Kenny Chesney onstage at Royale in Boston.

More than 700 fans filled every seat at Boston’s Royale on a blustery Thursday evening, Aug. 25. Many were there for the rare opportunity of seeing Country superstar Kenny Chesney in a venue more intimate than the stadiums he routinely sells out. But everyone left that night with something most had not expected: a glimpse into the world of Music City’s greatest songwriters.

For seven years, CMA Songwriters Series has illuminated audiences in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Nashville. This was its first appearance in Boston, with Bob DiPiero reprising his role as emcee. Every other participant had penned one or more of Chesney’s hits, including Matraca Berg (“You and Tequila”), Brett James (“When the Sun Goes Down” and “Out Last Night”), Wendell Mobley (“There Goes My Life”) and Craig Wiseman (“The Good Stuff” and “Summertime”).

“To debut the CMA Songwriters Series in a new city is the most fun thing you can do because they don’t know what to expect,” said James. “They came here tonight to hear Kenny Chesney. They don’t know who I am. They don’t know who any of these other songwriters are. But they’re going to get something they’ve probably never experienced before.”

“Especially when there’s not an iconic performer like Kenny involved, people who come to CMA Songwriters Series are beyond being fans. They’re Country Music archaeologists,” added DiPiero. “They want to see what all this is about. You see this recognition on their faces while you’re singing a song they’ve always connected to an artist, like, ‘Didn’t Tim McGraw write this song?’ Well, no, this guy right here wrote the song. It’s a real, immediate connection.”

In line outside the Royale entry on Tremont Street, Rob Connor, 27, and his wife Dana, 26, from Peabody, Mass., identified themselves as serious Chesney fans; they even picked “You Save Me” (Brett James and Troy Verges) as their wedding song. But their broader appreciation of Country in general, as well as the CMA Songwriters Series concept, also drew them to this event.

“It’s sung from the heart,” Dana said. “I like how every song means something to whoever wrote it. You can always find a way to relate to it. I try to turn all my non-Country friends into Country fans, just by telling them, ‘Listen to the words!’”

“This is actually our first Country gig,” said Jamison LaGuardia, Director of Marketing and Events at Royale. “My concert promoter, The Bowery Presents, and I have been intrigued with getting the Country aspect involved here in Boston. It’s got a huge fan base; I believe it took just three hours for us to sell out. Kenny has a huge name, but because this is our first dive into Country, people got excited really fast when they heard about it.”

Built in 1918, Royale retains its historic elegance, with Deco statuary and original gold etchings on the dark red balconies and black ceiling, all restored in 2010. All types of music are booked here, but the CMA Songwriters Series marked the first time that the dance floor was converted to table seating. Picture Vision Pictures was on hand with four stationary cameras and one handheld, streaming the event and subsequently posting an edited version at CMASongwritersSeries.com. A crew from Chesney’s NoShoesRadio.com was also set up to stream the event live.

Following an intro from Lori Grande of WKLB “Country 102.5,” the songwriters filed in to wild applause. Chesney, the first to perform, helped frame the purpose of the Series by saying, “You all may or may not know, but these are my heroes up here. When I first moved to Nashville, I had a few songs and that’s about it. I looked up to  people like Matraca Berg and Bob DiPiero, and all the songs that Craig and Wendell and Brett wrote, to be able to learn from them and sit up here with them and swap songs. That’s all I wanted.”

His performance of “I Can’t Go There” (Chesney and Skip Ewing) got the ball rolling on more than two hours of music, insight into the genesis of some major hits and a good bit of belly-laugh bantering. Recounting the process behind writing “Take Me There,” Chesney said, “I’ll call Wendell and another friend of ours, Neil Thrasher, at two or three in the morning, after I’ve had a little bit of Grandpa’s cough medicine and I’m thinking that every dumb idea I have is genius. Sometimes when I call Wendell, there’s silence. But every now and then he’ll go, ‘Awesome.’ Thank God there wasn’t silence with this song.”

“I think I can speak for everybody up here,” Mobley replied. “If Kenny drunk-dials you at midnight trying to rhyme ‘alligator’ with ‘Volkswagen,’ you’re going to take the call.”

The music, the stories and the camaraderie left a strong impression. Die-hard Bruce Springsteen follower Rocco Coviello, who has chronicled the Boss’s career for more than 30 years in photographs, admitted to leaving with a new respect for Country Music.

“It took my three daughters to get me to look at Country and to realize that they’re talking about love and loss and being thankful. They talk about heartland. They talk about America. They talk about family. They talk about values. To see the similarities with Bruce’s music is so wonderful: The simplicity is in telling the story. The complexity is putting it into music that taps into the emotion that a greater number of people can feel. The passion is what it’s all about.”