By DAN AQUILANTE
Last updated: 11:18 am
October 14, 2008
Posted: 3:15 am
October 14, 2008
BETWEEN foot ache and heartbreak, Kenny Chesney knows pain.
Country music's biggest star is still in recovery from his marital split from actress Renée Zellweger, but with today's CD release of "Lucky Old Sun," this twanger, best known for carousing beer ballads, has written a decidedly beautiful album showing that - after three years - he's finally getting a grip on losing love.
"Writing this album has been really therapeutic," the singer admits to The Post. Still, over the phone from his Nashville home, he wouldn't discuss why his marriage ended. In the annulment papers, Zellweger's lawyers cited him with fraud.
Fraud? What does that mean? Chesney has an affable drawl, and he laughs easily. The question makes him chuckle. "I don't really know what that means - it's legal language."
Then he stops, thinks before saying anything else and adds, "I just don't know how to be respectful to her and answer that."
For answers, he suggests you listen to the music.
"All I can say is that there are songs on this record that reflect how real all that was to me. I opened my heart and poured my soul into these songs and this record."
With a sincerity and honesty you don't expect from a guy whose past songs are about drinking beer and partying on the beaches of Mexico, he adds: "Listen to those songs and you know how real this was to me. This was my life, and not a spectator sport for people who read gossip magazines."
While Chesney's heart is still mending, he's happy to report he's no longer limping. "The foot's great,"
he says.
The foot incident - which happened at the opening show of this summer's stadium tour -
all started with Chesney jinxing himself.
"I did an interview with a local TV station in Columbia [SC] and I was asked if I
ever got nervous about a show. I told 'em, 'No, anything that can happen to me onstage has already happened.' "
That night, his boot got caught between a hydraulic lift and the stage surface for more than 30 seconds, crushing his foot from the ankle down, with most of the damage centering in his toes.
"That was the most miserable I've ever been onstage," Chesney laughs.
"It was a very humbling. I was in agony, on my back, in front of a stadium of fans, and I had to make a decision to either go home or play hurt."
Chesney says he "hopped around on one foot all night," but he completed that show and didn't miss any of the other gigs on the tour.
"When I play, I give it everything because there's a kid out there who's never been to a concert before. If I do my job right, he's going to remember my show for the rest of his life, and maybe he'll want to make music part of the rest of his life because of it. That won't happen if I phone in a show - or skip it altogether.
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