After spending two years leading his Las Vegas residency at Sphere, Kenny Chesney is returning to stadiums in 2027.

The Country Music Hall of Famer will launch his Original Vibe Room Tour 2027 on April 24 in Tampa, Florida (marking his eighth appearance at Raymond James Stadium), with the tour also making stops in Chicago, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Detroit and Nashville before concluding at Foxborough, Massachusetts’ Gillette Stadium on Aug. 28.

Joining Chesney are CMA entertainer of the year winner Eric Church, nine-time Grammy winner Sheryl Crow and newcomer Greylan James, known as a writer on songs by Jordan Davis, Morgan Wallen and more, as well as his own “Water at a Wedding.”

“When we started to talk about touring next year, all I could think about was how good those stadiums feel… how loud, how fast, how much energy comes hurling at us,” Chesney said in a statement. “I don’t think I knew how much I missed it. And when it hit me, as well as watching comments on Instagram and Facebook, I realized: we should make next year be all about the stadiums. So, we did.”

Chesney continued, “To make it really hit, I called Eric, who’d come out that first weekend in Vegas and sang a few with me, to see if he’d want to do this. He was in. Then to give fans a twist, something a little different, but someone who rocks and everyone in No Shoes Nation loves, I asked Sheryl Crow if she wanted to come play with us; and she said, ‘Yes.’ Suddenly, we’ve got all that high-powered energy, and it was starting to feel the same way we did way back in the day…”

The tour will mark Chesney’s 25th show at Gillette Stadium and his 13th year in Pittsburgh and Detroit, as well as his 12th stadium show in Philadelphia and ninth stop in New Jersey, Dallas-Fort Worth and Kansas City.

“It’s crazy to think these stadiums where I see football played every week are like coming home for the band and myself, but also really No Shoes Nation which rose out of these stadium parking lots. Stadiums are where we come most alive – and this tour’s taking it to a whole other level,” Chesney said.

Before the tour launches next year, Chesney will release his 21st album, Silver Sands Marina, on Sept. 25. The 11-song project will mark his first on his new independent label Hey Now Records, which launched earlier this year.

See the full list of cities and dates below:

 
 

Nashville International Airport is set to be renamed in honor of Dolly Parton, after the airport’s governing board voted unanimously to begin the process on Friday (Sept. 11).

The Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority board of commissioners voted 6-0 to start modifying the airport’s name to honor the late country icon, who died Aug. 25 at age 80 following a brief battle with cancer. A final name has not yet been determined.

“While a final name has not yet been determined, we are working closely with the appropriate parties to thoughtfully determine how Dolly Parton’s name and legacy will be incorporated,” the authority said, describing the vote as “the first step in a multifaceted process” and noting it expects to share more detailed plans in the coming months.

The final name will be decided jointly by airport leaders and the Dollywood Foundation, the nonprofit Parton established in 1988. The board also had to modify its existing naming policy, which generally calls for airport properties to be named after individuals who have been deceased for at least two years.

The renaming push predates Parton’s death — a petition to rename the airport “Dolly Parton International Airport” launched in early 2025 — but gained momentum after she died, with the petition surpassing 175,000 signatures.

The effort has drawn bipartisan support: Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, proposed the change shortly after Parton’s death, and Nashville’s Democratic mayor, Freddie O’Connell, backed it, with the city’s Metro Council unanimously adopting a supporting resolution on Sept. 1. “At a place where Tennessee welcomes the world, it is fitting that Nashville International Airport would bear the name of our state’s favorite daughter,” Lee said in his initial statement.

A Tennessee native born in Sevier County, Parton became one of the most successful and beloved figures in American music, selling more than 100 million records worldwide across a seven-decade career. She topped the Billboard Hot 100 with “9 to 5” and “Islands in the Stream,” holds the record for the most No. 1s by a woman on the Hot Country Songs chart with 25, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.

Beyond her music, she was celebrated for her philanthropy, particularly the Dollywood Foundation’s Imagination Library, which has distributed hundreds of millions of books to children.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Darryl Worley drove the backroads in Tennessee on his way home and was impressed at the public outpouring.

Just hours after terrorists flew into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a substantial number of flags and other outdoor expressions of patriotism were already on display at numerous houses. America’s unification didn’t last long; fifteen months later, as he returned from performing for American soldiers in the Middle East, he drove the same streets. The flags were mostly gone, and so — he lamented — was the unification. A few weeks later, he co-wrote “Have You Forgotten?” with Wynn Varble (“Waitin’ on a Woman,” “A Little More Country Than That”), crafting one of the handful of country hits that documented the nation’s attitudes about the attack and the wars that were launched in retaliation.

As Americans observe the 25th anniversary of that September day, Worley has released a new recording of the song. It sounds, intentionally, quite similar to the original version, though it has a different feeling, because the nation itself feels different. The central question of “Have You Forgotten?” has an easy answer for anyone who saw the twin towers fall on TV or heard live newscasts about the heroism of the passengers on Flight 93, the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania.

“I don’t think anyone’s forgotten,” says Will Kaufman, author of the forthcoming book American Song and Struggle from World War II to MAGA: A Cultural History (Nov. 19, Cambridge University Press).

True. But a whole generation of emerging creatives and executive staff in the early stages of their careers in music have heard the stories — and many of the songs — but don’t actually remember. They were too young to have experienced it or hadn’t yet been born. Their world is a different place than the one their parents experienced, in part because of 9/11, and adults are left to explain how the wars in the Middle East affected the kids’ lives. It’s the renewal of a regrettable tradition that most age groups unfortunately inherit. Baby boomers, for example, similarly heard tales from their parents about how World War II had shaped the culture into which they were born.

“I think about it all the time,” Worley says. The 9/11 attacks, he notes, “must feel to [kids] like Pearl Harbor did to us.”

One major way in which 9/11 influenced the culture came with country music’s reaction. A bundle of songs reflected the attitudes about war and patriotism that followed the attack. Among them: Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)” and “American Soldier,” Aaron Tippin’s “Where the Stars and Stripes and the Eagle Fly,” Brooks & Dunn’s “Only in America,” Lonestar’s “I’m Already There,” David Ball’s “Riding with Private Malone,” Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the U.S.A.,” The Chicks’ “Travelin’ Soldier” and Alan Jackson’s “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning).”

That happens with most wars. World War II inspired such country songs as Elton Britt’s “There’s a Star-Spangled Banner Waving Somewhere,” Red Foley’s “Smoke on the Water,” Gene Autry’s “At Mail Call Today,” Bob Wills’ “Stars and Stripes on Iwa Jima” and Carson Robison’s “Mussolini’s Letter to Hitler.”

The genre likewise scored a few successful singles related to the Korean War and cranked out a bundle during the Vietnam War — such as Sgt. Barry Sadler’s “The Ballad of the Green Berets” and Johnny Wright’s “Hello Vietnam” — until the public mood turned sour. At that point, Johnny Cash’s “What is Truth” gave credence to young people’s opposition, and pro-war fare mostly dried up.

The 9/11 songs have inarguably held up better than country’s previous war songs. Some of these songs can still be heard on classic country stations 25 years after the terrorist attacks. By comparison, the World War II titles weren’t in circulation much 25 years after Pearl Harbor.

“There’s a good reason for that,” Kaufman maintains. “World War II eventually ended.”

The wars in Iran and Afghanistan, he explains, dragged on, and they can be considered continuations of the early-90s War in the Gulf, which was built on leftover antagonisms from the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 and ’80. The president has on numerous occasions connected the current faceoff to 1979, thus many of the war songs that worked in those earlier eras still have similar meanings in 2026. The songs typically convey some level of patriotism, and, Kaufman suggests, that makes them useful to the American psyche. And to forces who might want to influence that psyche.

“I think these songs are so popular,” he says, “because they’re part of the arsenal.”

That’s not necessarily why they’re created. Worley wanted “Have You Forgotten?” to unify people — to make them remember that the country’s enemies are hostile players from other shores, not the members of a rival political party.

Having seen the men and women on the front lines who risk their lives and sacrifice time with their families, he valued the sense of service that motivated them.

“Being in the war zone and spending that time with the troops was very, very motivating as far as coming home, wanting to do something that would honor them,” he says.

Worley maintains his own sense of service with “Have You Forgotten?” He was scheduled to perform it Sept. 10 during a commemorative event at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and again on Sept. 11 during a memorial in New York City.

Still, support for the people who do the grunt work of wars doesn’t necessarily equate to support for the war itself. Public support for a war, it could be argued, correlates with the volume of country music’s commercially successful songs about it. If any country songs have been written to back the current campaign in Iran, they haven’t caught on commercially. Polls suggest the public is not behind it. The war certainly hasn’t inspired Worley.

“The whole thing is bothersome,” he says. “It’s bothersome that it can’t be what we thought it was going to be: over and done with. I just feel like it’s taken on the similarities of other conflicts we’ve gotten into, that could drag on for who knows how long.”

Younger creatives may not be writing new material about the Strait of Hormuz, but those who were alive during 9/11, and old enough to be aware of it, have not forgotten that war. They are, in fact, acutely aware of the ways it affected their generation.

“The global war on terror was obviously ongoing for a long time,” says songwriter Andy Sheridan (“Gonna Love You,” “Indigo”), who was in eighth grade in 2001. “I had friends that joined the Army after they graduated high school. They went and served in the military, and then came back and were not the same. So it is personal. This is a dark thing that happened in our history, and obviously the ripples of war stretch out far, far, far beyond the initial event.”

Sheridan, who is a history buff, has a 12-year-old son, and is trying to make him aware of the facts around 9/11, though he is reticent to influence his son’s beliefs.

“He’ll form his own opinions about it at some point when he’s older, when he maybe understands a little bit more of the world,” Sheridan says.

Country’s war-on-terror songs might help that understanding better than some of the genre’s predecessors because of the way that they were written. Focused mostly on loss of life, loss of innocence and family separation, the 9/11-era songs are typically less jingoistic than those from previous eras’ wars. Instead of grabbing their narratives from headlines, even the pro-military titles — including “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” and “Have You Forgotten?” — were crafted around first-hand experiences with soldiers.

The songwriters, one might suggest, learned from the earlier battles. Some politicians, unfortunately, have not. The ICE incarcerations and anti-Muslim rhetoric of 2026 are the same sort of atrocities, Kaufman notes, as World War II’s “yellow peril,” in which Asian-Americans were rounded up and incarcerated. Polls show Americans generally agree that that was wrong.

“I don’t think these things can be can be disconnected,” Kaufman says.

“Have You Forgotten?” reminds the nation indirectly that its military should be deployed wisely, risking soldiers’ lives only when the sacrifice makes sense. But a new live version of Jackson’s “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning),” re-released in conjunction with the 25th anniversary, addresses all of war’s suffering by referencing a Biblical passage: “Faith, hope and love are some good things He gave us/And the greatest is love.”

That, too, is worth remembering in every generation.

Alison Krauss & Union Station have canceled upcoming dates on the group’s Arcadia Tour, after lead vocalist Krauss has been put on vocal rest.

A social media post on Sept. 10 read, “It is with great regret that Alison Krauss and Union Station have announced the cancellation of our upcoming tour dates. After consulting with medical professionals, Alison has been advised to take a period of vocal rest to ensure a full and healthy recovery.”

The post added, “This decision was not made lightly as we are deeply committed to our fans. However, prioritizing health and vocal integrity are imperative at this time…we hope to make it back to these cities in the near future.”

More than a dozen shows are impacted by the cancellations, beginning with a show that had been scheduled for Sept. 11 in Davenport, Iowa. Also impacted were three shows slated for Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium on Sept. 18-20, as well as shows in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, Nevada and California through early October.

Tickets for all canceled shows will be fully refunded and attendees are encouraged to reach out to their point of purchase with any questions.

Last year, Alison Krauss & Union Station released Arcadia, marking their first album in nearly 14 years.

The group is up for entertainer of the year at the upcoming IBMA Bluegrass Music Awards in October, and also up for vocal group of the year, while Krauss is up for female vocalist of the year. The group’s Barry Bales is up for bass player of the year, Jerry Douglas is up for resophonic guitar player of the year, Ron Block is up for banjo player of the year and Russell Moore is up for male vocalist of the year.

See the announcement below:

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Two weeks after her Aug. 25 death, new music from Dolly Parton has emerged.

“Bound to Ride,” credited to Dolly Parton & The First Ladies of Bluegrass, came out Wednesday (Sept. 9). The song, which features banjoist Alison Brown, fiddle player Becky Buller, mandolin player Sierra Hull, bassist Missy Raines and guitarist Molly Tuttle, is part of Where the Soul Never Dies: Celebrating 80 Years of The Stanley Brothers, which comes out Oct. 16 on Compass Records.

Parton, singing to a track already laid down by the First Ladies of Bluegrass, recorded her part in isolation during COVID, according to Rolling Stone, which premiered the song, originally released by the legendary Stanley Brothers in 1964.

However, the dynamic track sounds incredibly lively and cohesive, with Parton giving a delightfully spirited vocal delivery and even adding in ad libs like, “Pick it girls!,” and calling out the musicians by name as they go into solos.

Parton grew up playing bluegrass and early on in her career released a cover of Jimmie Rodgers’ bluegrass standard “Mule Skinner Blues.”

She frequently returned to her love of bluegrass, including recording three seminal bluegrass albums for Sugar Hill Records, in 1999 (the Grammy-winning The Grass Is Blue), 2001 (Little Sparrow) and 2002 (Halos & Horns).

Fans know there’s at least one more unreleased track coming from Parton: “My Place in History,” a song Parton wrote in 2015, has been placed in a lockbox at Dollywood’s DreamMore Resort in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, with strict instructions from Parton for it to be unveiled on Jan. 19, 2046, which would have been her 100th birthday.   

Where the Soul Never Dies also includes Willie Nelson, Jamey Johnson, Billy Strings, Dierks Bentley, The Travelin’ McCourys, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Rhiannon Giddens, Steve Martin, Jim Lauderdale, Tim O’Brien and more taking on Stanley Brothers classics.

Where the Soul Never Dies track list:

1. “If I Lose” – Billy Strings & Drew Emmitt
2. “Bound to Ride” – Dolly Parton & The First Ladies of Bluegrass (Alison Brown, Becky Buller, Sierra Hull, Missy Raines, Molly Tuttle)
3. “Rank Strangers to Me”- Jamey Johnson & Shawn Camp
4. “Riding That Midnight Train” – Jim Lauderdale & The Traveling McCourys
5. “I’ll Fly Away” – Willie Nelson & Sierra Ferrell
6. “Mother No Longer Awaits Me at Home” – Ralph Stanley II & Tim O’Brien with The Clinch Mountain Boys
7. “Think of What You’ve Done” – Nitty Gritty Dirt Band with Alison Brown
8. “Little Birdie” – Rhiannon Giddens & Dirk Powell
9. “How Mountain Girls Can Love” – Dierks Bentley & Della Mae
10. “Pardon Me, Stranger” – Steve Martin & Ed Helms with Alison Brown
11. “Ralph’s Banjo Special” – Kristin Scott Benson, Gena Britt, Alison Brown
12. “Going Up Home to Live in Green Pastures” – I’m With Her (Aoife O’Donovan, Sarah Jarosz, Sara Watkins)

When Jason Aldean performed at the Academy of Country Music Awards in Frisco, Texas, on May 16, 2024, his acoustic version of “Should’ve Been a Cowboy” paid homage to the late Toby Keith.

But while he was there, Aldean got an additional opportunity to celebrate another country legend. He received a fresh demo of a new song written by two band members, bassist Tully Kennedy and guitarist Kurt Allison, and he quickly recognized the sound that Allison had created with a Fender Rhodes electric piano.

“It was a tip of the hat to Ronnie Milsap,” Aldean remembers. “I knew immediately – one listen – that we were going to cut it, and it was going to make the record.”

“Anytime Soon,” released by Broken Bow to country radio on Aug. 2 via PlayMPE, uses a keyboard tone akin to Milsap’s “Stranger in My House,” blended with classic rock sounds that embody Tom Petty and Journey. It was created with Aldean’s musical tastes in mind, as well as his penchant for stories about guys trying to pick themselves up.

“There are two things that never go out of style, man: falling in love and relationships falling apart,” Aldean says. “For whatever reason, I’ve always leaned into the latter.”

Kennedy and Allison were writing with John Edwards (“How Far Does a Goodbye Go,” “Whiskey Drink”) a few weeks before the ACMs at BMG Music on Nashville’s Music Row when they found the musical thread that became “Anytime Soon.” They’d already written another song and thought they were done for the day, but Kennedy and Edwards started a rough-edged chord progression in a minor key. It felt substantial, so Allison, who was already packing up to leave, began unpacking. They didn’t quite know where the song was headed.

“We didn’t have a hook,” Kennedy recalls. “With each line we wrote of the chorus, I was getting more nervous. I’m like, ‘I don’t know what we’re writing to,’ which never happens. You just don’t do that because you don’t know where to land. “

The song developed a drinking theme fairly quickly, with the protagonist downing a couple shots at a time, hoping to erase a woman from his memory. In the last half of the chorus – with the writers still uncertain what lie ahead – the guy’s internal war became clearer, as he tries to “fight off” “a battle that I’m bound to lose.”

“That’s Aldean 101,” Allison says. “He’s never like, ‘Hey, I’m a super-awesome guy.’ It’s always like, ‘Hey, I got some faults, and I’ve got some struggles, but that’s on me.’”

The hook finally showed itself after that, as they recognized the guy’s enemy is well-supplied: “They ain’t runnin’ out of whiskey anytime soon.” It was then that they contemplated a title. “Running Out of Whiskey” sounds decent, but it’s the opposite of the song’s meaning. “That’s not cool,” Kennedy says.

Plus, they’d previously written “Whiskey Drink,” and Aldean had had a hit with “Drowns the Whiskey.” “Anytime Soon” seemed the better option. “That,” Kennedy says, “feels great.”

They wrapped after one verse and chorus, deciding to wait until they could finish it with John Morgan. So roughly a week later, all four writers assembled at BMG and brought up the work tape, wondering if it would still resonate. “You come back, and it’s better than you even remember,” Allison says. “We were excited to finish.”

One of the first things they addressed, at the start of the second verse, was a location. The existing lyrics suggested a bar but could still be interpreted as a guy drinking alone.“We try to be as vague as we can while still giving details about the storyline,” Morgan says. “There’s definitely drinking references in the first verse. [It] doesn’t really put you in a certain place.”

They launched verse two with the guy “hittin’ this hole in the wall” and staying “all the way to last call,” making the dive bar images stronger. But they still weren’t definitive. “We didn’t want to get overly specific with some of those words,” Allison says. “Like ‘hole in the wall.’ Does that mean ‘dive bar’? Does it mean, ‘Hey, I’m going through a struggle and I put my fist through the wall at the house’?”

They finished the song by repurposing a pre-chorus from the first verse as a bridge, then made a demo that approximated an Aldean recording. Given Kennedy and Allison’s musical history, that’s not particularly difficult. “They’ve been playing music with me for 25 years,” Aldean says. “They know what I will and won’t say, what I think is cool and what’s not cool.”

Aldean tends to sing the verses in his songs loosely, a bit like a conversation with a musical soundtrack behind it, and Morgan delivered the demo vocals with that in mind. “One of the references that we pulled from, phrasing-wise, was Don Henley and ‘Boys of Summer,’” Morgan recalls. “Some of those verses, he’s talking more than singing… It was [meeting] in the middle on doing the Henley thing, being in the measure, but kind of being lazy about it.”

The demo provided a terrific roadmap when the band recorded the master version of “Anytime Soon” with producer Michael Knox (Montgomery Gentry, Thomas Rhett) at Nashville’s Treasure Isle. They needed just three takes to record it; in fact, session pianist Tony Harrell and recording engineer Peter Coleman (Blondie, The Knack) may have devoted more time to developing the “Stranger in My House” keyboard tone than the band needed to play it.

“Luckily, Peter Coleman knew how to make that thing sound authentic,” Knox notes. “It wasn’t a plug-in. It was a true Wurlitzer sitting in the back of the studio that they pulled out and had to dust off and warm up [to] get it done right.”

Allison and Adam Shoenfeld traded guitar parts, though Allison took the primary solo. Drummer Rich Redman provided a steady backbeat, and acoustic guitarist Danny Rader’s almost-inaudible rhythms brighten the track just a hair. Steel player Mike Johnson added enough twang to keep the Milsap-meets-Petty sonics in a country lane.

Johnson, says Knox, “can make a rock song sound like a country song, and you don’t know why you think it’s a country song.”

Aldean knew “Anytime Soon” inside out before he cut the final vocal and gave Knox six takes. “This one,” Aldean says, “was pretty much in the wheelhouse.”

Aldean slid it into his live set when his 2026 concert schedule launched Jan. 15 at Simmons Bank Arena in North Little Rock, Ark. The recorded version debuted on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart dated Aug. 22 at No. 55. Given that his last 25 radio-promoted solo releases have hit the top 10, with 18 going to No. 1, it’s a good bet that “Anytime Soon” is beginning a ride that won’t end … anytime soon.

“I remember when I was a young guy,” Aldean says. “Now I’m trying to hang in there with all the young guys. I’m just glad that we’re still putting out stuff that seems to be connecting with people out there. That’s what it’s all about.”

Dolly Parton’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame will be replaced after it was targeted by vandals just a week after her death, aged 80.

Images and videos shared on social media show that Parton’s name on the plaque has been obscured by multiple dark scratches. The damage doesn’t appear to be random.

Ana Martinez, a spokesperson for the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, tells TMZ that repairs were already scheduled due to previous cracks found in Parton’s award.

The Hollywood Historic Trust, which grants and maintains the stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, wrote on Instagram that it is “proud to honor the legacy of Dolly Parton with a replacement of her star.” The new landmark will be available for viewing this Friday.

The queen of country first received a star during a ceremony June 14, 1984, a dual presentation with actor Sylvester Stallone while they promoted their feature film Rhinestone. It is this award, which bears a record icon, which was damaged and has since been removed.

She received a second star in 2018 alongside Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt for their work together in the informal supergroup, Trio.

Parton’s death on Aug. 25 was met with a global wave of tributes, from fans to fellow artists and even world leaders. The country music superstar’s catalogue experienced a 1,143% gain in official on-demand streams in the United States week over week following her Aug. 25 death, according to Luminate.

As fans remembered Parton by turning to her music, a swag of her classic songs returned to Billboard’s charts. Her classic “Jolene” returned to the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 16. That’s easily a new high for the single, which originally reached No. 60 in 1974.

Also crashing the Hot 100 is “9 to 5” (No. 16), Parton’s Kenny Rogers duet “Islands in the Stream” (No. 26) and “Here You Come Again,” while “I Will Always Love You” blasts to No. 1 on Digital Song Sales, and Ultimate Dolly Parton returns to the Billboard 200 at No. 5.