2022

One of my favourite acts on the UK scene is Gasoline and Matches. They are fantastic in a live setting both backed by a band or acoustically in a writers round scenario. With great songs that have the seal of approval from some of country music’s finest (Chris Young downloaded their first single ‘Fools Gold’ when they met in Nashville) Gasoline and Matches are a duo that’s going far, both in the British scene and beyond!  First song you learnt all the words to?   Steve: For me, it was Michael Jackson ‘Thriller’. I think that was the first LP record I ever had and I love that song. I used to dance to it as a kid.  Sally: If I’m going back that far, it would have been something like Spice Girls. I think my first favourite pop band was S Club 7. So I reckon it would have been ‘Bring It All Back’ or something like that. I could still sing all the words now to you.   A song that makes you think of touring?  Steve: Charles Kelly – ‘The Driver’  Sally: For me a good driving song would always be something by Brothers Osborne. I listen to their first album, ‘Pawn Shop’ on repeat in my car.   READ THE FULL INTERVIEW IN THE LATEST ISSUE OF MAVERICK AVAILABLE HERE! Media Contact: Zoe Hodges, Editor Email: editor@maverick-country.com

When did you first know that you wanted to be a musician?  I picked up a guitar four years ago. At all of my family functions, everybody brings an instrument, because everybody plays, whether it be a banjo, a bass, guitar, anything. My Granddad asked me what I wanted for Christmas and because I was getting a little older in age, I started realising that Christmas wasn’t necessarily about presents. I told him that I just wanted to learn how to play guitar. That way, whenever we have these family functions, I’m not sitting in a corner of the room twiddling my thumbs, I could be involved. So he taught me three chords on the guitar, and I went online to learn the rest of the chords by myself. I stuck with it and within about six months of picking up a guitar, I had my first paying gig.   When you were little, what sort of music did your family make you listen to on long car journeys, and what are you choosing to listen to now?   I grew up around old school country, like Keith Whitley, Merle Haggard, Conway Twitty, stuff like that, just old, true to the core, country music. Now I have to say, as a songwriter, and an artist I’ve expanded what I listen to, I still listen to Keith Whitley and Merle Haggard, but I also listen to the Cadillac Three. I’m a huge fan of Chris Janson, because he has a huge part in all this and I still kind of lean more towards the new old school country, if that makes sense.  I’m glad that you mentioned Chris Janson there, can you tell me a little bit about how you guys first started working together?   I had to get strings for my guitar and nowhere in my little hometown sold them. So I had to make a 45-minute drive up towards Nashville to get them and I asked this girl if she wanted to go with me and I’d make a date out of it. I told her I’d take her out to eat and she agreed to it. So we go, I get the guitar strings and I come back out and I asked her what she wanted to eat. She said she wanted sushi, I’m not a fan of it, but I was a gentleman and I took her to eat sushi. When we got there, Chris Janson held the door for us. I had been to seven concerts my whole life and Chris Janson was five of the seven. So I’m freaking out, I’m kind of starstruck at that point. They seat us and I ended up asking the girl what I needed to order, she told me to try spicy tuna roll. So I ordered it, took one bite and spat it out in the napkin! I had all this time to think about how I was going to approach Chris. I had it in my mind that whenever I saw him stand up, that would be my cue to stand up and go and pay too. I saw him stand up, and I grabbed the ticket. We get walking across the restaurant floor and he sits right back down in this booth. I’m standing there awkward so I decided to go up to his table, and I introduced myself and I tell him what a fan I am, I tell him that I’m a songwriter and that it would mean the world to me, if he could listen to some of my music. Before he could even say anything, his wife, Kelly spoke up and she said, thank you for coming up, I’m his manager, I’m also a music publisher. Is that a receipt you’re holding in your hand? I can write my email down on the back of it and you can send me some songs, and I promise we will listen to them. I’m like, yes, ma’am, that would be great. Chris immediately looked up at me and said, did you just say, Yes, ma’am. I said, Yes, sir. He said, I like that a lot, pull up a chair and talk to me. Two weeks later, I was at work. I was the guy that cut the grass in the medians of the road and I hated my job. Chris was calling me at like 8.30 in the morning, and I was bush hogging grass. He said, I have this song idea called Real Bass Pro and I want to write it with you because I know you’re a big outdoorsman, can you get off work and come to Nashville? I called my boss immediately and he said, No, there’s too much work to do. So I knew that my lunch break was at 11 o’clock. So I asked Chris, if he would be okay with writing over FaceTime on my lunch break and he said yes. So, I had a couple of hours to think about this song idea. I wrote a chorus to the song, I had one hand on the steering wheel of a tractor, mowing and I had one hand on my phone, trying to write this song. 11 o’clock came, I parked underneath a big tree, and I propped the phone up on the steering wheel of the tractor and we finished writing Real Bass Pro. That was my first big cut.  Can you tell me the story behind ‘How It Oughta Be’?  When we sat down to write that song, I’d just quit my city job and I was broke. I had to go and get gas in my truck and gas was at its peak price. All the craziness was going on in the world and I just got to thinking to myself, it shouldn’t be like this, we should learn to love each other and not talk trash about each other, and I had the idea, it shouldn’t be like this so how should it be?

Kenny Chesney couldn’t believe it had been four years since he and his band stood on America’s NFL stadium stages – and rocked No Shoes Nation for everything they were worth. After three postponements, a name and line-up change and in many cases over 1,000 days, the man the Wall Street Journal called “the King of the Road” and his Here And Now 2022 Tour is Billboard’s No. 1 Country Tour. Like 2018’s last true full-on tour – the 19-stadium, 42-date Trip Around The Sun – Here And Now played to 1.3 million fans, making him to the top country touring act in the nation. “You don’t think about this stuff,” Chesney says, “just the way it feels to be back out there with the fans! As good as No Shoes Nation is, and they’re the best, this year they took that heart and passion and brought it up six levels. Suddenly, me and my team were looking for ways to open up seats, move the stage back, create cleaner sight lines, so we could get every single person who wanted to be there into the venues. “It’s a crazy thing to play a show when you’re backed up to the edge of the back end of the end zone,” marvels the eight-time Entertainer of the Year. “But you have this blast of energy coming from the people, hitting that, mixing with the band and that massive sound system and creating a whole other thing that we’re trying to throw back out to them. It was, in a word, insane!” Chesney’s longtime manager Clint Higham told Billboard for “The Year In Touring Issue” that posted Dec. 6, “The people of No Shoes Nation are such intense fans, the being together after four years created its own energy and momentum. We found ourselves adding seats in so many markets trying to meet the demand because whether it was the people who’d held their tickets for over 1,000 days in many cases or the people buying those new tickets who felt the buzz and wanted to be there, it was a whole new level of demand based on what Kenny gives people.” With his just announced I Go Back 2023 Tour – designed to bring the euphoria of Chesney’s live shows to those markets he started out in – almost sold out, the power of the musician from East Tennessee’s relationship with No Shoes Nation may be stronger than ever. By keeping the focus on those who find their life in his songs, the songwriter/superstar maintains one of the most passionate relationships in Country music.  “When we hit pause on our 2020 tour, I never thought we would go much past the fall, let alone into 2021,” muses the only country act in Billboard’s Top 10 Touring Acts of the Last 25 Years for the past 14 years. “The idea it would be 2022? That it would be four years was unthinkable. Yet, here we are, and it feels better than it ever has. So, for everyone who came out and helped make this Country’s No. 1 tour, this is all about you and how much we love you and what you bring us every time we set up and play where you are.” For Chesney, who’s become the sound of coming of age in the heartland for the 21st Century, moments like this have come to define a career that created a new dynamic for modern Country music. With the full-tilt energy of his live shows and songs that reflected a new aesthetic for country fans across the nation, Chesney has set a standard that he continues to maintain.