With Kenny Chesney making it a little more up close and personal on his I Go Back 2023 Tour, the crowds have been loud, the shows freewheeling and the headliner has remembered who he was back when it was all falling into place for the 8-time Country Music Association and Academy of Country Music Entertainer of the Year. With a platter of memories made and songs sung, the East Tennessee superstar decided that not one, but two nights would be needed to shut down his most intimate shows in almost a decade.

“It’s strange how much fun we’ve had this year,” Chesney says as the tour heads to Indiana this weekend. “It’s a completely different scale, but in a way, it intensifies the energy in a whole other way. We’ve got a roof over our heads, all that passion can’t escape – and it lets all the music really stick to you!

“We’re so used to ending on a double, it felt like the thing to do. And when I asked Louis Messina, our tour promoter, if there was a way to make this work at this late date, he said, there’s always a way... So, Orange Beach, Alabama: get ready for a two-night stand! We’re coming in hot – and we’re ready to play.”

Having just stepped up to headline the Gulf Coast Jam in Panama City Beach, Florida on June 3 and the Carolina Country Music Festival in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina on June 10, the only country artist to make Billboard’s Top 10 Touring Acts of the Last 25 Years for the last 14 years isn’t quite ready to take it home for the summer. Having a little more freedom onstage to call audibles, move songs around, take requests and just jam, it truly has been a tour that harkens back to the moment when the East Tennessee songwriter was becoming a superstar.

“There is nothing like the energy when the scrim drops and you walk onstage at a stadium,” he offers. “But I have to tell you: there’s also nothing like the energy in these arenas when the crowd is pumping, they’re all one and they’re completely into the songs. It’s all contained in these venues, and you just feel the response moving through you like a freight train.

“I’m sorry about the short notice, but something tells me these tickets are gonna be gone as fast as we put ‘em up. I’ve had a long, crazy history with the people in Orange Beach – whether it’s all the years we’ve played the Wharf orthe year we took over the beach on the Florida/Alabama line and created something that’d never been done before – so if we’re going to do something like this, I can’t think of better people to do it with, or for!”

After one of 2022’s biggest tours in any genre – having the fifth biggest tour after Bad Bunny, Elton John, Mötley Crüe/Def Leppard and Harry Styles – I Go Back 2023 has been a massive success. Presented by Blue Chair Bay® Rum with special guest Kelsea Ballerini, they’ve set attendance records, had special guests, pulled songs out of thin air and in a fraught world made the power of live music palpable for fans who live beyond the obvious major markets.

Tickets go on sale at Ticketmaster on Monday, May 22 at 10 a.m. CT.