Songfacts®:

• The first cut on Kenny Chesney's The Big Revival album is also the title track. The song depicts an old-time church service, complete with speaking in tongues and snake handling. "The philosophy behind putting 'The Big Revival' first was to set a tone," Chesney told Radio.com. "There's things about religion that I don't necessarily agree with or understand, but I'm a big believer in spirituality — I've seen songs change people, and that's spiritual."
  
  "But 'The Big Revival' is really about picking yourself up off the bottom, reclaiming your soul, restarting," he continued. "That was everything I wanted to say to my audience - and you have to think about that, you have to think 'Okay, we took a year off, now what am I going to say to these people, who have been there for me for a long time?' And the idea of 'The Big Revival' was it."
• The song was written by songwriter Dennis Linde, who is best known for penning the 1972 Elvis Presley hit, "Burning Love" and Dixie Chicks' 1999 murder ballad "Goodbye Earl." It was previously recorded by John Anderson in 2001 and Montgomery Gentry in 2008.