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Article

The Country #1 Hit Video That's a Part of Myrtle Beach History

  By  Kathryn Hedgepath

Country music fans and others welcome Kenny Chesney back to the CCMF, the Carolina Country Music Festival, for a second time.  He first graced the big stage in 2017 as the headliner for our third festival.  As increasingly notable names filled that spot as the years progressed, it was beginning to sink in that, not only did we have an event that could stand the test of time, but one that could attract the biggest names in country music. 

By the time it was announced that he’d be returning in 2023, the CCMF had twice been nominated by the Academy of Country Music as one of the top country music festivals in the world.  However, a hitch threatened to tarnish the reputation of our sold-out event:  one of the headliners couldn’t sing and had to pull out.  With just weeks to go before the festival, Kenny Chesney swoops in to save the day and fill in for that other star who was now on vocal rest.  And we thought we couldn’t love him more.

Kenny Chesney has held a spot in my heart in regard to Myrtle Beach since 2004.  My husband, Jenks, and I were married in the spring of that year and in that August, I was away from him for the first time when I went to the US Open (for tennis, not golf) in New York.  We had friends up there at the time who had achieved some impressive accomplishments in their careers.  When I called Jenks as I was headed home, I teased him that I had been lunching with the top radio newscaster in NYC and a New York Times bestselling author.  Of course, he knew whom I was talking about, but very much to my surprise he replied, “Well, I met Kenny Chesney!”

Jenks had received a phone call from a friend who had heard a rumor that the country star was in town shooting a video on the beach in the Cabana Section.  That is the stretch between 52nd and 62nd Avenues on North Ocean Boulevard named for the small structures built along the dunes to provide a haven from the elements while visiting the beach.  They are privately owned, but the owners can’t live in them or even spend the night in them. 

Since he was nearby, Jenks makes his way there and soon sees a film crew at work.  Again, it’s 2004, so he takes his small camcorder with him because his phone didn’t take videos back then. 

When he arrived at the cabana, there was no barrier set up, so he began shooting from the sidewalk.  The crew was about ten yards away on break and enjoying cold cuts being served on a folding table.

About five seconds later, a guy in a baseball cap about Jenks’ size (we are both 5’5”) points at him and firmly says, “You can’t do that.”  When he asked why, the guy said that they were shooting a video and they couldn’t have him posting his footage on the Internet.  Jenks said that he didn’t know how to do that [in 2004], and the guy replied, “We don’t know that you don’t know how to do that.” 

Thankfully, I was thousands of miles away, because I think I would have been mortified because the guy in the baseball cap who called him out was Kenny Chesney himself.  He was actually really nice about the whole thing and told Jenks that he could take stills, just not video.  My hubby quickly went back to the car and exchanged his camcorder for his Canon SLR to take a few shots. 

Meanwhile, the friend who had alerted Jenks shows up and Kenny graciously agrees to have some photos taken with her.  Their brush with fame was all over in about five minutes.  Apparently, they were the only looky-loos that day.  A few people passing by on the sidewalk seemed oblivious to what was going on. 

Fifteen years later, we’re sitting in a bar on the US Virgin Island of St. John where Kenny has a vacation home.  Jenks asks the bartender at The Quiet Mon Pub if Kenny ever actually came to that bar which he had mentioned in more than one of his songs, and the bartender said, “Absolutely he does.  As a matter of fact, you just missed him.  He was here last week.”  I suppose one brush with fame was enough…

While Jenks was engaging with the country star that day at the cabana, he had asked him which song the video was for.  Still protecting the privacy of the project, Kenny said, “I can’t tell you that…but if you listen to the album [When the Sun Goes Down] it will be perfectly obvious.”  The song was “Anything But Mine.”

On Tuesdays, I point out that cabana to my guests and tell them about the video.  I say that, even if they don’t normally listen to country music, it is worth their while to look up the video online (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6c8a90PWIM). 

It’s a cute song about a guy who comes to Myrtle Beach for the summer, and falls for Mary, a local girl.  But now the summer’s coming to an end, he’s headed home, and the relationship was never meant to be. 

When Mary is reading her “Dear Jane” letter, listening to her cassette of Kenny Chesney on her little boom box, and wistfully looking out to sea, she is in that cabana.  The cabana is still there, but other featured locations are not.

The video shows some great scenes of the Myrtle Beach Pavilion and the amusement park across the street from it about two years before they were razed.  Footage from another local amusement park was spliced in where the “Hurricane” ride from the Family Kingdom is seen with the band in the foreground. 

Elsewhere in that park, you will still find today our Swamp Fox roller coaster.  One of only about 115 wooden roller coasters still left in the country, it is named for the South Carolina Revolutionary War hero, Frances Marion, and made its debut in 1966.  It made its second debut in 1992 after being pummeled by an actual hurricane.  That was Hugo in 1989.

The lyrics of "Anything But Mine" really capture the sounds of summer in Myrtle Beach. 

You can hear the cries from the carnival rides

The pinball bells, and the skee ball slides

The songwriter who penned those words is North Carolina native, Travis Hill, known in the music world as Scooter Carusoe.  To sum up his career, he has written a lot of hits for a lot of stars.  He’s been considered one of the greats for a long time.  But he’s a little bit more than that.

According to Billboard Magazine, when Sony was able to sign a fifteen-year-old prodigy back in the nineties, they found that they were facing some unusual challenges.  The first was that they had to work around her high school schedule.  Then they had to take a special approach to finding the best songwriting collaborators.  Normally, they sign an artist, fly in one of the best writers in the industry, they hammer out a hit song, and the writer leaves. 

Sony found it a little more complicated to ask someone who excels in their field to lend their talents to a teenager.  They needed to find a talent who would listen to that teen and serve as a mentor to really launch her career.  Scooter Carusoe was one of the chosen.  Oh, and that teen, that was Taylor Swift. 

Kathryn Hedgepath

Myrtle Beach native, Kathryn Hedgepath, loves to share her hometown’s history with visitors and newcomers to the Grand Strand.  She is the creator and narrator of the Myrtle Beach History Trolley and Step-On Tours, and the author of the book, Myrtle Beach Movies, that tells the stories behind the motion pictures that were made or premiered in Myrtle Beach.  She has traveled in 40 countries on 6 continents and uses her experience to convey our local history through a world lens. Kathryn returned home from NYC in 2002 to marry her beloved husband, Jenks, after a career in television and publishing (and even worked in Space Shuttle Operations at NASA Headquarters in DC for a semester before starting grad school at Georgetown University).  Her first career job was as Personal Assistant to television icon and wildlife expert, Jim Fowler, of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom fame. Her dad, Myrtle Beach’s first veterinarian, arranged the job interview when Jim Fowler came to Myrtle Beach for a speaking appearance at a veterinary conference in 1991.