Kenny Chesney rules the road

Country star can still pack the big venues Peter Cooper • Gannett News Service • July 24, 2008 The most prominent member of an endangered species, Kenny Chesney is nonetheless feeling OK. American stadium tour headliners are all but extinct these days, yet Chesney’s “Poets & Pirates” show is playing coast to coast this summer. Chesney has sold more concert tickets in the new millennium than any act in any genre. “Across America, he’s the guy,” said Ray Waddell, Billboard magazine’s editor of touring. “In the last five or six years, nobody has put up the kind of numbers he has. These kinds of tours are hugely expensive to mount, relative to how much you can charge for tickets. Production has to be big, and you have to draw a whole lot of people. And then it doesn’t grow unless you’re delivering, and unless you get to a stature... [read full story]