Eleven months ago, Mark Chesnutt‘s wife called an ambulance to pick him up from his tour bus after a show. It was the second time she’d had to make that emergency call in the last few years.
Chesnutt and his wife, Tracie, had moved back to Texas a few months prior, and the famed ’90s country singer had endured pain in his arm long before that. On Saturday night near Houston, Texas, Chesnutt barely made it through his show. His wife had begged him to cancel it, but he refused. He barely made it back to the bus from the stage. His bus rolled out, and Tracie made the call. The ambulance met the bus before they got home, and by the end of the night, Chesnutt had an emergency quadruple bypass heart surgery.
He hadn’t had a heart attack yet, but he was dangerously close.
“I almost died,” Chesnutt says. “I worked through that after the heart surgery, did more therapy, took another three months off, and now I’m back and doing better than average.”
Not only is he back, but Chesnutt is ready to go on tour. He just announced his 2025-2026 Redemption Tour. He’s been on a years-long journey to reclaim his health. With his heart, back, and sobriety stronger than ever, Chesnutt is anxious to get back where he belongs – on stage.
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Mark Chesnutt Plans Redemption Tour
While back pain is something he fought for most of his adult life, Chesnutt said it was 2021 when everything started “going crazy.” And he doesn’t mean the way his life went wild when his country music career took off in the ’90s.
With hits including “Too Cold at Home,” “Brother Jukebox,” and “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” Chesnutt’s career exploded with the songs carrying him from honky-tonk stages to being one of the decade’s most reliable hit makers. He signed a record deal with MCA Nashville in 1989 and was notching chart-toppers within one year. By the end of the ’90s, he earned 14 No. 1 hits, 23 Top 10 songs, and sold more than 12 million albums. Chesnutt had also married and became a dad in the same time frame.
2021 was a different kind of chaos – the kind that includes career-threatening back surgery and potentially fatal alcoholism.
Chesnutt’s health was imploding. Some of it, Chesnutt admits, was his fault. Some of it wasn’t. He had lived with a fractured spine for years, with his condition deteriorating further over time. His spine was fractured in three places when he stopped to have back surgery.
“Back then, when it happened, it was just a small fracture of the spine,” Chesnutt explains. “In them days, they didn’t know how to fix it, and I couldn’t fix it, so I just lived with it.”
Chesnutt’s spine was somewhat healed, and other than his back being curved, it didn’t cause him many problems. Until it did. He lost the ability to walk and fell down the escalator at the Houston airport.
“It was just bone-on-bone, and I had a lot of nerve damage,” Chesnutt says. “I just couldn’t keep my balance anymore. Doctors told me if I didn’t stop and have surgery, I was gonna be crippled.”
Mark Chesnutt: “I was Gonna Be Crippled”
Having weathered the first year of the pandemic, he had started drinking more, too. Chesnutt was always fond of a few beers, but SARS-CoV-2 forcing him from tour worsened an already dangerous habit.
“It was getting worse and worse, and my surgery was a major major one,” he says, explaining doctors scraped scar tissue off his nerves and that he now has two titanium rods in his back. His recovery was long, and because of the virus and social distancing, the singer had to delay his much-needed physical therapy by six months.
He recalls: “I couldn’t work. I was laid up, didn’t drive, couldn’t walk, couldn’t do anything.”
Chesnutt had to use a walker, couldn’t eat, and his weight dropped to 135 lbs. But he could drink.
“I was pretty much a mess for several years there.”
Chesnutt started physical therapy in 2022. The singer and his wife moved to Tennessee during that time for what he said was “some stupid, unknown reason.”
Then he returned to tour before his back – or his addiction—was healed. Chesnutt couldn’t stand on stage and could barely walk to the stool from which he had to sing. After several months, the singer regained his strength and could perform without sitting. He still struggled with balance and frequently fell. Then alcoholism made him desperately sick, and he had to go back to the hospital.
“I Drank All Day, Every Day”
“I drank all day, every day,” Chesnutt admits. “I’d get up in the middle of the night and drink. I’d never stop.”
The singer had been a heavy drinker most of his adult life. He was in the music business, where overconsumption can feel like the job description. And all his heroes drank. To him, he was just following in their footsteps. Living through the solitary nature and slowed pace of the pandemic, combined with ongoing back pain, pushed Chesnutt further into addiction.
“Back in those days, it was normal for everybody to drink all the time,” he said. “I just took it to the extreme, and it about killed me.”
Chesnutt knew he needed help. He didn’t want to check into an alcohol rehabilitation center because he was afraid his presence would leak to the tabloids. He told his wife to call an ambulance because he didn’t know another way to get help. They were in Knoxville, Tennessee – a different emergency trip to the hospital than in June of 2024.
“I knew I was dying,” he says.
Doctors gave Chesnutt four blood transfusions. He learned his heart was on the edge of cardiac arrest and that if his wife hadn’t called an ambulance when she did, he probably wouldn’t have survived the following two days. Chesnutt stayed in the Knoxville hospital for a week and learned that all his organs, especially his heart, were shutting down. He had esophageal varices, a common complication of cirrhosis.
Mark Chesnutt was Bleeding Out From Inside
“I was bleeding out from my inside,” he explains. “They basically told me they were gonna get me over this, and I was going to be fine, and they could fix everything wrong with me. But if they discharged me and I went home and started drinking again, I’d be back in a matter of days, and I might not leave alive. I had to quit drinking or die.”
Chesnutt took his last drink on November 1, 2023. He was 60 years old.
“I prayed for so long for something to make me realize that I had to stop drinking, and I couldn’t do it on my own,” he says. “I couldn’t talk to anybody about it.”
Then Chesnutt had to learn how to live life as a sober person. When he quit drinking, he quit any substance stronger than the caffeine in his coffee. Sobriety scared Chesnutt. He had to do band rehearsals without alcohol for the first time. He had never been on stage without having at least a few drinks.
“I wasn’t blasted every time, but I was close,” he says.
Rehearsals started in February of 2024. Chesnutt told his wife he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to do it.
The Singer Has Dedicated Himself to Sobriety
“I walked up there, started my set list, and said, ‘Well, let’s take it from the top of the set,” he says.
The Texan remembered every word to every song and knew his voice had never sounded better.
“I thought to myself, ‘What in the Hell was the big deal?” he admits “Why did I think for so many years that I needed to drink?”
With his heart, mind, and body healthy, Chesnutt is gearing up for his 2025-2026 Redemption Tour– more dedicated to sobriety than ever and equally determined to deliver the most compelling shows of his career.
“Mark Chesnutt gave honkytonk music back its soul,” noted music critic Robert K. Oermann. “When Chesnutt appeared on an arid musical landscape back in 1990, I dubbed him the hillbilly messiah. I still feel that way today, and I’ll feel that way decades from now.”
George Jones frequently told Chesnutt that Chesnutt reminded him of himself at that age. He now understands Jones wasn’t talking about his singing.
“He always told me, ‘You better watch it,’” he said. “I wish he could’ve been proud of me, but I’m telling you, I’ve been enjoying sobriety now. I’m alive, and I’m so excited to see what’s going on right now with Zach Top and traditional country music. I’m glad I lived long enough to see this happen because I almost didn’t make it.”
(Photo by David “Doc” Abbott)
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