Aldean’s star status is already set, but the core values in that song were also part of city life

Aldean’s star status is already set, but the core values in that song were also part of city life
Wharf concert season closes out with Aldean, Turnpike Troubadours, Willie’s Outlaw Fest & Hardy

By Fran Thompson
Jason Aldean was going to sell out his Aug. 26 concert at The Wharf Amphitheater anyway. He did not need the overwhelmingly positive support that followed Country Music Television’s decision to pull the video of Try That in a Small Town from its rotation earlier this month.
Fans streamed the song and video 11.7 million times in the week following CMT’s censure, up from an already impressive 987,000 streams the week before. Aldean is a major country music draw. He sold out Boston’s historic Fenway Park in seven minutes way back in 2012.
Tickets for his current tour were on the secondary market before CMT pulled the video. A couple tickets in the very top corner of The Wharf Amphitheater were selling for $99 each plus fees on Aug. 20. Re-sellers were asking $434 each plus fees for two in the general admission pit.
“To me, this song summarizes the way a lot of people feel about the world right now. It seems like there are bad things happening on a daily basis, and that feels unfamiliar to a lot of us. This song sheds some light on that,” Aldean said when the song was released in May.
There was no controversy before the video for the song penned by Kurt Allison, Tully Kennedy, Kelley Lovelace and Neil Thrasher hit CMT two months later (July 14). ) But mass attention and conjecture immediately followed.
“There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it – and there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage – and while I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music – this one goes too far,” Aldean wrote in a post censure tweet. “The song refers to the feeling of a community that I had growing up, where we took care of our neighbors, regardless of differences of background or belief.”
I didn’t pay attention to any of this until Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon chimed in with a local take.
“For me, for the woke mob to say a word about a man who is writing a song about trying to eliminate violence, with this same group of mobsters who are glorifying gangster rap and pop art, desecration of women, gun violence, gangs, drugs, the list goes on and on, this is an example of fakes and frauds and hypocrites the woke society, until the silent majority stands up, they are going to keep on bullying,” Mayor Kennon said.
To that point, just this month, Louisiana passed the Restoring Artistic Protection Act, changing parts of state law to prevent creative or artistic expression from being used to establish a defendant’s character in court.
The new law is a direct response to St. Tammany Parish prosecutors using lyrics from rapper Mac Phipps’ music to paint him as capable of murdering 19-year-old Barron Victor Jr. at a Slidell club in February of 2000. Phipps was convicted by a split jury of manslaughter and sentenced to 30 years in prison. After numerous discrepancies came to light, he was granted clemency in 2021.
As Jake Clapp stated in Gambit Weekly, “No one would really believe that Johnny Cash shot a man in Reno, right?’’
No sane person would assume that Jason Aldean is in favor of lynching black people because part of the Small Town video was shot in a Tennessee courthouse where a black man (Henry Choate) was lynched back in 1927. Numerous other music videos and movies have been filmed there and to even give that opinion any tread is just creating controversy out of thin air.
As for lines like “Stomp on the flag and light it up,” “Well, that (expletive) might fly in the city, good luck / Try that in a small town,” the insinuation is that those kind of actions would be met with vigilante justice.
Does the song promote violent retribution? That is insinuated. The song also suggests that the woke mob is going to go into small towns and confiscate guns. Who are the wokes doing that?
Aldean warns that trying to “round up” firearms won’t “fly” in a small town. Would rounding up un-registered firearms and increasing penalties for possessing stolen firearms fly? I hope so.
Aldean said the song is about the sense of community and respect that comes with growing up in a small town getting lost, while critics say the song promotes violence.
I grew up surrounded by one-way streets and block after block of row houses inhabitated by second generation immigrant parents living the American dream. We never locked our door. There were maybe 50 homes between us, but my mom grew up 100 yards from where we did. First cousins were always a short walk away. So were countless housewives ready to call my mom, if they saw me doing what I already knew was wrong. The center of our lives was Most Blessed Sacrament Church. I attended MBS school with 3,000 other kids. It was the largest parochial school in the country.
Small towns do not have a monopoly on promoting and perpetuating values such as faith, family, hard work and patriotism. Parents and mentors do.
Kingsessing, the most densely populated neighborhood in what was then the third largest city in America, was all about looking out for each other right down to dads taking orders from neighbors before making a run down to the stand by the airport to pick up watermelons.
A mass shooting less than a quarter mile from my childhood home claimed the lives of five people and left four others wounded on July 3. It is horrifying to know that this is happening in towns big and small.
Aldean was also in the national spotlight when a gunman perched on a hotel balcony shot repeatedly into the crowd at the Las Vegas Route 91 Harvest Festival in 2017, killing 58 people and injuring hundreds of others. It was the deadliest mass shooting in American history. Where does that pure evil fit into what’s happening in the country we love?
This trip through the national news cycle will help Aldean gain even more fans. Morgan Wallen faced backlash in 2021 when he was caught on video using the N-word. He apologized. His music was pulled from CMT while his album sales spiked. A year later he won the ACM Album of the Year.
Aldean has 27 no. one singles, 15 billion streams and has sold 20 million albums. He is the reigning ACM Artist of the Decade.
Why not take him at his word and move on?
Tickets are available at the Wharf box office for remaining amphitheater shows this season – The Turnpike Troubadours on Sept. 2 at 7 p.m.; Willie Nelson’s Outlaw Music Fest with The Avett Brothers, Gov’t Mule and other guests on Oct. 8 at 4 p.m. and Hardy on Oct. 14 at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets are available for all three at ticketmaster.com and the Wharf box office.