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HEMISPHERESMAGAZINE.COM • AUGUST 2012 79
HEMISPHERES: Welcome to the
Fishbowl talks about life in the
limelight, but there’s also a lot about
the thoughts that fill your head when
you aren’t working.
CHESNEY: This is a very emotional
record. With my previous record,
Hemingway’s Whiskey, I started
working on being very honest with
my feelings. The more I live, the more
I feel comfortable pu ing my true
feelings out there. No ma er who you
are or what you do, everybody suffers
for the truth. I think this record
reflects that.
HEMISPHERES: On the title song,
you’re very direct about what it’s like
to have eyes on you all the time, but it’s
not exactly a full-on screed like, say,
“Hotel California.”
CHESNEY: Yeah. I had to treat [the
song] “Welcome to the Fishbowl”
with delicate hands because it would
have been really easy to come off
as a victim. I tried to capture how
the world that we live in is ge ing
smaller by the minute, not just for
me, but for everybody. I grew up in
a small town and everybody knew
everybody’s business. Now everybody
knows everybody’s business, on a
much larger scale.
HEMISPHERES: You say as much on “I’m
a Small Town.” Did you put those two
songs next to each other on purpose?
CHESNEY: They’re very different, but I
made a conscious choice to sequence
them. I grew up where everybody
knewwhat you were up to at school,
at church, and like I said, it’s the same
way now, but on global scale. I try to
have a light touch about it, because
you don’t have to be in the public eye
like I am to be affected by it or to ben-
efit from it. Trust me, there are times
that I feel like I’m a giraffe in the zoo,
with people just staring through the
fence. But when my career started
to take off and life first started to
change, I was complaining about the
negative part to a good friend and
he told me, “Look, nobody drug you
to Nashville, nobody made you write
these songs, nobody put that dream
in your head.” And he’s right.
HEMISPHERES: You’re a big enough
deal to fill not just arenas, but stadiums
too. What’s it like to walk out there,
stare at all those people and know you
have to deliver?
CHESNEY: You’ve got a group of people
in a football stadiumwho didn’t just
hear your song on the radio—they
lived with it. It’s become a part of their
lives. They spent a whole day and a lot
of money to go to an event like that.
You really want to come through. It’s a
kind of ceremony, and when those two
energies meet, whenme and the band
get up there and do what we do and
then hear the roar coming back, it’s
like an avalanche. It is unbelievable.
HEMISPHERES: That’s a pretty hard
experience to replicate night after night.
“You’ve got a group of people in a
football stadiumwho didn’t just hear
your song on the radio—they lived
with it. It’s become a part of their lives.
You really want to come through.”
CONTINUED ON PAGE 144»
KENNY CHESNEY,
BY THE NUMBERS
17
Albums released
26.6MILLION
Albums
sold in the U.S.*
21.1MILLION
Digital tracks sold*
4.2MILLION
Copies sold of his first
greatest-hits collection
(his bestselling release
to date)
103,000
Copies sold of his first
album, 1994’s In My
Wildest Dreams
(his weakest seller)
1
Serious injuries suffered
during a live performance
(see page 144)
*Not including his latest release
Data courtesy of Nielsen SoundScan
DANNY CLINCH (CONCERT); MARK J. TERRILL/AP (MCGRAW + CHESNEY); MICHAEL LOCCISANO/GETTY IMAGES (CMAS)