Casino del Sol is celebrating its 21st anniversary this weekend by hosting one of the biggest names in country music in one of the biggest concerts in Tucson this year.
But if you thought you could wait until the last minute to get a ticket to see Kenny Chesney Thursday night, you will be very disappointed when you approach the AVA at Casino del Sol box office. The windows will be plastered with “Sold Out” signs.
Tickets for Chesney, who hasn’t played a Tucson show in about a dozen years, were all gone within hours of going on sale June 6. You can thank KIIM 99.5 FM; the country radio station hosted a listener pre-sale the day before tickets went on sale to the public.
Chesney is bringing his “Big Revival Tour” to town, but we are only getting the small-court version. The tour, which is hitting larger arenas and amphitheaters all over the country this summer, includes a rotating cast of big-name tag-along acts: Jason Aldean, Chase Rice, Eric Church, Jake Owen, Old Dominion, Brantley Gilbert and Cole Swindell among them.
We just get Chesney in all his East Tennessee country glory, which is just fine by us — two hours alone with an artist who has come to define pop country music in the new millennium.
Chesney’s new album “Big Revival” — his 15th studio album, which he released last September — brings him full circle, from his “Keg in the Closet” party-boy days and his coming-of-age “How Forever Feels.” It’s a bold statement that touches on faith in the title song (“If your faith ain’t strong enough child / You might wind up dead / Praise the Lord and pass me a copperhead”) and living life to its fullest on “’Til It’s Gone” (“One life, one chance / One ticket to the big dance / You and me still holding on / Right down to the last song”). He delves into the soul of “American Kids” — “Growin’ up in little pink houses / Makin’ out on living room couches / Blowin’ that smoke on a Saturday night / A little messed up, but we’re all alright” — praises the independent, freewheeling streak of women in his No. 1 single “Wild Child,” a duet with indie folk rocker Grace Potter. (She’s set to do a show at the Rialto Theatre Aug. 9.)
Of course a Kenny Chesney show wouldn’t be a Kenny Chesney show without a little reggae/island feel — “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problem,” “How Forever Feels,” “When the Sun Goes Down” — and some grab-your-best-gal/guy ballads — “Come Over,” “Don’t Blink,” “You and Tequila,” “You Had Me From Hello,” “There Goes My Life.”
“Big Revival Tour” returns Chesney to the road after a year of lying low to record the album. After playing before an estimated 1.25 million people in 2013, he decided to dial back his life and focus on making an album that did more than score No. 1 hits.
“You get to a point when you’ve made a lot of albums and you need to challenge yourself, to really make the record the focus, to ask yourself what you want to say ... and not just cut songs because they fit what people expect,” the 47-year-old multiple Entertainer of the Year award-winner told the Hollywood Reporter in August 2013. “It’s a lot harder to find those songs than you’d think, and writing takes time — to think, to live, to be.”
Apparently his fans really missed him. His tour has posted early sell-outs at every stop and the reviews are overwhelmingly positive. At an early tour stop in Glendale in late April, the Arizona Republic noted the concert’s frequent references to drinking, something the crowd took literally when the tour pulled into Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on June 20. Police made 22 alcohol-related arrests and ejected dozens of others, according to media accounts. The Green Bay Press Gazette reported that there were so many drunk country music fans that Green Bay police didn’t bother trying to keep count.
In May, 10 people were arrested at the tour’s Heinz Field show in Pittsburgh, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. That was far less than the 73 arrests during Chesney’s 2013 concert, the newspaper reported.
