Jason Aldean Burns It Down

Jason Aldean’s Burn It Down Tour turned up the heat in Nashville a few weeks ago.  The show came after a week of sub-freezing temperatures and an ice storm.  But the minute Jason took the stage, it was completely filled with fire, even burning his trademarked straw hat.  He came on stage wearing a more formal black hat.  He then played for more than two hours, and gave the fans a few surprises.

After the show, he spoke about it with Country Countdown USA’s Lon Helton: “For me, when people come out to a show, they want a different experience, and that’s what we try to give them.  Whether it’s fireworks or whatever it is, you want to give them something visually that’s different from just listening to the CD.  That’s always been the goal, and each year we want to make it different, hopefully bigger and better, and that’s the challenge for is.  It’s fun to go out and do that.  One of these days, I may not be able to run around as much as I do now, so I’ll do it while I can!”

In addition to the hits, Jason included several songs from his new album, Old Boots, New Dirt.  Jason explained to Lon why he does that: “I have a couple things in mind that I think might be the next single, and I’ll start playing it just to get a reaction, and that will tell me a lot about how the reaction will be when it’s a single.  But it’s not always that way.  I remember the first time we played “Amarillo Sky,” it looked like we had aliens on stage, because people were just looking at us, but it went on to become a big hit.”

One of the new songs Jason did was “Two Night Town,” which is the last song on his new album: “That’s one of my favorite cuts off the new album, and we actually threw it in the show last year, because I think it’s one of the most well-written songs we’ve ever recorded.  It’s so broken down, so laid back, more laid back than any of the songs in our set, so it gives people a chance to see me more as a singer than just rippin’ through Hicktown, it gives me a chance to sing a little bit.  Also, the song itself, it’s one of those songs that I don’t think it matters who sings it, it’s just a great song.”

Jason had a surprise guest during the show: Alabama lead singer Randy Owen came out to sing “Tennessee River” and “My Home’s In Alabama:” I don’t think it’s any secret that the group Alabama was my biggest musical influence, and over the years I’ve had a chance to work with them and Randy, and he’s been great to me over the course of my career.  For me, I brought him up to Nashville, I wanted to have a special moment in the show, so I got in touch with Randy, and he came up from Fort Payne, which was really cool, especially the weather we had that week.  But we got up and played Tennessee River, and then I wanted to play My Home’s In Alabama, because when I first started to learn to play guitar, that was the first.  My dad played guitar a little bit, and he taught me how to play that song.  So to be on stage with Randy Owen, it’s pretty special for me.  He always sounds great.”

Joining Jason for the Burn It Down Tour all this year is hot new hitmaker Cole Swindell.  Last time Cole was on the Aldean tour, he was selling t-shirts for Jason’s tour partner Luke Bryan.  Now he’s in the middle slot.  Cole told us he was up for the challenge: “Not only is this tour huge, this is a bigger job for me.  I’m used to playing 25 minutes, and now I’m about to play right before Aldean on this tour, so I’ve got to focus, I have a brand new show with lots of hits, both by me and songs I’ve written for others, so it’s just exciting.”  Jason had this to say about Cole: “I’ve known Cole for a while, and to go from selling t-shirts to writing songs to playing shows, it’s one of those things that a lot of people try, but Cole is one of those guys, you listen to the songs he’s been writing, I almost cut his second single, ‘Hope You Get Lonely Tonight.’  He’s one of those guys who’s really young and brings a lot of excitement, and it’s cool to have that vibe on the road.”

The show opens with a lot of fire, but at the end, Jason’s microphone actually catches fire!  Jason told Lon that was actually his idea: “We were talking about the tour, and they were showing me all these images, but I said, what if at the end of the show, my microphone burst into flame?  They all looked at me like I was crazy, but I said let’s see what we can come up with.  So they actually built this microphone stand for that, and it’s just a cool moment, to kind of put the stamp on the night.  But the first few nights we used it, we had to dial it in.  The flames were getting closer than I wanted, so we had to dial it in just a little bit.  But it’s a cool effect for the show, we got a lotta flames and pyro in the show, so that puts a stamp on the night.”

How does that work? “We have two guys whose sole job is to deal with all that stuff, and I want to make sure they don’t have any mess-ups, and everything goes off like it’s supposed to.  You’ve got a lotta guys running around, and a lot of boxes with flames coming out, and one guy gets in the wrong place, you can have a huge accident.  Knock on wood, everything has gone well, we haven’t had any issues, we’ve had some close calls, but nothing’s caught on fire yet.”

 

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Category: Audio