Kenny Revels in Songwriting Honor

Posted by amyclark on 08/18/2008
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10/17/2007 Stephen L. Betts   Kenny Chesney was recognized for two aspects of his career at this week's ASCAP Country Awards: artist and songwriter. As an artist, Kenny was repsonsible for three of the 2007 ASCAP Country Music Awards Most Performed Country Songs: “You Save Me,” “Summertime,” and “Beer in Mexico,” the latter of which also earned him an ASCAP Award as the song's sole writer. “People sometimes forget that I came to town as a songwriter,” admits Kenny. “To have my first No. 1 as a writer all by myself… it means the world to me. And I've been close before, but this is it! And it makes me feel like a writer in full." "I don't record songs just because I wrote'em," Kenny adds. "They have to compete with the very best writers this town has -- and looking around the room, seeing Craig Wiseman, who wrote 'The Good Stuff' and 'Summertime,' or Bill Anderson who gave me 'A Lot of Things Different' and 'Demons' on this new record, that's a pretty high bar to clear. So when I write something that measures up, then it's a single, then it goes to No. 1… well, you can see why to a kid who got their start writing for Acuff Rose, it means so much to me.” Kenny already has a jump-start on next year's ASCAP Awards, with a three-week chart-topper -- not on his own, but with “Take Me There,” the lead single from Rascal Flatts' Still Feels Good. He's also got a song on the eagerly anticipated Willie Nelson album, due out next year. “To have a few chords and a piece of paper and to turn it into a song is a very humbling thing,” Kenny says. “You have nothing, and then there is a moment, an emotion, a party, a turning point… When I wrote 'Beer In Mexico,' everybody had decided to go fishing, and I thought I'd just stay behind at my friend Sammy Hagar's pool with my guitar. It was an afternoon, chasing chords and scratching out lines, but it also became a song about celebrating life in the moment and knowing you don't have to figure out everything right now.”