A love letter to St. John Kenny Chesney helps to rebuild the human spirit, as well as the island he loves so dearly, with ‘Songs for the Saints’
Kenny Chesney was at home in Nashville, but his mind was on the 17 people sheltered in his house in the Virgin Islands, where deadly Hurricane Irma was wreaking havoc. Chesney frantically checked his cellphone for news of their fate, and that of the place where he had sought refuge for 20 years.
With the electricity knocked out and cell towers destroyed, days passed with no updates from St. John. Chesney didn’t know if the people in his home were alive. He was terrified, riddled with anxiety, and he started writing songs of hope inspired by the Virgin Islands to cope. The fate of his friends still unknown, “Song for the Saints” was among the first he finished. Musicians gathered around Chesney in a Nashville recording studio to hear it, and as his finger hovered over the play button, his phone dinged with news. His friends were safe. His home: destroyed.
“It was a really, really scary time,” Chesney recalls. Seated in his manager’s office on Music Row, as the singer remembers how he felt during those uncertain days, his nerves become raw. He rapidly rocks in his chair, knots his fingers behind his head and then stares at his hands when he moves them to the table.
“All that anxiety and all that fear made me hyper-focused to a point where I became it,” he continued. “I would get up every day, go into the studio and make this record. I’ve never made a record that was so in the moment, and I think you can hear that angst and I think you can hear the anxiety.”
In stores July 27, “Songs for the Saints” is the album Chesney didn’t want to make. As he wrote songs in the moment for therapy, they manifested into a means to help hurricane victims. The 11-song collection is about the rebuilding process — not of the islands, but of the human spirit. A departure from Chesney’s guitar-driven arena country, the album was recorded in three weeks and rings of a singer-songwriter project driven by vul-
nerability and determination. It’s a love letter to the island of St. John, and all proceeds will be donated to Chesney’s Love for Love City Foundation that funds rescue and rebuilding projects post-Hurricane Irma.
“This is a resurrection record and a hopeful record,” said Cris Lacy, Warner Music Nashville’s senior vice president of A&R. “I put it in and was overcome with the heart and spirit of this record. It’s vintage Kenny Chesney. It’s so inspiring. He made choices for the theme of the record. He wasn’t constructing it, he was just feeling it.”
Jenn Manes, a blogger and tour guide on St. John, said that in the trauma and wake of Hurricane Irma, she had been too overwhelmed to cry. Sunburned, exhausted and scared, Manes gathered with hundreds of people on the rooftop of a pizza restaurant in St. John the day after Irma thrashed the island. The roof was the only place where people could get a cell signal. As Manes joined the crowd, holding her phone into the air to get more bars, it pinged with a message from her father:
“Kenny’s team is on the way,” it read. “You’re all going to be o.k.”
Chesney landed a plane on St. John as soon as soon as FEMA would allow it. He took a helicopter tour of the island and wept as he absorbed the extent of the devastation, more than he had ever seen in his life. He had spent two decades cultivating friendships, drinking beer and sharing life with the characters he had met there and in that moment, many were unaccounted for.
The singer flew the 17 people who sheltered in his St. John house to Nashville. Chesney remembers the shock, fear and uncertainty fixed in their eyes when they got off the plane. His guests camped out in his kitchen and home theater while he spent hours a day in the recording studio to complete “Songs for the Saints.” When he came home, they watched The Weather Channel together.
His team of people, including his boat captain, former and current island residents and men experienced with hurricane clean-up, arrived on St. John. Because his relief efforts were privately funded and not tied to the government, Chesney’s team could quickly react. They cleared roads, cut people out of their homes and communicated the victims’ immediate needs to the singer. At one point in the studio, Chesney stepped away from the mic, checked his phone and found 327 new text messages. There were no antibiotics on the island. People needed generators, coolers and water. There was no dog food.
“It was such a chaotic time, my God,” he said, sighing heavily. “Talking about it takes you to that place.”
Two days after Hurricane Irma, Manes and her boyfriend encountered the singer’s team and were delighted to discover it was largely composed of people they knew.
“It was pretty incredible that these average people stepped up, and what they’ve done here is nothing short of a miracle,” Manes said. “Most of them are still here today helping us.”
When Chesney realized the island’s ball field was being used to land relief helicopters and the children of St. John had no place to play, he provided musical instruments to give them a creative outlet. He promised that if they learned to play them, he would fly them to one of his concerts. In June, Chesney brought more than two dozen of the kids and their instructors to his stadium show in Philadelphia.
“They were really confused because they were used to seeing island Kenny, not stage Kenny,” the singer laughed. “They were like, ‘Who is this guy? Wait a minute.’ That was the rebuilding of the human spirit.”
He also partnered with animal rescue groups and has flown more than 1,400 dogs to the mainland where they have been rehomed — including a few adopted by the singer’s staff. Chesney is convinced the animals would have died.
“People can disappoint you, animals never will,” Chesney said. “I never thought I would have been in a position to do that. But it’s only because of music that I’m in that spot. It’s been an unbelievable experience.”
Chesney’s team isn’t alone in the relief efforts. Former NBA star Tim Duncan and a group organized by Michael Bloomberg have also stepped up to mend the infrastructure on the island. Chesney hopes “Songs for the Saints” will provide emotional healing, too. Home to his record-breaking 30th No. 1 hit “Get Along,” the album also includes duets with Ziggy Marley (“Love for Love City”), Jimmy Buffett (“Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season”) and Mindy Smith (“Better Boat”) — all singers whose music was part of Chesney’s daily life on St. John.
“When you think about all the people it could help and how it could help change their psyche and give healing, (‘Songs for the Saints’) is probably the most important record I’ve ever made,” Chesney said. “I hope they get as much healing out of listening to it as I did from making it.”