After more than a decade, Kenny Chesney is bringing the beach back to Rupp Arena

It was a cold, early spring evening in 2008 along Main Street as crowds lined around the block to enter The Dame. On most nights, this long-since-demolished venue was a prime performance haven for local artists, indie rock favorites and any number of national touring acts.

On this night though, something altogether different was about to unfold. Taking the stage was Kenny Chesney, then and now one of the most bankable country singers on the planet, a hitmaker who headlined Rupp Arena five of the previous six years. The show at hand, however, was part of an abbreviated club tour that would preface a mammoth summer run of arenas and even stadiums.

It was a nervous evening. Shockwaves were still reverberating from recent news that The Dame, a popular billiard hall/bar next door (Buster’s) and the rest of the block were to be razed over the summer for a massive commercial, retail and residential project known as Centerpointe (realized years later as City Center.)

But as a few hundred patrons packed into The Dame this night, in contrast to the 10,000 to 18,000 fans that would fill Rupp, the club was still wildly alive.

Kenny Chesney was in town. All the world, especially in the regions that embraced contemporary country-pop music, was a beach.

Chesney, of course, has been the country equivalent of Jimmy Buffett for more than two decades – a singer who is happy to wear the cowboy hat long indicative of the genre as long as he can still sing about the whims of tropical paradise that made the ultra-easygoing title tune to his 2002 album “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems” a career re-defining anthem as well as a template for how the majority of his music has been designed and promoted ever since.

It’s all a little less Nashville and little more Boca Raton.

Chesney returns to Rupp Arena on April 25 with his first local concert since 2011. That’s a full decade that has seen every one from commercial peers like Luke Bryan, traditionalist mavericks like Chris Stapleton and blue-collar beer toasters like Luke Combs sell out the big houses and scale the charts. None of that seems to irk Chesney in the least. He remains as comfortable singing midtempo tunes that regularly reference oceanside bliss as his many landlocked fans are listening to them.

There is the occasional nod to traditionalism in the Chesney scenario. The 2011 Rupp show, for instance, enlisted country forefather George Jones as a surprise guest for two songs. For the most part, though, Chesney is as cozy as country music gets – an artist with an agreeable Southern tenor, an audience friendly persona and a pack of tunes whose country sentiments are fleshed out with broad pop colors.

While a new collaborative single with Old Dominion titled “Beer with My Friends” surfaced in 2022, Chesney hasn’t released a new album since “Here and Now” three years ago. That stands as his longest gap between albums, but fans needn’t worry. The title of his current trek is the “I Go Back Tour,” a reference both to the fact that his current shows are balancing hits with songs that haven’t been part of his concert repertoire for years and to a purposeful routing to play cities and venues again that were popular draws earlier in his career – which definitely applies to Lexington and Rupp.

“I Go Back” is also the title of a pop-savvy hit Chesney scored in 2004.

Kenny Chesney and Kelsea Ballerini

When: April 25 at 7:30 p.m.

Where: Rupp Arena, 430 W Vine

Tickets: $28.50-$172.50 through ticketmaster.com

Ashley McBryde concert at EKU

Over at the EKU Center for the Arts, Ashley McBryde, an artist with a very different style and discourse, will perform a sold-out concert.

Over the course of three albums, the Arkansas native has created a highly literary brand of country music that strips away the glamour, gloss and excess sentiment of modern Nashville recordings. A brilliant case in point is a tune from her 2018 debut album “Girl Going Nowhere” titled “Livin’ Next to Leroy.” It outlined the kind of country cooking that comes not from a kitchen stove, but a meth lab. Then there’s “Martha Devine,” a tune from McBryde’s 2020 album “Never Will,” that bluntly chronicles revenge in a very family way.

“Honor thy father, honor thy mother,” the song goes. “But the Bible doesn’t say a damn thing about your daddy’s lover.”

Bet Christmas was a blast in that house.

Setting these songs ablaze is a boldly jagged electric sound that places McBryde’s equally electric singing, which is as commanding in queasy confessional moments as it is in all out rockish celebration, front and center.

McBryde’s most unexpected career move came with her third and newest studio album, 2022’s “Lindeville.” Named after the late Nashville songwriter Dennis Linde - whose credits range from Elvis Presley’s “Burning Love” to the (Dixie) Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl” - the recording teamed McBryde with a team of collaborators that included John Osborne (of Brothers Osborne) and Brandy Clark to create a carnival-like scrapbook of character-driven songs. Sample titles: “Brenda Put Your Bra On,” “Gospel Night at the Strip Club” and “Forkem Family Funeral Home.”

McBryde has opened a few ears in Lexington, too. A favorably received warm-up set for a 2017 Rupp concert by Justin Moore led her back to the arena in 2018 as a part of the three-day Red, White and Boom festival.

Out of the 15 featured acts, McBryde was the only woman.

“In some ways, I’m like, ‘Seriously? I’m the only girl on the bill?’ McBryde told me in an interview prior to the Boom performance. “Then in other ways, I’m like, ‘Well, I’ve always been one of the guys anyway. I was always the girl who went fishing with everybody.’ It is kind of weird, though.”

Ashley McBryde

When: April 30 at 7 p.m.

Where: EKU Center for the Arts, 822 Hall Dr. in Richmond

Tickets: Sold out