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After a year in which he earned the Academy of Country Music’s Top Male Vocalist award and brought his total career record sales to 12 million, Chesney is right where he wants to be—rocking in a wrought iron chair on his grandmother’s front porch in Luttrell, Tenn. (pop. 915).
“I can be gone for two years and come back and sit on this porch and it’s like I never left,” says Chesney, 35. “I sat here with my grandfather before he died, when he was going through chemo for his lung cancer. This porch and this house are a part of me. My mom and I lived here when my stepfather was in Vietnam. This house is very much a part of me.
“The comforts of home are something that you never grow out of. I’ve traveled all over the world playing music, but this is where, without a doubt, I am the most comfortable.”
Chesney, the son of a high school coach and a hairstylist, spent 18 years in this eastern Tennessee mountain town, at times living only 500 yards away from the former home of the late country guitarist Chet Atkins. As a child, he didn’t own a baseball, so he would pick up rocks from the driveway and hit them with a broom handle, when he wasn’t inside watching his grandparents’ black-and-white television. While he never climbed up a water tower with paint in hand, his friends did. He had nothing but an abundance of time, which ironically is the one thing he lacks now.
“I love being from a place where everybody knows everybody and the main things in your life are family and friends and church and sports,” he says. “Those four things basically consumed my whole life and I never ever thought about leaving here when I was growing up. Then I put a guitar in my lap one day and started playing music and haven’t really quit yet.
“You learn right from wrong from growing up in a small town. You learn to treat people with respect and to treat people the way you want to be treated. I wouldn’t be making the music that I make if I had grown up anywhere else,” he says.
From football to fame
As a Gibb High School student, Chesney gave little thought to music because he was obsessed with playing football. “That’s where I learned that it wasn’t OK just to be good,” he says of his football experiences. “That’s where I learned to go the extra mile, to work really hard to achieve something.”
After graduation, he attended East Tennessee State University and earned extra money by playing a Johnson City (pop. 55,469) bar called Chucky’s five nights a week for tips. After graduation, he moved to Nashville, Tenn., and began playing at a rough honky-tonk called the Turf for $5 an hour plus tips. He put together a simple demo tape that led to a music publishing deal, and eventually a record deal.
The first three years after releasing his debut album in 1993, Chesney toured incessantly with a crew that he hardly knew. As soon as he could afford it, he hired his former Little League teammates—Tim Holt, Daryl Hobby and David Farmer—to handle his tour management and merchandise. “I just needed a little part of me out there and I needed a part of home out there,” he says. “It’s turned out to be one of the best moves I’ve ever made. I could trust these guys with my life.”
These days, Chesney doesn’t get home too often because of his demanding recording and touring schedule. Although he may now fly in on a private jet, his family doesn’t treat him any differently. A young cousin calls him “Ninny,” and Chesney’s photo is just one of many grandchildren’s on the mantle in the home of his grandmother, Lucy Grigsby. In fact, she made it perfectly clear during this visit that any homecoming festivities would have to wait until she got home from church.
Like many Sundays, Chesney’s mother, Karen, and her twin sister, Sharon, join the numerous aunts, uncles and cousins who share funny stories in the living room as they eat pot roast, potatoes, green beans, corn, deviled eggs, red velvet cake and banana pudding. Next week, Chesney will indulge himself in a similar smorgasbord when he loads up his car with gifts to make the four-hour trek from Nashville to Luttrell to spend Christmas Eve with his family.
“I’m on a diet basically all year, but when it’s Christmas time, I come up here and eat chocolate pie and peanut butter candy,” he says. “Eating is a big tradition in our family.” Grigsby’s four children and their families arrive around 6 p.m. Christmas Eve to begin dining and opening presents. “My grandfather died in 1990, so the first couple of Christmases after that were kind of tough, but that’s basically the only tradition that we have.”
One of his favorite Christmas presents ever was the Elvis Presley Double Live album that he received when he was 6. “I listened to that album over and over again,” he says. “I used to sit with a hairbrush in front of a mirror and pretend that I was Elvis. Because it was a live album, I pretended the applause was for me.”
All I want for Christmas
Despite his stardom, Chesney says he’s just as easy to please now. “My mom hates when she has to buy me something for Christmas because she thinks I have everything and she can’t buy anything for me, which is wrong. She said, ‘What do you want for Christmas?’ and she thought I was kidding when I said, ‘I want a couple of canned green beans from my grandmother.’ I want to be able to take it on the road and eat it.”
This Christmas, Grigsby and her family will be unwrapping presents to the sounds of her grandson’s first Christmas CD, All I Want For Christmas Is a Real Good Tan, which pays homage to his love of the Caribbean islands. Thank God for Kids has a calypso feel, Jingle Bells reveals a reggae influence and I’ll Be Home For Christmas has such an island vibe that you can almost hear the waves crashing in the distance.
The album is a bit of a family affair because Chesney’s mother and her twin sister join him on Silent Night. “The Grigsby Twins is what they were known as back when they were kids, singing around East Tennessee. My grandfather would haul them all over to sing for folks, wherever he could put them up. And now it’s my turn to drag them all over and make them sing.”
Country icon Willie Nelson joins him on Pretty Paper, while Alabama frontman Randy Owen chimes in on Christmas in Dixie. “I can’t believe it took me this long to make a Christmas record because I’m one of those guys who just loves Christmas,” he says.
All year long, Chesney looks forward to celebrating Christmas with his grandmother. “If I have kids one day, I really want them to grow up in this kind of environment and I want them to know the importance of family and Christmas, that it’s not about getting a Playstation,” he says. “I hope I have kids who can taste my grandmother’s chocolate pie one day. It’s a great tradition and I hope to pass that down too.
“I hope that I move back to a small town because I would like my kids to grow up in a small town. I want my kids to grow up like me and my friends grew up. I think that you appreciate things a lot more and it teaches you how to work hard and want something.”
Grandma Grigsby's Chocolate Pie
Lucy Grigsby, Kenny Chesney’s grandmother, shares her recipe for chocolate pie with American Profile readers:
Pie crust:
Mix flour, Crisco and water into a stiff ball of dough. Roll dough on a floured pastry sheet until it is paper thin. Place crust in a pie pan and bake for 10 minutes in a 400-degree oven. Sprinkle salt on crust before baking.
Pie filling:
In a sauce pan, combine egg yolks, sugar, cocoa, cornstarch and cream and stir well. Cook over low heat until it thickens. Add vanilla and butter. Stir until butter is melted and mixed well. Pour into baked pie crust.
Meringue:
Beat egg whites until stiff. Gradually add sugar and vanilla and beat until well blended. Pour on top of pie and brown under broiler in the oven. Watch carefully! It will burn easily.
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