Kenny Chesney Big Revival Tour with special guests Jake Owen and Chase Rice, Ambleside Park, Thursday, June 25. Gates open 5 p.m. For more information visit amblesidelive.com.
"Oh my God! They booked Kenny!" Kenny Chesney, perhaps the biggest star in country music today, is set to lead about 20,000 of his barefoot brigade in song this summer as the headliner of the Ambleside Live concert series.
The "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problem" singer was lured to West Vancouver by show organizers Dan Fraser (co-founder of Nettwerk Music Group) and Graham Lee, who reached below the Mason-Dixon line to get the man with the platinum twang. Louis Messina, a legendary New Orleans promoter best known for handling artists including Taylor Swift, George Strait and Chesney, listened to their pitch.
"We used to do shows in the deep South with him with all of our artists back in the day," Fraser reminisces.
Towards the end of 2013, Messina told Fraser and Lee that Chesney would be heading out on a summer stadium tour in 2015. Ordinarily, that meant a Rogers Arena show, but Messina said the singer was looking for a "unique play in Vancouver."
Chesney could add another stadium show to a tour that includes a stop in Chicago's Soldier Field, or, Fraser suggested, maybe he'd like to plug in at, "one of the most beautiful spots on the West Coast," Ambleside.
Messina was in.
"Louis went out and convinced Kenny Chesney's manager, said you should take a chance with us, and here we are, on sale," Fraser reports. Premium admission tickets for Chesney's only Western Canadian tour stop went on sale Jan. 31 for $145 a pop. They're sold out. General admission tickets for $85 are still available. Lee estimates they'll get about 20,000 fans into Ambleside for the show.
Chesney is one of the handful of artists who will "fit within the community," notes Fraser, who lives just five blocks from the park.
For Fraser, finding the right talent comes down to two things: "We know the community and we know what will draw."
For Lee, who remembers playing soccer not too far from where Chesney's boots will be stomping come June 25, the concert is decades in the making. "I remember, as a kid, saying, 'This is a great spot for shows,'" Lee recalls. In 2008, after assuring West Vancouver there would be no major sound problems or traffic issues, he got the green light for what became Ambleside Live.
"We want to make sure whatever we do is good for the community, good for the city, and it makes sense financially," Lee says. However, everything hinges on the "right fit of music," Lee says, meaning songs everyone can enjoy; "family-type music, obviously not heavy metal."
"As long as we keep sourcing that out, I think this could get bigger," Lee says. Lee put together his first shows at his own arena in Kelowna - with mixed results.
"We had quite a few shows that lost money because we actually co-produce a lot of the shows," he says.
But his big coup was bringing in Bryan Adams, who passed the word about the arena to Rod Stewart. "Apparently he told Elton John and Elton John came," Lee says.
Elton John sat behind his grand piano on the Kelowna stage five years after the arena's manager assured Lee: "There's no way we're going to get Elton John for Kelowna." The lesson was lasting, and applies to his handling of Ambleside Live today. "You've got to maintain people's expectations. It's kind of like a first date," he explains. "If you bring in a good show, people will remember it. "If you bring a lousy show in, it actually represents the site."
When asked about career highlight concerts, Fraser - who was booking sock hops at 12 and was on the road as a tour manager at 17 - replies with one word: Fun. The three-piece pop group wasn't quite a household name when Fraser booked them at Ambleside Live. "Fun was just starting to build. We had a lot of, 'Fun who?'" he recalls. Any concerns about booking the band were assuaged when he saw kids lining up the night before the show, singing Fun songs on the Spirit Trail.
