Kenny Chesney Readies America For Summer 2020 ‘Chillaxification’

Alister Ann – Kenny Chesney
Kenny Chesney performs at Gillette Stadium.

Kenny Chesney announced a 2020 tour on Tuesday that will take the country star to a different American stadium nearly every Saturday next summer.

The “Chillaxification” tour begins April 18 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, and will hit other stadiums every Saturday – save July 4 – through Aug. 22, when the tour stops at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. The tour concludes the following week at Gillette Stadium, in Foxborough, Mass., on Friday, Aug. 28.

Other noteworthy stops include Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium (May 16), Nashville’s Nissan Stadium (June 27), Chicago’s Soldier Field (July 25) and the new SoFi Stadium, in Inglewood, Calif., which Taylor Swift will open with two shows on July 25 and 26, less than a week before Chesney plays there on Aug. 1.

Florida Georgia Line, Old Dominion and Michael Franti & Spearhead will support Chesney on the tour.

“I just wanted to say how excited I am about the upcoming tour,” Chesney said in a video shared to social media. “If you’re a little depressed or a little bit lost, write it all down and blow it all off. Come get some chillaxification.”

Chillaxifying as a Chesney show may be, the performer has spent most of this decade hard at work, securing six finishes in the Top 20 of Pollstar‘s Year End Top 100 Worldwide Tours chart. Last year, Chesney finished No. 11 with a gross of $114.4 million, just $2 million behind his personal best annual worldwide touring gross of $116.4 million, a mark he set in 2015.

Naturally, Chesney has hit many of these stadiums before. Notably, his seven highest Pollstar Boxoffice reports are sold-out, two-night Gillette Stadium stands staged on the last weekend of August every year from 2011 to 2018, excluding 2014. The 2017 run is the highest grossing, with a gross of $12.1 million, followed by 2018, with a gross of $11.6 million.

Other familiar territory includes MetLife Stadium and Soldier Field, where Chesney grossed $6.9 million and $5.8 million, respectively, in summer 2018.

“Every stadium show, I make it a point to go to the point furthest from the stage, and sit there,” Chesney told Pollstar last year. “Sometimes I walk, sometimes I take a golf cart, but I get up there and I listen to the wind, feel the distance from the seat that somebody wanted to be there bad enough, they bought it. I then know exactly how far it is to reach them – and that means emotionally, as much as musically. I want to connect, that’s the point; but I really want to connect with those fans, because they’re the true believers.”

In a recent interview for VenuesNow‘s Women Of Influence package, Kate McMahon, executive vice president of Messina Touring Group, which promotes Chesney’s tours, pointed to her two decades of collaboration with the star as her proudest professional accomplishment.

“Kenny Chesney calls her direct,” MTG chief Louis Messina told VenuesNow.

Tickets for the tour go on sale to the public Oct. 4 at 10 a.m. local time, after pre-sales. Find the list of dates below.