In the current issue of EW, you can find my "backstage pass" feature on the touring circus that is country superstar Kenny Chesney's life. Over two days at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, we captured the fans, the partying, the camaraderie amongst his staff, and the bombastic live show from every angle. (You can even see a picture of me packed into the box they use to roll Chesney into the audience for the start of the show). But there's so much we didn't have room to include that's stuck with me after the two days I spent as a (relatively) sober fly on the wall in Chesney Land: He travels with a 235-pound stuffed blue marlin that he caught himself, for example; "Marley" serves as a sort of mascot, and a reminder not to take things too seriously out on the road. The tour has its own printed plastic cups, and goes through them at the approximate rate of a minor-league-baseball-stadium beer vendor. The Sun City Carnival employees travel with their own interior decorating, turning fluorescent-lit football locker rooms into moody lounges and tiki bars, installing a stripper pole in the production office (that reportedly very few people have dared to work), and commandeering one training area as the "Vibe Room," intended as a place for friends (old and new) to come together before and after the show, raise a cold one, and relax. The answer to the question "Who lives like we do?" is "WE DO!"

But despite all the trappings of his phenomenal success — the screaming girls, the parking-lot mob scene, the chance to travel the world with your buddies by your side — it was the final conversation I had with Chesney himself that hangs with me the most. Sweaty and beat from a show that ran a hard two hours, he'd collapsed in the cluttered back bedroom of his bus, surrounded by gym clothes and sneakers, a suitcase piled on the bed. In that moment, sans hat, he looked exactly like the "ordinary guy" he constantly claims to be. By way of a final question, I asked him, simply, "How long can you do this?" and he broke into a monologue more honest and open than anything he'd told me all weekend. "I can honestly say that my perspective of this is gonna change," he began, after a pause. "Things that I've done to put myself in a position to do certain things — I’ve had my foot on the gas pedal so hard for so long, and I've never looked at it as a sacrifice. Never. Not once. But…I can say that I don't see myself with the foot on the gas pedal as hard as it's been down for 16 years. I think there is a part of life that I'm missing."

Read on after the break as Chesney discusses his future, his desire to take a year off, and how Willie Nelson changed his life.

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