Kenny Chesney + Jimmy Fallon Talk SPHERE, Friends + No Shoes Nation Last Night

Sometimes when you’ve got good news, show up and share it with the world. For Kenny Chesney, notoriously circumspect about everything except his music, being only the sixth band – behind Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees U2, the Eagles and Dead + Company, plus jam force Phish and electronic artist Anyma – to bring their iconic sound to Vegas’ Sphere was a strong reason to go to New York to talk, instead of play, music.
 
Having made the Sphere announcement at the start of “TODAY”’s 8:30 a.m. half hour, the East Tennessee songwriter/superstar stopped in at “The Tonight Show” to talk what made him take on the challenge of being the first country artist to play the groundbreaking venue, the fact he’d not seen a concert there before signing on and several good friends who share his penchant for creating and playing songs that touch people where they live, but also where they feel most alive.
 
“The great thing about Jimmy,” Chesney said about the host, “is he’s so musically curious, he always takes the conversation places you don’t see coming. Lots of people have asked me about the story Taylor told in TIME, but he wanted to know if I recognized her massive impact when she was 17… Lots of people have asked about the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame performance for Jimmy’s induction, where I sang with James Taylor and Mac McAnally, but he understood what it meant to me on a soul level, and wanted to talk about how much we all miss him.
 
“That’s the reason when we made the decision to go into this new dimension with our live experience, I knew I wanted to dig into it with Jimmy Fallon. He not only wanted to understand what the work was to create something that required being built from the ground up, he wanted to know what it feels like to be at one of our shows.”
 
For Chesney, who has always relished a challenge, the idea of completely new visuals delivered in the highest possible definition on a screen that wraps all the way up and around the dome-shaped building was an opportunity to really consider what some of his most iconic songs mean. Known for its 167,000 individual speakers, which can be dialed in to each section with dazzling specificity, these 12 shows will allow No Shoes Nation to almost be consumed by the experience. Or as he joked earlier in the day, “Like they’ve never seen us before.”
 
Beyond breakout stories in USA Today, Rolling Stone, People, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, as well as trades and music-centered publications, including Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, POLLSTAR, HITS, Consequence, Holler, Music Mayhem and Billboard, Stereogum, RELIX, Hollywood Reporter and Britain’s Daily Mail – plus radio across the nation -- all picked up the news.
 
Having extended his Billboard Country Airplay Chart record with “Take Her Home,” his 33rd No. 1, plus a dozen personal stadium records on his 2024 Sun Goes Down Tour, Chesney’s breaking ground and having fun taking No Shoes Nation into a whole new musical realm. “For people who consume this music so completely, I love the idea that now the music is going to consume No Shoes Nation with this full-on experience. There’s never been anything so completely immersive – and I’m honored that we get to take No Shoes Nation into this space, really have fun and give all that positive energy an even deeper dimension.”

Kenny Chesney joined NBC’s “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” as lead panel guest on Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025 to discuss his groundbreaking Sphere residency, | Photo Credit: Todd Owyoung/NBC

Tickets go on sale to the general public on Friday, Jan. 31 starting at 10 a.m. PT via KennyChesney.com, with various tiers of VIP travel packages offering early access to tickets now via KennyChesney.Vibee.com. Kenny Chesney Live at Sphere Las Vegas is presented by Blue Chair Bay® Rum.
 
Kenny Chesney Live at Sphere Las Vegas
Thursday, May 22
Saturday, May 24
Sunday, May 25
Wednesday, May 28
Friday, May 30
Saturday, May 31
Wednesday, June 4
Friday, June 6
Saturday, June 7
Wednesday, June 11
Friday, June 13
Saturday, June 14

SOMALI YACHT CLUB Streams New Song in Full via The Obelisk

Psychedelic stoner rock trio SOMALI YACHT CLUB will be releasing their third full-length, 'The Space,' tomorrow, April 22, via Season of Mist, making it the band's debut to the label! The band is now streaming the record in its entirety via The Obelisk! You can hear the album ahead of its release at THIS LOCATION.

The native Ukrainians have pledged to donate all profits made in 2022 (until the end of the year) to various charities to help their home country of Ukraine.

'The Space' can be pre-saved via all digital streaming platforms HERE and pre-ordered HERE.

SOMALI YACHT CLUB is a moniker designed to represent dichotomy and variance. Named after the real-life pirates who attack vessels off the Somalian coast and the peaceful leisure of those with time to kill and money to burn, SOMALI YACHT CLUB musically embodies the boundless, wide-open, quiet/loud spaces that atmospheric post-rock and metal occupy. After over a decade of mesmerizing audiences in their Ukrainian home base and Eastern Europe, SOMALI YACHT CLUB inked a deal with Season of Mist in 2021 to reissue their back catalogue and release their third full-length, The Space.

The band’s story began in 2010 when guitarist/vocalist Ihor sent drummer Lesyk a random message on a Ukrainian musician’s forum to play a hybrid of math rock, post-hardcore, stoner and post-metal. Intrigued, Lesyk called bassist Artur to create the band’s first (and only) lineup. The initial jam sessions went so well that the trio decided to move forward on a permanent basis. Relying on albums such as Moccasin’s The Last Leaf, Ahkmed’s early EPs, Mars Red Sky’s self-titled, the entire Sungrazer discography and the legendary Isis duo of Oceanic and Panopticon, as well as Down, Electric Wizard, Queens of the Stone Age and now-labelmates Weedeater, the SOMALI YACHT CLUBsound was formulated.

“It was a very naive and simple time,” comments the band. “Ihor, as always, was full of energy and it was not enough for him for the bands in which he played at the time. We just started to jam and found the blend that fits all of us. Also, we always loved bands and particular songs that are eclectic — we get a lot of inspiration from such things. They are fun to play and hopefully fun to listen to.”

However broad and varied their influences may be, SOMALI YACHT CLUBstarted to forge their own path via their self-released 2011 Sandsongs and 2013 Desert Walls EP. The pair laid the groundwork for their formidable full-length debut, The Sun, which channeled spaced-out, psychedelic jams with churning stoner doom metal. Their amalgamation of all-things stoner continued through the 2015 Sun’s Eyes EP and 2018 The Sea full-length, the latter noted by The Sludgelord that it “succeeds in taking the listener on that well-known ride of warm tones and meandering melodies” and MetalStorm.net stating, “SOMALI YACHT CLUB offers up a fresh spin on a rich but well-explored genre and in doing so deliver one of the early highlights of 2018.”

The new year brings forth The Space. The album was tracked at various points throughout 2021 at Jenny Records near Lviv, Ukraine, with mixing and mastering courtesy of Yaroslav Tseluiko at Jaro Sound in the Czech Republic. The cover depicts a supernova and was handled by Dasha Pliska, who was also responsible for The Sun and The Sea artwork. The Space also completes the trilogy that began with The Sun and The Sea, but, according to the band, there is no unifying theme.

“It’s a bit hard to tell a real story in our music because, let’s be honest — it’s still more instrumental-focused. The Space is very loosely connected to a single concept as it has even more abstract and personal lyrical themes. Also, the song ‘Pulsar’ was the first written and named song for this album, so it set a path for the title.”

The Space finds SOMALI YACHT CLUB now in full expanse of their sonic elements, delivering six cuts of atmospheric post-rock/metal with dashes of melancholy and introspection. Ihor’s relaxed, if not smooth delivery runs parallel to his driving, fuzzed-out riffs that are dotted with traces of melody. The rhythm section of Artur and Lesyk is the undisputed anchor, maintaining a careful ebb and flow that embellishes songs that demand room to breathe and require texture and thoughtfulness — notably the 12-minute-plus closer, “Momentum,” which features one of the band’s finest jams to date. Such numbers resulted from SOMALI YACHT CLUB’s regular practice sessions that bore more than enough new material.

“We wrote The Space pretty much the same way as the previous two,” says the band. “We brought an idea or a riff to rehearsal, play and jam it a lot of times to see if it doesn’t go stale, record demos, listen, think, re-think, change everything and so on. This time we went to the studio with more than enough material — some even didn’t get a proper recording as we understood it needed even more time to mature and be reconsidered. Some ideas became an outtake; some songs were created right in the studio.”

Like their name serving a dual purpose, so does SOMALI YACHT CLUB’s output on The Space. The album contains a regular balancing act between heaviness and soft, clean guitar moments that will place SOMALI YACHT CLUB into the echelons of bands who have previously mastered the timeless art of dynamics. The Space is the perfect elixir in a time rife with uncertainty, menace and chaos. Alas, the new age of stoner has arrived.

Genre: psychedelic stoner rock

Line-up:
Ihor - guitar, vocals, keys
Artur - bass
Oleksa - drums

Recording studio: Jenny Records
Producer / sound engineer: Maryan Kryskuv
Mixing & mastering studio and engineer: JARO SOUND / Jaroslav Celujko

Biography: David E. Gehlke

Cover art: Dasha Pliska

Pre-sales: https://redirect.season-of-mist.com/syc-thespace
Available formats: CD digipak, vinyl black and coloured

Links:
https://somaliyachtclub.bandcamp.com/
https://facebook.com/Somaliyachtclub
https://www.instagram.com/somaliyachtclub/

SOMALI YACHT CLUB Reveals New Album, Premieres New Single

Psychedelic stoner rock trio SOMALI YACHT CLUB will be releasing their third full-length, 'The Space,' on April 22 via Season of Mist, making it the band's debut to the label! The album art, tracklisting, and details can be found below. The band is now sharing the first new single, "Silver," which can be heard below.

'The Space' can be pre-saved via all digital streaming platforms HERE and pre-ordered HERE.

SOMALI YACHT CLUB is a moniker designed to represent dichotomy and variance. Named after the real-life pirates who attack vessels off the Somalian coast and the peaceful leisure of those with time to kill and money to burn, SOMALI YACHT CLUB musically embodies the boundless, wide-open, quiet/loud spaces that atmospheric post-rock and metal occupy. After over a decade of mesmerizing audiences in their Ukrainian home base and Eastern Europe, SOMALI YACHT CLUB inked a deal with Season of Mist in 2021 to reissue their back catalogue and release their third full-length, The Space.

The band’s story began in 2010 when guitarist/vocalist Ihor sent drummer Lesyk a random message on a Ukrainian musician’s forum to play a hybrid of math rock, post-hardcore, stoner and post-metal. Intrigued, Lesyk called bassist Artur to create the band’s first (and only) lineup. The initial jam sessions went so well that the trio decided to move forward on a permanent basis. Relying on albums such as Moccasin’s The Last Leaf, Ahkmed’s early EPs, Mars Red Sky’s self-titled, the entire Sungrazer discography and the legendary Isis duo of Oceanic and Panopticon, as well as Down, Electric Wizard, Queens of the Stone Age and now-labelmates Weedeater, the SOMALI YACHT CLUBsound was formulated.

“It was a very naive and simple time,” comments the band. “Ihor, as always, was full of energy and it was not enough for him for the bands in which he played at the time. We just started to jam and found the blend that fits all of us. Also, we always loved bands and particular songs that are eclectic — we get a lot of inspiration from such things. They are fun to play and hopefully fun to listen to.”

However broad and varied their influences may be, SOMALI YACHT CLUBstarted to forge their own path via their self-released 2011 Sandsongs and 2013 Desert Walls EP. The pair laid the groundwork for their formidable full-length debut, The Sun, which channeled spaced-out, psychedelic jams with churning stoner doom metal. Their amalgamation of all-things stoner continued through the 2015 Sun’s Eyes EP and 2018 The Sea full-length, the latter noted by The Sludgelord that it “succeeds in taking the listener on that well-known ride of warm tones and meandering melodies” and MetalStorm.net stating, “SOMALI YACHT CLUB offers up a fresh spin on a rich but well-explored genre and in doing so deliver one of the early highlights of 2018.”

The new year brings forth The Space. The album was tracked at various points throughout 2021 at Jenny Records near Lviv, Ukraine, with mixing and mastering courtesy of Yaroslav Tseluiko at Jaro Sound in the Czech Republic. The cover depicts a supernova and was handled by Dasha Pliska, who was also responsible for The Sun and The Sea artwork. The Space also completes the trilogy that began with The Sun and The Sea, but, according to the band, there is no unifying theme.

“It’s a bit hard to tell a real story in our music because, let’s be honest — it’s still more instrumental-focused. The Space is very loosely connected to a single concept as it has even more abstract and personal lyrical themes. Also, the song ‘Pulsar’ was the first written and named song for this album, so it set a path for the title.”

The Space finds SOMALI YACHT CLUB now in full expanse of their sonic elements, delivering six cuts of atmospheric post-rock/metal with dashes of melancholy and introspection. Ihor’s relaxed, if not smooth delivery runs parallel to his driving, fuzzed-out riffs that are dotted with traces of melody. The rhythm section of Artur and Lesyk is the undisputed anchor, maintaining a careful ebb and flow that embellishes songs that demand room to breathe and require texture and thoughtfulness — notably the 12-minute-plus closer, “Momentum,” which features one of the band’s finest jams to date. Such numbers resulted from SOMALI YACHT CLUB’s regular practice sessions that bore more than enough new material.

“We wrote The Space pretty much the same way as the previous two,” says the band. “We brought an idea or a riff to rehearsal, play and jam it a lot of times to see if it doesn’t go stale, record demos, listen, think, re-think, change everything and so on. This time we went to the studio with more than enough material — some even didn’t get a proper recording as we understood it needed even more time to mature and be reconsidered. Some ideas became an outtake; some songs were created right in the studio.”

Like their name serving a dual purpose, so does SOMALI YACHT CLUB’s output on The Space. The album contains a regular balancing act between heaviness and soft, clean guitar moments that will place SOMALI YACHT CLUB into the echelons of bands who have previously mastered the timeless art of dynamics. The Space is the perfect elixir in a time rife with uncertainty, menace and chaos. Alas, the new age of stoner has arrived.

Genre: psychedelic stoner rock

Line-up:
Ihor - guitar, vocals, keys
Artur - bass
Oleksa - drums

Recording studio: Jenny Records
Producer / sound engineer: Maryan Kryskuv
Mixing & mastering studio and engineer: JARO SOUND / Jaroslav Celujko

Biography: David E. Gehlke

Cover art: Dasha Pliska

Pre-sales: https://redirect.season-of-mist.com/syc-thespace
Available formats: CD digipak, vinyl black and coloured

Links:
https://somaliyachtclub.bandcamp.com/
https://facebook.com/Somaliyachtclub
https://www.instagram.com/somaliyachtclub/