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Kenny Chesney Reveals He was Starstruck Meeting Kevin Costner for First Time

Being one of the top-selling music artists of all time doesn’t mean you don’t get starstruck. It may be a rarer occurrence, sure, but according to Kenny Chesney – it still happens all the same. His culprit? The one and only Kevin Costner.

Speaking to Radio.com‘s Katie Neal recently, the country icon reveals the not-so-tall tale.

“It was a couple of years ago and we were playing this festival,” Chesney starts off. “Kevin Costner walked up on my bus and said hello. I couldn’t believe it,” he continues, cutting straight to the chase. “I had just watched JFK, his movie, on the bus like two nights prior, so it was really strange to have him walk up on the bus and stick out his hand. So I was starstruck for a moment, but he’s a really great guy and we talked for a long time.”

Okay, we’ll give you that one, Chesney. What a surreal way to meet the Hollywood legend. ‘Surreal’ seems apt for Chesney, too. His own remarkable success aside, the country icon says he still caught himself going “Wow, that’s Kevin Costner.”

JFK is one of my favorite movies, he continues. “To have him walk up on the bus and want to chat was pretty cool.”

Understatement of the century.

From Kevin Costner to the Green Monster and Making People Happy

For Kenny Chesney, however, the moment was almost too good. Having his decades of touring culminate with spontaneously meeting Costner – only to have the COVID-19 Pandemic shut down the live entertainment industry – has been rough.

“Last summer I grew a garden, which was fun, but I’ve written a few songs here and there,” he says of pandemic life. “I’ve come up with about 100 different ways to be bored out of my mind. I traveled when I could. When the pandemic happened, I took it very seriously and I still take it seriously, so I haven’t traveled that much. I’ve tried to stay creative, and I’ve tried to stay positive. I haven’t done much else other than that,” he continues. Sound familiar?

In particular, Chesney adds that his garden has become a favorite pastime. It’s nickname? “The Green Monster.”

“We grew everything, you name it. The Green Monster is left field at Fenway Park and I had this sign made and that’s what I named my garden. Tomatoes, all kinds of vegetables,” he adds.

If Chesney is anything other than a jack-of-all-trades, however, it’s modest. He speaks of meeting Kevin Costner, his massive garden, and his own pandemic life and career accomplishments with zero flair and down-home honesty. To this end, his latest country smash, “Happy Does,” speaks to the baseline of pandemic-laden humanity: get off your phones and enjoy the life in front of you while you can.

“I think that’s the message of ‘Happy Does’…it’s realizing there is a lot of life out there to live if you go do it,” Chesney clarifies. “When you live on a bus and you’re bored and you’re on your phone, it’s just the way we live our lives today, but I don’t know that it’s that good for us,” the icon reminisces of the tour life.

“That’s why when I heard ‘Happy Does,’ it made me…want to escape from my phone and watch the sky, watch a sunset and share that with someone…I thought someone else out there might need to hear it, too,” he concludes to SoundslikeNashville.com.

Well said, Mr. Chesney. Now get us sharing that sunset with Kevin Costner, and we’re talkin’.

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