By the Caribbean Journal staff
From “Adios to Jost” to “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems,” country star Kenny Chesney has long had a love affair with the Caribbean, particularly the U.S. and British Virgin Islands (he has a home in St John.)
It was a love affair that turned into a calling last fall, though, when Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit the Virgin Islands and Chesney set to work, creating the Love for Love City Fund to support recovery efforts.
That saw Chesney help get supplies to the islands, dispatch relief flights and help raise more than seven figures’ worth of funding for the islands’ needs.
“The destruction was too much,” Kenny allows, “and there were too many other places that were hurting. When I realized the help that had to happen, I did what I could to facilitate getting things done. But even more powerful to me were the people of the No Shoes Nation, who stepped up and gave what they could. They showed me how people come together in times of crisis to lift up people they don’t even know.”
Now, Chesney is continuing that support with his newest album: Songs for the Saints, an album that “honors the people and the life on those islands.”
But the 12-song album, which hits the market Friday, is going further: proceeds from the album will also go directly to the Love for Love City Fund.
The album is led by an already-popular single, Get Along, along with songs including “Love for Love City,” a collaboration with Ziggy Marley and even “Trying to Reason *(With Hurricane Season),” which sees Chesney duet with Jimmy Buffett.
“I didn’t necessarily have ‘a plan,’ but these songs needed to be written,” Chesney said in a statement. “And a friend said, ‘You should call the album Songs for the Saints, make it something that honors the people and the life on those islands, but also provides for them long after what happened has fallen off the news cycle.’ It hit me, that was what I was already doing and hadn’t realized it.”
For more, visit Kenny Chesney.