Saturday Night Headliner
Don’t miss Casey Chesnutt—Texas country grit, Red Dirt energy, and a modern edge—closing out
Saturday night at Louisiana Railroad Days Festival 2026.
About Casey
Casey Chesnutt is a doting dad, a thriving musician, and a proud veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps who drives his truck more than 3,000 miles each week to visit his three-year-old daughter and play gigs. His famous last name is one of country music royalty, but Casey isn’t leaning on it for a leg up in the music business. He’s forging his own path—first through the Texas country scene and now determined to cultivate his unique version of modern country music.
Casey, the son of “Too Cold At Home” singer Mark Chesnutt, grew up surrounded by ’90s country. By the time he was a teenager, Casey started to develop his own diverse taste in music and dug into the Texas Red Dirt scene. Cross Canadian Ragweed is among his most significant influences, closely followed by Reckless Kelly, Randy Rogers, Stoney LaRue, and Wade Bowen. But Cody Canada’s Cross Canadian Ragweed made the most significant impact.
“It was a little more rock and roll, and they had long hair, and they just were like rock stars,” Casey said. “But it was really dirty, kind of like raw gritty sound, kind of like Lynyrd Skynyrd, but cooler. That’s what I started listening to and really fell in love with.”
As Casey got older, he started trying to write similar songs. But his artistic point of view confused those in his inner circle. His dad is a nationally known country artist, and Texas Red Dirt is niche with limited reach.
“Everybody was like, ‘What’s this?'” Casey said. “But that’s what I loved and wanted my sound to be like.”
After Casey finished his time in the Marine Corps, he intensely focused on his music and chasing his creative dreams. He knew his songs wouldn’t work in mainstream country because people heard his last name and expected a ’90s country sound. He unsuccessfully tried to write ’90s country music, but one of his friends penned a song called “Even Texas Couldn’t Hold Her” that he thought would resonate with ’90s country fans. Casey recorded it, and the result toed the line of the music he wanted to make and what people expected to hear from him. After that song was well-received, the young singer felt more comfortable recording and promoting his own music.