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Georgia native Jason Aldean began playing music in nightclubs when he was 15 years old.
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He’s country
Hitmaker Jason Aldean wraps up the 2009 Bend Summer Concerts series
By Ben Salmon / The Bulletin
Last modified: September 10. 2009 1:16PM PST‘All of a sudden.”
Jason Aldean uses that phrase three times in the first three minutes of his interview with The Bulletin.
It’s understandable. Aldean — a native Georgian with a booming voice and a cowboy hat on his head seemingly ‘round the clock — has been on the radar of country music fans for a few years; he’s sold more than two million copies of his first two albums and racked up a handful of hit singles. And he has worked toward a career in country for more than half his life.
But with the release of his third album, “Wide Open,” in April, Aldean’s profile has skyrocketed. The album’s first single, “She’s Country,” is a country-rock hybrid, where banjo coexists with hard-rock guitar riffs and Aldean sings the praises of a pretty woman with a pickup truck, a thick Southern drawl, cowboy boots and down-home roots.
It’s also one of the biggest country hits of the year, and it’s made Aldean one of his genre’s newest stars. His videos run constantly on CMT, and he’s now headlining venues like Les Schwab Amphitheater in Bend, where he’ll perform on Thursday (see “If you go”).
Even if you spend years paying your dues in America’s dim nightclubs, a surge in success as big as Aldean has experienced this year can be a shock. He called The Bulletin last week and talked about what it’s like being on the launch pad.
GO!: How bizarre has 2009 been for you? Or have you been able to hold on to a sense of normalcy?
JA: I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a little weird. This is our fifth year out on the road ... since I got my record deal, and things have always been pretty good. Our singles have done well and it’s not like we weren’t steadily making progress every year, because we were. It just seems like all of a sudden this year it just blew up and in a good way.
It just goes to show you what having one big song can do for you. People are kind of aware of you, and then all of a sudden you have that one song that everybody knows, and all of a sudden it puts you on the map. So it’s been a little strange. Our crowds have gone from 2,500 or 3,000 to 6,000 or 8,000 and just in the span of the last six months. That’s something that’s hard not to notice. It’s been weird but in a great way, I guess.
GO!: A casual fan of country music might think yours is an overnight success story, but I know that’s not the case. Do you hear that a lot, and does it bug you?
JA: I started playing nightclubs when I was 15 and I’m 32 now, so that is not an overnight success, I don’t care how you cut it.
But I also can see how people that don’t know the situation can perceive it that way, because they’ve never heard of you, and all of a sudden it’s like you’re everywhere, and it seems to them like you’re an overnight success. But it’s one of those things that if you go back and you look at things, it is far from an overnight success, for sure.
GO!: You mentioned how having one big song can change things for an artist, and your big song, “She’s Country,” has a pretty heavy rock element to it. Is that something you sought out? Or did you just like the song and it happened to rock?
JA: It wasn’t something like we went out on the prowl for it. It kind of came to us, which was cool. The writers (of the song) said, “You know, we wrote this song and ... we knew the only chance we had of getting it cut was Jason Aldean.”
I like that. It’s like the fact that we’re not scared to go out and try new things, man. Music’s music. It’s meant to be fun. It’s meant to be experimented with. And I’m glad that we’ve kind of carved out a little niche for ourselves where people think of us that way, almost like we’re not scared to do anything.
GO!: It’s better than having a reputation for playing it safe.
JA: Yeah, someone who plays the same thing over and over, and all the songs sound the same. That’s the last thing I want.
GO!: Did you listen to rock ’n’ roll growing up?
JA: Oh yeah. Lots of ’80’s rock, Southern rock. (John) Mellencamp. (Bob) Seger. All that.
GO!: I just read a quote where your record label (Broken Bow) was touting the fact that they let you make the kind of record you wanted to make. What kind of albums do you want to make?
JA: I want to make albums that I feel like represent what it is that I want to do, versus having songs force-fed to you by the label: “You’re gonna cut this. You’re gonna cut this. You’re gonna cut this because this is how we want to market you.” For me, it’s like these are the kind of songs I like, and this is what I want to record, and I want you to market me the way I am. Don’t go try to make everything slick, because it’s not the way I am.
I’ll give Broken Bow credit. They’ve always kind of allowed me to be myself and do things that I wanted to do, and not mess with me too much. And that’s something that a lot of labels don’t do.
GO!: Has anyone ever urged you to ditch your hat?
JA: When I was at Capitol Records. I was signed to Capitol Records for about a year and they tried that ... but obviously that didn’t work out very well because I wasn’t there very long.
That’s a prime example, though. When I got signed there I was wearing a hat and doing (my) deal and they wanted me to look like a Backstreet Boy, and that just wasn’t the deal for me.
GO!: You toured with Keith Urban earlier this year. After seeing his level of fame, is that something that appeals to you? Or would you like to stay about where you are?
JA: I’m happy where I’m at right now, but I definitely know that there’s room to grow, so I’m up for whatever. I’m able to go out and play my music and make a good living, and that’s great, but there’s also room for growth there, too, and I’m looking to grow, so we’ll see what happens there. So yeah, to get to that level, is that on the agenda? Yeah, I would hope so.
Ben Salmon can be reached at 541-383-0377 or bsalmon@bendbulletin.com.
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