Last year, country star Kenny Chesney personally asked Gavin DeGraw to perform a cover of his song “Somewhere With You” at the 2011 CMT Artists of the Year ceremony. In a recent interview with WQYK 99.5′s sister station, Fresh 102.7/New York, DeGraw said he took on the challenge without knowing the song he’d be performing had several words sung at a really fast pace.

“I took this on not realizing that the song, ‘Somewhere With You,’ had more words than any song I had ever heard,” DeGraw said. “There were thousands of words, pages and pages of words.”

DeGraw explained how Chesney would ask him how things were going in regards to the song, and all he could think about was all the words he had to memorize.

Before the performance, Gavin had an idea. He took the time to re-write the lyrics, specifically spacing out the words for the teleprompter, thinking that he would be reading from side to side. Once he got on stage to perform, he said he became extremely nervous when he realized the crowd was full of A-list country music stars, and the teleprompter screen read downwards instead of sideways. It was also about 30 yards away, where he could barely read it.

“Man, I was freaking out,” he recalled.

He said he has yet to watch a video of the performance but guesses that he looks like he’s really into the song, squinting at a bright light when was actually trying to read all of Kenny’s lyrics.

“It was like a government eye test to get your drivers license,” he said. “They’re like ‘Can you read the very, very, very bottom?’ You know what I mean?”

After the show, DeGraw and Chesney were hanging out when Gavin mentioned that he owned a bar, The National Underground, in Nashville. He said Chesney immediately wanted to play at his bar with him.

Gavin’s response: “I was like, ‘Kenny Chesney, if you play my bar, I will cover any one of your songs at any moment, but never this song ever again.’”

- Sarah Scroggins, CBS Local/Fresh 102.7