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.
His tour arrives Friday in Colorado Springs, where he’ll perform at Weidner Field. To hear him tell it, playing live 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. “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.”
That’s not to say Aldean has neglected the music-making side of his career. In fact, over the past five-plus years, he’s released five albums — the most recent of which was last year’s “Highway Desperado.”
And while Aldean drew almost entirely on material written by Music Row songwriters on the first four of those albums, for “Highway Desperado” he co-wrote three of the album’s tunes.
Aldean credited two of his band members — Kurt Allison (guitar) and Tully Kennedy (bass) — with spurring him to write with them for “Highway Desperado,” and the two band members have credits on the majority of the songs on the album, including its controversial lead single, “Try That in a Small Town.”
The song decries senseless big-city crime but was widely criticized as an anti-Black Lives Matter song that celebrates a brand of vigilante justice where townspeople take care of their own.
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.
The fuss over “Try That in a Small Town” has eased now, but despite that, it became Aldean’s first song to top Billboard magazine’s all-genre Hot 100 singles chart. It also topped the country singles chart, joining nearly 30 other number ones Aldean has amassed over his career.
Having so many hit songs makes putting together his set lists a challenge. But for each tour, Aldean puts considerable effort into crafting a crowd-pleasing selection of songs. That’s true of this summer’s outing.
“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.”