Kenny Chesney’s great idea was to realize that Jimmy Buffett is more than just a singer. Buffett is a genre, and until Chesney came along nobody except a few Buffett impersonators had laid claim to the Margaritaville man’s brand of vacation music.
Chesney wed modern, Nashville country to Buffett’s faraway state of mind. The difference is that when Chesney sings about time well-wasted in the tropics, there’s no irony in paradise. Buffett’s songs often have an undertow — a sense of life slipping away. Chesney, on the other hand, believes so completely in long breaks and golden getaways he could be selling condo shares in the Caribbean.
His sold-out performance on Sunday night at Sound Advice Amphitheatre, near West Palm Beach, celebrated tourism as a way of life. If he wasn’t advocating lazy seasons (Summertime) or walks on the beach (No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems), he was glorying in memories of same (I Go Back).
A few songs, notably Anything But Mine (“And in the morning I’m leaving/making my way back to Cleveland”), offered a more serious turn of subject toward breakups and do-overs. But the concept of time off is what really makes him go. Chesney understands that for many of his fans, life is work, and that an evening with him may be the only break they get all year.
Chesney and his band aren’t in the wish-fulfillment business, but on Sunday they proved to be sharper and slicker than ever at putting those wishes to music. Chesney’s energy level is unflagging, and his body of work has grown big enough to fill a live set lasting nearly two hours.
He’s also become a better singer, with a fuller baritone. And when the song calls for it, he can put across more than just enthusiasm. He sang David Allan Coe’s You Never Even Called Me by My Name with all the morose wit and wounded pride the song demands.
Buffett isn’t Chesney’s only touchstone. The drinkin’-from-a-Dixie-cup line in Just Don’t Happen Twice was straight out of Travis Tritt’s Country Club. On Live Those Songs, his band channeled The Who’s Can’t Explain while Chesney made couplets out of classics (“I’d be wastin’ away/on the dock of the bay”).
Sometimes, Chesney is doing more than just “living” other people’s songs. He has arguably constructed a career out of references. Toby Keith ought to claim royalties for the snickering refrain of Chensey’s Key Lime Pie, which pinches Keith’s I Love This Bar — a song that was, interestingly, the subject of a plagiarism claim by a musician from Key West. But hey, you can’t copyright a state of mind.
Sean Piccoli can be reached at or 954-356-4832.
