Mark Chesnutt Brings Real Country Music to Arkansas State Fair

by Julian Spivey
Mark Chesnutt, one of the most underrated voices in country music history, performed what amounted to a greatest hits show at the Arkansas State Fair in Little Rock, Ark. on Saturday, Oct. 20.
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Chesnutt began his set with “Goin’ Through the Big D,” a no. 2 hit for him in 1994, and right away you could tell the sound system at the Arkansas State Fair wasn’t at it’s best. The vocal was too low and drowned out quite a bit by the band. This would be something that would affect the performance, especially early on and during more raucous performances.

Chesnutt continued his show with a couple of more hits “Blame It on Texas,” from 1991, and “I Just Wanted You to Know,” one of his nine no. 1 hits from the ‘90s.

Chesnutt rode a wave of neotraditionalist country in the ‘90s becoming one of many big male vocalist stars along with artists like Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Clint Black, Travis Tritt, Tracy Lawrence, Joe Diffie and more and in my opinion is one of the truly underrated singers of his era.

Chesnutt pays tribute to a lot of his country music heroes, some of whom like George Jones would become close friends of his. In fact, Chesnutt was given one of George Jones’ guitar straps, which he wore proudly during his show on Saturday evening. Chesnutt played a terrific cover of Jones’ “(I’m a) One Woman Man.” He also performed “Talking to Hank,” which he and Jones did a duet of for Chesnutt’s 1992 sophomore album Longnecks & Short Stories. Chesnutt would also perform nice covers of Charlie Rich’s “Rollin’ with the Flow” and Willie Nelson’s “What a Way to Live.”

The great thing about legacy artists like Chesnutt is you’re going to get pretty much all of their greatest hits during their show and Chesnutt performed all but one of his No. 1 hits on Saturday night. That one he didn’t play was his final No. 1 from 1998, his cover of Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” which he’s actually rather embarrassed now about cutting.

Some of those other modern classics he performed during his set on Saturday were “Almost Goodbye,” which greatly showed off his fantastic vocals and the slower songs fixed the sound system issue a bit, and “Brother Jukebox.”

Chesnutt has a good number of honky-tonkers in his repertoire, which had the Arkansas State Fair crowd tapping their feet and swinging along like “Old Flames Have New Names,” “It’s a Little Too Late,” “It Sure Is Monday” and “Gonna Get a Life,” with those final three ending his set before he came back for a one-song encore of the ultimate honky-tonker “Bubba Shot the Jukebox,” much to the appreciation of the crowd.

My favorite performances of Chesnutt’s show on Saturday night, however, were the one-two punch of slow tearjerkers “Too Cold at Home,” the first single of his career that became a top five hit in 1990, and 1992’s “I’ll Think of Something,” which went to No. 1. These are two of the most beautifully written (“Too Cold at Home” by Bobby Harden and “I’ll Think of Something” by Bill Rice and Jerry Foster) and performed country heartbreakers of all-time and I really believe both may be among the 100 greatest country songs ever released.

It’s at both kind of disappointing and kind of fitting that it takes going to your local state fair these days to see some classic sounding country music, but Chesnutt brought the goods on Saturday night for sure. 

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