Kenny Chesney photo courtesy of kennychesney.com.

After hitting the concert trail for most of the last decade with summer tours that included a good share of stadium dates, Kenny Chesney rather famously stayed off the road for most of 2010, playing just a handful of shows and concentrating instead on his forthcoming album Hemingway’s Whiskey.

But Kenny’s also been thinking about 2011 when he will indeed be back out in full force, playing about 60 concerts, including some of those stadium gigs.

“I’ve already got a 3-D rendering of what our stage show will look like on my computer right now,” he told Billboard. “I can look at it from all angles. I don’t want to piece this thing together. If you go out like we do it, if we start in April or March, you can’t wait until January to piece this together.”

Kenny might not have launched a full-fledged tour this year, but he was certainly active during his downtime. Not only did he record the new album, he also produced a football documentary and spent two months in Los Angeles working on the concert film Kenny Chesney: Summer In 3D, which came out in April. The primary focus of the movie is, of course, the few hours he spent on stage during his 2009 tour, though there’s a lot more that goes into the job than simply showing up and taking over the spotlight. It was good for Kenny to have a break from those other parts of the routine.

“I didn’t miss going to catering every day at 5 o’clock,” he said. “I didn’t miss hanging out on the bus all day wasting time, doing certain things… But, boy, I tell you, I missed that first note every night. I missed the energy of the crowd. That’s what you hope you miss, and boy, I missed it.”

Kenny’s return to touring next year comes only after he launches the new album. Hemingway’s Whiskey is due Sept. 28.

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