Just in case the souvenir T-shirt isn’t enough, Kenny Chesney is offering fan club members a 456-page coffee table book illustrating the rise of his touring career. Titled Kenny Chesney: Living In Fast Forward, the book includes 571 pictures by Allister Ann, Jill Trunnell and Glen Rose, spanning the star’s first days on the road to his current status as a stadium headliner.
“This is a very special journey every year,” Chesney says, “and I am the only person who truly was able to capture it all, because I’m there when the stage is built, the buses pull in. Looking at all the pictures from Glen, Jill and Allister, I saw this amazing story — and I knew I wanted to do something that would still be here long after we were gone, and so I started to dream.”
Chesney and his colleagues spent two years working on the book, which was sourced, designed, printed and bound in Tennessee.
“I had no idea what I was getting into,” he says. “Book design, printing tests, revising layouts, but I had a great creative director helping me — and photos that really captured the soul of all that this has been. When it started coming together and I saw what it could be, I wanted something more than just a book — and the designer not only knew where to go, but how to make this project something we could literally create right here in Tennessee!”
Chesney will be signing all the copies in a limited run of 3,500 books. Fan club members in his No Shoes Nation get first dibs to buy the book, with details arriving by email.
“This wasn’t about how many could we sell, or how far could we push it,” he says. “It was giving those people on the journey something that honored what we’ve shared in a way very few things do. We have shared so much, and I wanted to make something that was as special as what’s between these covers.”