Kenny Chesney photo courtesy of Sony BMG Nashville.
Aug. 25, 2008 — When Kenny Chesney’s Lucky Old Sun album appears on the horizon on Oct. 14, it will have some rather familiar elements. For starters, during the first week of release, the only version available will be a Deluxe Fan Edition with four extra live tracks — quite similar in concept to the deluxe version of the Sugarland album that arrived last month. In addition, the title track will already have hit the market Sept. 2 as the centerpiece of a new album by Beach Boys founder Brian Wilson, who’s titling his project That Lucky Old Sun.
The timing is amazingly coincidental. "That Lucky Old Sun" was a huge pop hit in 1949 for numerous artists, including Frankie Laine, Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra. Now, nearly 60 years later, its lazy, carefree lyrics have been co-opted to support the themes that are present in both the Beach Boy icon’s summer-centric music and Kenny’s island obsession.
"Lucky Old Sun is a really personal record," Kenny asserts. "It comes from some pretty deep places, and it looks at my life, how I've evolved and the way the ocean can take you places beyond location. There are a bunch of fun songs on the record, for sure, but nothing quite as immediate as [the] live tracks, so in some ways, it's the very best of what we do in the studio and what we do in people's hometowns."
The live recordings include two songs from his summer show at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., and a pair from a club date in Key West.
The first song released from the album is "Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven," with a video that plays up the island motif, complete with an appearance by Bob Marley’s Wailers.
Meanwhile, the title track was a turning point for Kenny, who enlisted Willie Nelson to join him in the recording, ultimately leading to Willie employing Kenny as the producer for his album Moment Of Forever. Willie was quite familiar with the song: He’d already recorded it for two of his own albums: the 1976 release The Sound In Your Mind and his 1979 duet project with Leon Russell, One For The Road.
And in a six-degrees-of-separation way, Willie provides a full-circle connection between Kenny and Brian Wilson: In 1995, Willie collaborated with the Beach Boys on a re-recording of one of their sun-soaked titles, "The Warmth Of The Sun."
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