Chesney drives USANA fans wild

KENNY CHESNEY, SUGARLAND, PAT GREEN, USANA Amphitheatre, West Valley City, Thursday

WEST VALLEY CITY — It's got to be hard to be a USANA worker on a Kenny Chesney night.

Unless, of course, you have a lot of aggression to take out on young men and women in straw cowboy hats dancing in the aisles, standing on their seats and charging the stage for a picture of country's hottest entertainer.

Keeping members of this crowd in their seats and behaving appropriately is a tough job indeed.

From the opening chords of AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long" — which had the sold-out crowd at a fever pitch before Chesney ever took the stage — to the final note of Chesney's own "There Goes My Life," nearly every member of the audience was on his or her feet for the two-hour-plus show.

What more can you expect from a performer who encourages his fans to check their problems at the door following his hit "No Shoes, No Shirt (No Problems)"? The pure singability and fun-filled nature of Chesney's music makes him a perennial summertime favorite, even if his shows don't change much from year to year.

"It would not be a summer without coming here," Chesney said early into his Flip Flop Summer Tour stop in West Valley Thursday night.

The set list included all the expected hits: "Beer in Mexico," "Summertime," "Big Star," "Young," "Anything But Mine," "I Go Back," "When the Sun Goes Down," and the ultimate Kenny Chesney live show must-have, "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy."

Chesney did deviate from past shows a bit, however, with his newest single from his upcoming album, "Never Wanted Nothing More."

In one of his brief exchanges with the crowd, he noted the change of pace. "I don't usually play a lot of new music in a show, but I'm going to play one tonight, if that's all right."

Naturally, the crazed audience didn't appear to mind one bit.

In every way, the Academy of Country Music's performer of the year did what he does best, year after year. He offered some 20,000 Utahns a high-energy, fun-filled night of his hits, racked up over the past decade in country music. And, yes, he allowed them to forget about their problems for at least one night.

Unless their problem was getting close enough to the stage to snap a decent picture, that is. The hard-working USANA employees made sure that didn't happen.

---

E-mail: awelling@desnews.com