Caribbean Cowboy

Though his island dream house is still in the dreaming stage, as often as he can Chesney occupies a hillside four-bedroom Mediterranean-style villa with open walls and a “killer view” of the Virgin Islands. The most important piece of furniture is the subject of a song he says is his most personal, “Old Blue Chair.” In case you missed it on his last album (When the Sun Goes Down, the CMA Album of the Year), the chair shows up in the subtitle and in the first track of Be As You Are (Songs From an Old Blue Chair), and again at the end, with a reprise version recorded seaside last summer in the BVIs complete with the sounds of sloshing surf. He wrote the song after a night of partying with houseguest Peyton Manning, star quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts.

I’ve read a lot of books, wrote a few songs

Looked at my life, where it’s goin’, where it’s gone

I’ve seen the world through a bus windshield, but nothin’ compares

To the way that I see it

When I sit in that old blue chair

“One New Year’s Eve when I was in my soul-searching period,” recalls Chesney, “I went out and sat in that chair with a big drink between my legs. I looked up at the infinite stars and fell asleep — or passed out, whatever you want to call it. What woke me was the sun coming up over Tortola. It had rained a lot, and the mosquitoes were horrible; I must’ve had 200 bites all over my body. Right then I decided I was going to make myself happy and move on and put my heart and soul into my music and into being a better person.

“Is that what you call an epiphany?” he wonders aloud.

No, that’s what you call a hangover; it’s only an epiphany when you act on it and it becomes a turning point. Which he did. Chesney rededicated himself to competing in the bare-knuckle brawl that is the Nashville music industry, but tempered his ambitions with an accepting perspective learned from his Virgin Island buds. He took inspiration from a friend named Ben (the subject of the song “Island Boy”), who “left Maine, sold everything he had, looked at a spot on the map and went to it.” From that, Chesney learned that while it’s risky to follow your bliss, doing so can take you to places where you really belong.

“Now I let my heart take me where it wants to go,” he says, echoing a line from the chorus of “Soul of a Sailor.” “That’s the essence of the islands and why I love it.”

Ben is now the captain of Chesney’s new boat, a 60-foot Sea Ray. Together they cruise the islands, stopping at spots like Ivan’s Stress-Free Bar on Jost Van Dyke. It’s one of those places where you can just walk up and make your own drinks, pitch a tent and stay for a few days, a week, a month.

“When I think of the Caribbean, Ivan’s is where my mind goes,” Chesney says. “It’s got a great vibe. Ivan is a kind, warm person from the West Indies, in his 60s. He’s a musician and he loves musicians. I’ve learned to look at the world differently there, how to pace my life. My view is through a tour-bus window; his view is of the tide coming in and going out.”

Ivan’s is one of several such bars mentioned in Chesney’s songs.

“There’s an unseen magic in those places that can be life-changing, and I’m living proof of it,” he says. “You can lose yourself and find yourself and reinvent yourself.”

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