The East Tennessee superstar’s first book strikes a chord nationwide
Having spent the last ten days moving from East Tennessee State University to Boston, Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York City, Chicago, Nashville, Los Angeles, Key West and Tampa, Kenny Chesney was finally getting to share Heart Life Music with so many people who’ve lived their lives in his music, been part of the journey or were curious about the kid from beyond the city limits who made the nation’s major NFL stadiums his native environment. Moving at the speed of sound, the news that his first book had topped not one, but two New York Times Best Sellers lists caused a pause in the always-on-the-go songwriter/superstar’s momentum.
“When our editor sent a text asking to Zoom,” Chesney said of the news, “I figured he wanted to let us down easy. After all, The New York Times is such a big deal… Everybody wants to be part of, if not number one on, their best-seller lists. Rather than send an email, obviously, he was going to soften the news.”
Only the news wasn’t bad. Heart Life Music was No. 1 on both the New York Times’ Hardcover Nonfiction and the Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction Best Sellers Lists. At a time when so much in the world is polarizing, Chesney’s postcards from a life that saw a college kid go to Moscow, chase a girl to Toronto, spend time playing a dissolute Lower Broadway only to be signed by a label originally from Macon, Georgia through touring and learning from icons Alabama and George Jones, whirlwind of friendships with heroes including Jimmy Buffett, Eddie Van Halen, Bruce Springsteen, Sammy Hagar, the Wailers, as well as collaborating with Dave Matthews, Uncle Kracker, Willie Nelson and Grace Potter put people in the moment. It also offers wisdom shared, frustrations and failures, and triumphs that emerged over time.
“When we started, I didn’t truly believe I had a story to tell,” Chesney admits. “When you’re living it, especially at the speed we’ve been at for so many years, you don’t make a lot of connections. If writing a song is looking at a moment through a straw, then this is looking at a bunch of years through a fish-eye lens. It’s so wide open, and you have to make decisions about what you’re looking at.
“Holly (Gleason, his co-writer and longtime confidante) had a sense or belief going in. We would talk for hours, break for lunch, talk more – and she would go off and think. Then we’d start again the next day. I knew two things: I wanted anyone with a dream to see how, step-by-step, you can build it if you’ll be patient, and to make sure all the people and places that were so important to me were written down and remembered for all the magic they were.
“Having been out on the book tour, which is a very different thing, I realized this crazy magic carpet ride, as much as my music, is something that belongs to the fans. I said every night, ‘You have to really love somebody to listen to them talk.’ I can tell you: every night, I really felt loved.”
Whether a spontaneous verse and chorus of “She Comes From Boston” in Boston, where local radio legend Ginny Brophey brought him onstage, a double at CMA Theater, where he’d been inducted as the newest member of the Country Music Hall of Fame a week prior, best-selling author/podcaster Adriana Trigiani working the crowd up at the Bergen Theater in New Jersey, a packed East Tennessee State University kick-off event, or Lucy Buffett, artist/musician/sailor David Wegman and Key West Literary Seminar Director Arlo Haskell at the Tennessee Williams Theater, each event had its own rhythm, stories and sense of joy, hilarity and truth.
Already one of Barnes & Noble’s Best Biographies and Memories of 2025, Chesney now has another literary milestone to consider. “When Mauro DiPreta told me it wasn’t just one, but two No. 1’s, I almost thought he was joking. Except he’s too nice a man to do something like that. When it sunk it, and it took a minute, I was thrilled. Talk about the unthinkable: I had a New York Times No. 1 best seller that came out of a life lived with my grandparents, mom, friends growing up, everybody out on the road, all my sports heroes and friends, my years in the islands and a whole lot of music.”
Appearing at a sold-out Miami Book Fair event Sunday, November 16th, Chesney and Gleason will take the stage and tell all kinds of stories. But this time, they will do it as New York Times best sellers. Known for commanding the largest stages nationwide, Heart Life Music ventures to places long gone, makes unexpected music in Jamaica, the Kremlin, New England and Cabo San Lucas, drifts across the waters of the Caribbean, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Beyond meeting and collaborating with heroes, forging transcendent friendships in the islands and beyond, Chesney’s introspective look at the songs and sound that defined No Shoes Nation offers the intimacy of sharing a slow afternoon on the water.
