Having gone three-for-three with No. 1 singles from The Big Revival, Kenny Chesney knew he wanted his next single to do some very specific things. After the multi-week, GRAMMY-nominated “American Kids” – with its double hook and three different rhythms, the rocking invitation to live completely “Til It’s Gone” and his female positive ballad “Wild Child” – featuring Grace Potter, the focus was life-affirming reality embodied with summer’s freewheeling feeling.
“It’s a hard choice,” says the songwriter and 8-time Entertainer of the Year, “because there’s a lot songs on this record I think would sound great on the radio, that speak to the No Shoes Nation…. But ‘Save It For A Rainy Day’ we can all use. The idea is, why lose another beautiful day over something out of our control? Whatever it is, a girlfriend leaving, a crummy boss, something else, the reality is pretty simple: they don’t care that they’re ruining your day. And they’re not, you are! It’s your choice how you’re going to feel… a lot more than any of us realize.”
“Save It For A Rainy Day,” written by Andrew Dorff, Matt Ramsey and Brad Tursi, is a mid-tempo picking up where trouble recedes. Its chiming acoustic guitar and a loping beat is vintage Chesney, whose warm-voiced, intimate, yet resolved. After confessing, “I was stuck in a habit of wondering what happened/ Too busy taking all the blame” and a B-3 swirls up from the mix, he assesses the larger reality: “The sun’s too bright, the sky’s too blue/ beer’s too cold to be thinking about you/ Gonna take this heartbreak and tuck it away/ Save it for a rainy day…”
“We all go through stuff,” Chesney laughs. “And you know, you can get so caught up in what I did wrong, or trying to take the blame, and you start missing out on everything else… We all make mistakes, we all screw up, but we’re also – I think most of us – good people trying to do right, and have some fun while we’re here! Friends, family, the moments, that’s the stuff that’s so easy to miss, and this song makes it so easy to figure out.”
Chesney sold over a million tickets before ever playing the first note on his current The Big Revival 2015 Tour – and with 22 stadiums over the summer, it may well be the only Country Artist on Billboard’s Top 10 Touring Acts of the Last 25 Years biggest tour ever. Breaking his own attendance records in Pittsburgh and Green Bay, as well as gearing up for two night at Minneapolis’ Target Field July 18-19 and Foxboro’s Gillette Stadium August 28-29, the crowd connection has gone to a whole new level, prompting The Dallas Morning News to tag him, “Two parts Mick Jagger, one part Bruce Springsteen, one part Billy Graham.”
Thirteen years into headlining, the man The Wall Street Journal deemed “The King of the Road” got there by paying attention to the fans. Beyond the No Shoes Nation, the largest group of supporters who spend their summers crisscrossing America and following the tour, there are those people who find their lives in the songs that have become Chesney’s 27 No. 1s – and a whole lot that of others that got close.
With shows at Cleveland’s Q on July 9 and a massive play at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field — being documented for a special report on an upcoming Good Morning America – July 11, Chesney isn’t saving anything for a rainy day! He will be the first country act to headline Pasadena’s Rose Bowl July 25, as well as Denver’s Sports Authority Field at Mile High August 8, East Rutherford, NJ’s Met Life Stadium August 15 and Detroit’s Ford Field August 22.
