I played high school football. We would run out of the locker room to Born to Run. It fired us up so much and it just made me think about all these times in my life where music, where it wasn't in the front of my brain. It was just back here in the room waiting to happen. And it was all these pieces of my life that was orchestrated, that was said, okay, not yet.

• 1:23:21Speaker 01

  All of that came to me as, as they said my name that night, as I was getting inducted into the Hall of Fame. And I don't know how to explain what that, what that feels like. It's just a very surreal moment. I was lucky enough to sit there and get inducted and have both my parents sit beside me.

• 1:23:37Rick Rubin?

  Wow, beautiful.

• 1:23:37Speaker 01

  And when you're 58, that's a big deal.

• 1:23:39Rick Rubin?

  Their minds must have been blown.

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  Blown. My mom, well, the whole night she was just had my hand and my arm and squeezing it really tight. It was great to have that experience with her and my dad, you know, and.

• 1:23:50Rick Rubin?

  It probably meant even more to them than to you.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  Oh, no question for them to be there with me.

• 1:23:55Rick Rubin?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:23:56Speaker 01

  Because, you know, my dad and I, you know, we. We don't have a lot in common. We have sports and I've learned over the years that that's enough. Right? So our relationship for a while was strained at best, but to have sports and to have him there and us share that. I'll never forget it.

• 1:24:13Rick Rubin?

  It's also different than any other kind of award is a competition between artists. This is not that. There's no competition.

• 1:24:22Speaker 01

  No, and you can't buy yourself into this.

• 1:24:24Rick Rubin?

  You're invited into a club of the all time.

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  Because some of those award shows, you know, people block vote and they, it's real, but it's, I've learned over the years that awards are, you know, they're important when you're young, I think. After a while, it's okay, but this.

• 1:24:42Rick Rubin?

  There's also something about which song is better than another song or what artist is better. It's ridiculous.

• 1:24:48Speaker 01

  It's ridiculous.

• 1:24:49Rick Rubin?

  It's ridiculous. It's all apples and oranges every time.

• 1:24:51Speaker 01

  Who's to say one person's creativity is so much more superior than this one?

• 1:24:54Rick Rubin?

  It's insane.

• 1:24:55Speaker 01

  I hate that part of it. So.

• 1:24:57Rick Rubin?

  But this is different.

• 1:24:57Speaker 01

  But this is different. This is, you have to make some sort of, they call it an indelible mark. And for them to recognize that and to care is really cool, you know? And so, yeah, you can't buy your way into it. You can't, you can't market, you can't politic for it. It's just given to you, you know? So I'm very, I feel very fortunate and very thankful.

• 1:25:21Rick Rubin?

  How long does it take you to fall asleep after a show?

• 1:25:24Speaker 01

  I haven't slept in 10 years.

• 1:25:27Speaker 01

  And I'm working on it, but you know, I have a hard time relaxing. This side of my brain turns this way, this side turns this way, and I meet somewhere in the middle of all that. So I have a hard, for years I've had a hard time sleeping. One day, I'm sure I'll calm down. But when I'm not doing that, you know, I've got my own Sirius XM radio station, I'm programming that, I'm sending stuff in. Okay, I hate that. This doesn't, you know, stuff we loved five years ago, just get rid of that. We know, let's play the new Grace Potter record, let's play whatever.

• 1:25:59Rick Rubin?

  It's fun. It's fun curating stuff.

• 1:26:01Speaker 01

  I love it. I love it. But that's just another thing to turn the screw on.

• 1:26:07Rick Rubin?

  I read somewhere that you would end your tour every year in the same place.

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  We still do.

• 1:26:14Rick Rubin?

  How did that come to be?

• 1:26:16Speaker 01

  Because I love sports and within sports, I've always been very superstitious. Always. So there was a year that we opened our tour at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Football Stadium. And it was on fire, which is different than than any other year. And that whole year was just incredible. I forgot, it was like 2007, I think. And we ended it in Foxborough, Massachusetts, at the Patriots Football Stadium, at Gillette Stadium. Since then, we have opened every tour in Tampa. And we have closed every year with two nights at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough. And it's all out of superstition.

• 1:26:58Rick Rubin?

  That's amazing.

• 1:26:58Speaker 01

  Because I.

• 1:27:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, you know it works.

• 1:27:01Speaker 01

  And I tell Louis Messina, I said, don't mess with it. Whatever in the middle we do, we do. But we're opening in Tampa. And we're closing in Foxborough. And people know that that's where it's going. They travel to those places to be a part of the open and the close.

• 1:27:15Rick Rubin?

  Are you superstitious in other ways in your life?

• 1:27:18Speaker 01

  No, not when I think of it. I know someone that won't park their car unless the odometer ends in three. And they'll drive around until.

• 1:27:28Rick Rubin?

  Until that happens.

• 1:27:29Speaker 01

  I'm not that way. So it doesn't control my life, but. I don't know, because I was superstitious in in sports in my younger life.

• 1:27:38Rick Rubin?

  Did you like wear the same lucky socks?

• 1:27:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, or I would like. Yeah, I, this is really gross, but.

• 1:27:46Speaker 01

  We went on, I can't believe I'm telling you this story.

• 1:27:51Speaker 01

  We went on a little winning streak in high school football. And. I mean, this is really gross. Like, we didn't wash our, our anything, our undershirt, our underwear, anything for like a month. You know, with sweat and dirt and everything. But we were superstitious. Finally, we lost. I mean, okay, we get to wash our clothes.

• 1:28:13Speaker 01

  But it was to that point. So when that, when my life changed out there, and we started every year, like, as I'm sitting here talking to you right now, I know I'm doing this fear. We start in about seven weeks. That aside, next summer, we're already planning what we're gonna do.

• 1:28:55Speaker 07

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• 1:29:09Speaker 06

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• 1:29:14Speaker 06

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• 1:29:57Speaker 06

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