Chesney Says “Goodbye” In Indianapolis
(Thanks to a CMIL reader, Lauren, for capturing the tearful goodbye in this photo)
Kenny Chesney’s highly successful “Sun City Carnival Tour” wrapped up this weekend at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, IN. Close to 50,000 Chesney fans packed in to the stadium for the final show. The super-star lineup included the Zac Brown Band, Miranda Lambert, Montgomery Gentry, Sugarland, and the “King Of Summer” himself, Kenny Chesney.
We’ve seen the show a few times before this summer. Like always, the show was great, but because this was the final stop of the tour (and because Chesney is taking 2010 off) we were treated to a few surprises.
Some of the highlights of the evening…
-Chesney and his crew pranked Miranda by bringing her a dis-assembled “Bad Boy Buggy” on stage
-Montgomery Gentry ROCKED the house…Best performance of “One In Every Crowd” I’ve ever seen. Everyone was on their feet singing along.
-Sugarland added a fun cover of “Walking On Sunshine” to their set
-A very cheerful Jennifer Nettles joined Kenny on stage while he sang “When The Sun Goes Down”
-Miranda Lambert came back out to help Chesney sing “She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy”
-Zac Brown joined Chesney for a few songs including Alabama’s “Dixieland Delight,” Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker” and Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.”
It’s clear that fans will miss Chesney next year. Many fans brought farewell gifts for Kenny. The gifts included personalized license plates, scrapbooks, and banners. Toward the end of the show, Chesney grabbed a banner that read, “Thanks Kenny for giving us a great life” from the audience and hung it on stage.
After a full set and the fun covers, Chesney slowed it down and closed the show with a VERY emotional performance of “Better As A Memory.” Watching him sing the song with tears rolling down his face was tough. You can tell that it was a bittersweet moment for him and his crew. Fans cheered him on as he struggled to get through the songs because his emotions were overcoming him.
After the song Chesney invited the crew out on stage to take a final bow.
Chesney insists that he’s not disappearing next year…”And I hope people understand, I’ve never been an all or nothing kind of guy,” he stated. “This doesn’t mean there will be no shows or no music. It means I’m not going to be staging a major tour – I’m not going to take two weeks off and be meeting with people to build a stage, to start thinking about how we can do the lights different and what the video’s gonna be.” (Via GAC)
Although “Summertime” won’t be the same without him, it seems that the fans completely support Chesney’s decision to take time off.
“It’s hard to believe we’re putting this thing up on blocks,” Kenny said after the sold-out show in Indy. “The response from the fans, out in the crowd and the Internet, it makes [me] feel like people understand, and that they know we’re not gone for good, it’s just a breather.”
As always, we’d like to thank Kenny Chesney and his crew for giving us another summer to remember.
