Blue Chair Bay/Columbia Nashville
If you’re not familiar with a shotski — basically a ski with several shot glasses attached to it — all you need do to get a look at one is check out the cover of Kenny Chesney‘s Live in No Shoes Nation album.
The cover photo was taken at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, the same venue Kenny played Saturday night. A group of fans handed Kenny the No Shoes Nation shotski — emblazoned with the years they’d gone to Kenny’s shows — just before the picture was taken.
The story only becomes more incredible from there.
“I told those fans that I was gonna take that shotski to my island bar in my island home in the Virgin Islands. And I did,” Kenny explains. “It is one of three artifacts that I had in my bar that made it through Hurricane Irma.”
For Kenny, that only reinforces what the group of fans known as No Shoes Nation mean to him.
“I still have it,” he goes on. “It puts chills on me right now to think how I got that, why they gave it to me, I took it down there, and it made it through the storm. It’s just an example of the strength of the connection of me and my audience. And it’s a reflection of all that.”
Kenny will donate all the proceeds from his Songs for the Saints album, which comes out July 23, to rebuilding the Virgin Islands. Friday, he released the track “Better Boat,” which features Americana artist Mindy Smith, just as the record’s lead single, “Get Along,” ascends to the top of the chart.
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