Country music icon opens up about health emergency: ‘I knew I was dying’

Mark Chesnutt and Daryle Singletary perform during 1 Night. 1 Place. 1 Time: A Heroes & Friends Tribute to Randy Travis at Bridgestone Arena on February 8, 2017, in Nashville, Tennessee.(Photo by Rick(Diamond/Getty Images for Outback Concerts)

Mark Chesnutt has been in the news plenty across the past year because he beat the odds, had a quadruple bypass, and is already back out on the road touring.

But, in a recent interview with American Songwriter, the 61-year-old country music star revealed that his heart issues last year were not the first time he nearly lost his life.

In fact, Chesnutt laid out a series of health issues that became progressively worse across the past couple of years. He had a fractured spine that he lived with for years that finally needed to be fixed.

And, while he was recovering from that back during the pandemic, he picked up a drinking habit that took control and nearly took his life, too. He was off the road because of the virus and laid up after having back surgery.

“It was getting worse and worse, and my surgery was a major major one,” he said. “I couldn’t work. I was laid up, didn’t drive, couldn’t walk, couldn’t do anything.”

Chesnutt said he “drank all day, every day.”

“I’d get up in the middle of the night and drink,” he said. “I’d never stop.”

Chesnutt said he grew up in a time when “it was normal for everybody to drink all the time.”

“I just took it to the extreme,” he said, “and it about killed me.”

That is when he said he had his wife call for an ambulance.

“I knew I was dying,” he said.

American Songwriter reported that doctors gave the singer four blood transfusions and told him his heart was “one the edge of cardiac arrest.” Chesnutt said they told his wife is she had not called when she did, he likely would not have survived another two days. The singer told the site he was in a Knoxville hospital for a week where he learned that all of his organs, and especially his heart, were on the verge of shutting down.

“I was bleeding out from my inside,” Chesnutt said. “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 I 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.”

He told American Songwriter he took his last drink on November 1, 2023.

Then, in 2024, he dealt with the heart again and had the quadruple bypass. So, it has been a remarkable comeback for Chesnutt, who is out on the road touring now.