PHOENIX — Kenny Chesney hit a home run at Chase Field on Saturday night, packing in an estimated 45,000 country music fans into the house that baseball built.
The fans filled all but three sections of the seats, from the lower levels to the high-up bloody-nose views that must have made the thousands of people filling in the baseball stadium’s infield appear as small as ants. Those vacant sections, including one close to right field, had impossibly obstructed views so it made sense to close them.
Chase Field rarely if ever plays host to concerts. In fact, in the 20 years since the Diamondbacks’ ballpark was built, only three big concerts have been held on the field: boy band NSYNC in 2001, and Chesney in 2016 and again on June 23.
But if Saturday night is any guide, the folks at Chase Field might want to reconsider that idea.
Because here’s the thing: 45,000 people showed up. Attendance for most Diamondbacks games is maybe half that number.
Aside from the fact there were no baseball players on the field, no errant balls fouled off into the stands, it felt like Arizona baseball. Vendors hawking cotton candy, churros and 24-ounce cans of cold Budweiser Light weaved in and out of the stands just as they do on game day.
But every once in a while you would see one of those vendors stop and turn toward the stage and become one of those fans as Old Dominion frontman/songwriter Matthew Ramsey extolled the joys of going “Nowhere Fast” or stealing the “Hotel Key” as a reminder of a night of paradise.
Old Dominion, which has become a regular on Chesney’s bigger-than-life tours the past few years, lit up Chesney’s “No Shoes Nation.” The crowd hopped and bopped and fist-pumped to the band’s infectiously poppy tunes: “Snapback,” “Break Up With Him,” “No Such Thing As A Broken Heart” and “Make It Sweet,” a new song the band road-tested Saturday night. At one point, the infield looked like a pulsing sea as people bopped up and down.
Thomas Rhett, whose music sounds more like pop than country, took that energy and mulitplied it by 10. Even in the stands, where you could hardly see Rhett on the catwalk jutting out to the center infield, folks were on their feet dancing along to “T-Shirt,” “Give Me Some of That,” “Star of the Show,” “Vacation” and “Die A Happy Man.” When he slowed it down for his aching ballad “Marry Me,” a sea of cellphone flashlights flickered from end to end of the stadium, creating this surreal flashback to the days when lighters would dot a darkened concert hall during a monster ballad.
One of the hightlights of Rhett’s hourlong set was when he brought on his father, country singer-songwriter Rhett Akins, to sing a couple of his dad’s songs.
Chesney bounded on stage just before 9 p.m. to thunderous applause and defeaning screams that spilled out into downtown Phoenix and provided a soundtrack for the twentysomethings hanging out at the Lustre rooftop bar down the street.
Chesney sprinted the catwalk, slapping fans’ outstretched hands along the way as he sang “Beer in Mexico,” and he barely took a breath before he was hopping up and down like a man half his age — he turned 50 in March — to his rollicking “Summertime.” The sea of fans in the infield matched him jump for jump, fist-pump for fist-pump, through a torrent of high-energy, country rockers: “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems,” “I Go Back,” “Setting the World on Fire,” “American Kids,” “Pirate Flag,” “Living in Fast Forward.” At the end of “Young,” Chesney, whose shirt was drenched in sweat, bent over to catch his breath, but that was the only time he seemed winded.
His concert, which lasted nearly two hours, included bringing back Old Dominion’s Ramsey and Brad Tursi to sing “Save It For A Rainy Day,” a song they wrote for Chesney. And Rhett returned to duet on Chesney’s beach-bummed “When the Sun Goes Down.”
If there seemed to be a theme to Chesney’s tour it was peace and civility. He asked the audience to put aside their everyday lives and get lost in the music.
He punctuated that message with his inspired “Get Along” — “Get Along, while we can / Always give love the upper hand” — and you could see among the audience small measures of that kindness: a smile for the stranger next to you, an unsolicited thank you or I’m sorry; and fans wrapping their arms around the shoulders of their buddies singing along to the overriding message: “Drink a beer, sing along / Make a friend, can’t we all get along.”
Toward the end of the concert, as several hundred fans started making their way to the exits to avoid the end of the night crush, Chesney brought country music veteran David Lee Murphy on stage to sing their No. 1 hit “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright.” And as we made our way outside Chase Field, everything felt better than all right.
The Diamondbacks will reclaim their field June 29 when they take on the San Francisco Giants.
