Kenny Chesney released his 17th studio album, Songs for the Saints, on July 27.
The 11-song offering, which has already spawned No. 1 lead single, “Get Along,” features a collaboration with Jimmy Buffett on “Trying to Reason With Hurricane Season.”
“Each one of [the album’s guests] has a tie to my life in the islands, but also reflect some piece of what we’re trying to do,” says Kenny. “Jimmy, more than the lost shaker of salt, understands the poetry of the islands beyond what tourists see, the life in a way that made a song written decades ago so current.”
The catalyst for the new album, which also features collaborations with Ziggy Marley and Mindy Smith, was Hurricane Irma. The storm devastated a number of Caribbean islands in September 2017, including Kenny’s home on St. John.
“I was at a turning point in my life on so many levels, and then Hurricane Irma hit the Virgin Islands,” says Kenny. “But this album isn’t about St. John, so much as it’s about what happened to St. John and all those islands you didn’t see on the news. To just see the devastation and what that does to people is one thing, but then there’s this courage and resilience people find . . . This is not a literal record, but it is an album about the refuges we all have, how temporary life is and the way we navigate to better places, dig in and face the destruction. And sometimes, we learn to own our wild hearts in the process.”
Listen to Kenny and Jimmy’s new soothing new song.
