Every Old School country crooner with scores of number-one hits and more than 30 million albums sold around the world needs a deluxe spread in nearby proximity to Nashville to hang his ten-gallon hat and for the last dozen years Kenny Chesney has bunked down in splendid seclusion on 56 bucolic acres in Franklin, Tenn., about a half-hour’s drive south of Music City.
Though some might say his salad days were a dozen or more years ago, when the Country Music Association awarded him their Entertainer of the Year Award four consecutive times, from 2005 through 2008, Chesney remains a popular entertainer who’s collaborated on songs with a wide variety of artists from Pink and Uncle Kracker to Jimmy Buffett, Reba McEntire and Ziggy Marley. His most recent album, “Here and Now” released last year, debuted at number one — it’s his 16th top 10 album on the US Billboard 200, and, after it was delayed due to Covid-19, he’s now scheduled to embark on a 20-city American tour to promote the album next year.
It was in 2009, about four years after his ever-so-brief and tabloid-obsessed four-month marriage to Renée Zellweger, that Chesney plunked down $9.25 million for his longtime Franklin home that he’s now got on the market with Laura Stroud and Lisa Fernandez-Wilson at French King Fine Properties at nearly $14 million.
The estate’s two gated drives snake across rolling fields and through dense woods before they meet up in a circular drive at the front of the 12,599-square-foot, four-bedroom stone-and-brick residence that more than a little resembles a monastery, down to the faux-aged columns that line the cloistered entrance courtyard.