Jason Aldean bringing controversy, new music to Des Moines tour stop

This summer, Jason Aldean is doing what he’s done nearly every year around this time since he arrived on the country music scene in 2005. He’s going on tour, headlining amphitheater shows across the country, including the closing concert Sunday night at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines.

To hear him tell it, this summer ritual never gets old.

“That’s always kind of been my favorite part, the live touring and being on the road and playing music,” Aldean said in a mid-July phone interview. “I’m not really a studio rat guy. I’m not a guy that just loves going in the studio and stays in there all the time. When we go cut an album, I want to get in there, get it done, knock it out and then I want to go tour.

“I want to put the album out so we can go tour. So that’s always been my favorite part, and I think even more so now because I feel like the pressure’s off a little bit. In the early days, you’re still trying to prove yourself and make sure you have a career. I feel like I’ve succeeded at that. It takes a little bit of the pressure off now to where I can really go and kind of have fun.”

Small town, big controversy

One thing that has been different this summer: Aldean is touring while weathering a storm of controversy over his latest single, “Try That in a Small Town,” which is earmarked to be on a new album he plans to release this fall. The song decries senseless big-city crime, but is getting criticized as an anti-Black Lives Matter song that celebrates a brand of vigilante justice where townspeople take care of their own.

CMT recently pulled the video for the song after it was learned the backdrop for the video — the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tenn. — is where Henry Choate, an 18-year-old Black man, was lynched in 1927. It also was the scene of a 1946 race riot.

Aldean has defended “Try That in a Small Town,” saying in a statement the song wasn’t meant to deal with race and was a tribute to communities that come together to support each other in times of trouble. It’s also been noted that the singer didn’t choose the Maury County Courthouse as the site to film the video. Aldean also commented on the song in this interview.

“Like ‘Try That in a Small Town,’ it’s just one of those things that I felt like was something I wanted to say. Like most everybody, I watch the news every night and see what’s going on in our world, and it’s crazy and insane, and it’s just not something I can still wrap my head around,” Aldean said.

“You get a song like this that comes along and it says everything you want to say, and it’s like man, I want to cut that and I want to get it out as soon as possible. So that was why that song became the lead single, and I think there’s a little bit of that on the (next) album. But also, I write songs and have ideas about things that I’ve experienced in life, like most writers. You draw from experience, so there’s a lot of that kind of stuff on this album, as well.”

Time will tell if the controversy over “Try That in a Small Town” will ease anytime soon or if it will give a boost to his next album, the 11th of his career. That next album will continue a prolific period that has seen Aldean release four albums since 2018, the most recent of which were his companion albums, “Macon” and “Georgia,” which arrived in 2021 and 2022 respectively.

Beyond being efficient with his time in the studio, one thing that probably has helped enable Aldean to release so much music lately is he’s relied on outside songwriters for nearly all of his most recent material — which means Aldean hasn’t had to set aside time for songwriting.

That, however, has changed with the next album.

Back to writing

“I got back in the writer’s chair for this album. So I’ve got things that I wrote on the upcoming album,” Aldean said. “I think people forget that I moved to town as a songwriter. I was writing for Warner Bros. And it still is a part of what I do. I can do it. I don’t love it, and I don’t know how to say it.

“Sitting in a room for me for hours at a time trying to come up with something is torture. I’m just not good at that. I don’t like to feel like I’m closed in an office. I have to approach it in a different way. So for this album, I wanted to get back into that a little bit and I found a way that works for me a little bit.”

A key step for Aldean in putting his writing hat back came when he formed a new publishing company, Triple Play Music, with band members Kurt Allison (guitar) and Tully Kennedy (bass).

“Those guys have been on fire recently. They wrote ‘Trouble with a Heartbreak,’ they wrote ‘If I Didn’t Love You,’ the big Carrie Underwood duet that we had, ‘Try That in a Small Town,’ they wrote that new single that we’ve got out,” Aldean said. “They had just been after me to get in and start writing.”

Aldean made his first inroads in the country music community as a songwriter, signing with Warner-Chappell in 1998. He soon got a record deal with Capitol Records, only to leave the label after growing frustrated waiting to get the go-ahead to make a first album.

He struggled to find a new record deal and was ready to move back to Macon and get a regular job to support his wife and newborn child when indie label Broken Bow Records offered a contract.

Building momentum

Broken Bow’s commitment had a quick payoff. Aldean’s 2005 self-titled debut album turned out a No. 1 single, “Why,” and two top 10 songs, “Hicktown” and “Amarillo Sky.”

He’s been on an unbroken roll since then. Most of his 10 subsequent albums have topped Billboard magazine’s country album charts. Along the way, he’s piled up 27 No. 1 songs, with the aforementioned “If I Didn’t Love You” and “Trouble with a Heartbreak” being the most recent chart toppers.

Aldean said his next album will continue down a similar musical path as his other releases, with several musical genres working their way into a mix of hefty rock-tinged songs and sturdy, melodic ballads.

“I think at this point, when you listen to any of the albums I’ve done, my sound and what I do is just what I do,” he said. “There’s going to be some rock ’n’ roll influence in there, obviously a lot of country music influence, some pop and hip-hop-type stuff. It’s what I’ve done my whole career.”

Aldean can’t fit all of his hits into his live shows anymore, but he puts a good deal of effort into crafting a crowd-pleasing selection of songs.

“Every year, I really sit down and try to come up with a set list that I feel like is cool, that people are going to get their money’s worth when they come to a show and try to figure out a way to play some of the things that everybody knows from year’s past, and also some songs that we’ve done recently,” he said. “It’s a little tricky sometimes.”