{"id":1303899,"date":"2019-02-19T11:14:10","date_gmt":"2019-02-19T18:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cmt.com\/news\/?p=1803154"},"modified":"2019-02-19T11:14:10","modified_gmt":"2019-02-19T18:14:10","slug":"jason-aldean-were-fortunate-to-be-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/music-news\/jason-aldean-were-fortunate-to-be-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Jason Aldean: \u201cWe\u2019re Fortunate to Be Here\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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by Lauren Tingle<\/a><\/span> 38m ago<\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n

Jason Aldean<\/a> didn\u2019t hold back on any answer he gave in his keynote interview at Nashville\u2019s Country Radio Seminar.<\/p>\n

In the panel titled, \u201cOvercoming Obstacles,\u201d Aldean detailed all the tribulations that have occurred throughout his life including the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history that happened during his show at the 2017 Route 91 Harvest Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Aldean was performing \u201cWhen She Said Baby\u201d during Route 91\u2019s final set (Oct. 1) when a gunman opened fire from his room at the Mandalay Bay hotel on the festival\u2019s sold-out crowd below, killing 58 people and injuring more than 850 others.<\/p>\n

Aldean said the song has a different meaning now.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had taken it out of the set for the remainder of that tour,\u201d Aldean said. \u201cWe were watching the footage over and over on TV just like everyone else. And then you hear that song, and you start hearing rounds popping off. For us, it was, \u2018Let\u2019s put this in a drawer for a little while, and we\u2019ll revisit it later.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do play it now,\u201d Aldean said. \u201cIt was maybe a song, at one point, we just ran through during the show. Now, it has a different meaning. It\u2019s almost like we\u2019re fortunate to be here and to get to play it one more time. That\u2019s the feeling I think we all have.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said visiting hospitalized victims days after the tragedy was one of the hardest things he\u2019s ever done.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was glad we went out there,\u201d Aldean said, \u201cbut it was tough to see people laying there that had been at our show a few days before and went to have a great time and never asked for that. Knowing they were there to see us, and that\u2019s how they left, to me, it was gut-wrenching.\u201d<\/p>\n

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He added that leaning on the people who were there \u2014 his wife, Brittany (who was at the time eight months pregnant with their son, Memphis), his longtime bandmates and other survivors \u2014 helped him heal as a victim himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy band and I have been together for 20 years, and that\u2019s a brotherhood now is unbreakable,\u201d Aldean said.<\/p>\n

The conversation had Aldean chronicling his adversities throughout life with moderators SummitMedia\u2019s Beverlee Brannigan and Country Radio Broadcasters\u2019 RJ Curtis. Aldean said his life in music was a natural move after starting his first touring band at age 18 (\u201cThe thought of going to school for four years was nauseating,\u201d he said.).<\/p>\n

He moved to Nashville in 1998 to be a songwriter, but after six years of being signed to a record deal that went nowhere, Aldean found himself without a publishing deal, jobless and a new father.<\/p>\n

\u201cI moved to Nashville at 21, and by 25 I was a dad,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s expensive \u2026 From that whole time from \u201998 to \u201904, I was signed to Capitol records and nothing happened, which was probably the best thing that could have happened at that point. But I felt like I had done everything to get things going, and we just really weren\u2019t getting a lot of action. Having a kid at home, that was priority No. 1, and I was planning my exit to regroup.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was about to move the young family home to Georgia when he reluctantly headlined a showcase at Nashville\u2019s Wildhorse Saloon. In the audience for Aldean\u2019s performance were representatives from Broken Bow Records, the company that would become Aldean\u2019s longtime label home.<\/p>\n

\u201cLuckily for me at the time Broken Bow was on the upswing. They had Craig Morgan and Cherie Austin, and they were having a couple radio hits. I remember being really green to how the whole record industry worked. Even though I had lived here and been on the publishing side, I didn\u2019t really know much about the labels and how that worked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just remember [saying], \u2018This should be pretty easy. You guys get the songs played at radio, I\u2019m going to go tour and work my ass off, and that\u2019s pretty much how we\u2019re going to make this happen.\u2019 I thought it was that easy.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomehow it worked out. I think \u2018Hicktown\u2019 was on the chart for 40 weeks before it peaked, and I played 250 shows to win people over one person at a time \u2013 grassroots-style at the clubs. But I give them credit to pushing the songs at radio.\u201d<\/p>\n

At one point during the Q&A Aldean said he owes his tenacity to his competitive spirit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hate to lose even if I play Monopoly,\u201d Aldean admitted. \u201cThere was a lot of determination to be the best, and I wanted to be better than the next guy. That was something instilled in me early on, and that carries on even into today every time I go onstage now. If we go on before or after somebody, I want people to remember our show.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
Lauren Tingle is a Tennessean and storyteller who eats music for breakfast, lunch and dinner. When she\u2019s not writing or rocking out, she enjoys yoga and getting lost in the great outdoors.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

via:: CMT News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Lauren Tingle 38m ago Jason Aldean didn\u2019t hold back on any answer he gave in his keynote interview at Nashville\u2019s Country Radio Seminar. In the panel titled, \u201cOvercoming Obstacles,\u201d Aldean detailed all the tribulations that have occurred throughout his life including the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history that happened during his show at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1303899","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-11 16:28:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1303899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1303899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1303899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1303899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1303899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}