{"id":1318595,"date":"2020-03-06T10:02:12","date_gmt":"2020-03-06T17:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cmt.com\/news\/?p=1818777"},"modified":"2020-03-06T10:02:12","modified_gmt":"2020-03-06T17:02:12","slug":"from-hicktown-to-we-back-michael-knox-has-been-everywhere-with-jason-aldean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/music-news\/from-hicktown-to-we-back-michael-knox-has-been-everywhere-with-jason-aldean\/","title":{"rendered":"From \u201cHicktown\u201d to \u201cWe Back,\u201d Michael Knox Has Been Everywhere with Jason Aldean"},"content":{"rendered":"
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by Alison Bonaguro<\/a><\/span>
\n14m ago<\/span>
\n<\/span> <\/p>\n

The first time anyone heard Jason Aldean on the radio was way, way back in 2005, when his debut single \u201cHicktown\u201d was released. And the last time you heard him on the radio was probably about five minutes ago, when his latest single \u201cWe Back\u201d came on. <\/p>\n

The common denominator in both of those songs that have bookended Aldean\u2019s career so far is his producer Michael Knox. He\u2019s produced all nine of Aldean\u2019s studio albums, and 126 of the tracks on those albums. <\/p>\n

In a new Jake Brown book \u2014 Behind the Boards: Nashville<\/em> \u2014 Knox talks at length about his 20-year partnership with Aldean. When they first met around 1998, Knox explains that he\u2019d gone to Atlanta for a two-day talent show and he liked what he saw in Aldean. \u201cHe looked cool, and was singing Alabama, Tracy Lawrence, Guns N\u2019 Roses, it was all over the place. And I\u2019d been looking for a country rock guy for probably three or four years. We had McGraws, and guys who were making a lot of noise, but it was more cowboy noise, and I said, \u2019Man, I need a M\u00f6tley Cr\u00fce country guy, who takes all of this to the next place,’\u201d Knox recalls in the book. <\/p>\n

While the book goes deep into Aldean\u2019s entire discography, here\u2019s what Knox had to say about the first song and the latest song.<\/p>\n

On the sound of \u201cHicktown\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the time I got to work with Jason, \u2018Hicktown\u2019 was already four years old. We\u2019d played it to Jason, and he fell in love with the song, so we played it live a couple of times, then went in the studio and sang it. And it had some things that weren\u2019t naturally what he was doing before, but it was definitely where we were going with attitude, guitars \u2014 we changed the fiddles to guitars \u2014 and kind of rocked it out pretty hard. That was definitely the beginning of that new generation of where country was going. The main thing to remember of what we brought to country music was that really aggressive, AC\/DC guitars, the really distorted guitars and hard-core drum kits and banging. Jason really busted the door down with heavier guitars, stacked guitars, we had six layers of guitars, and then live drums being recorded by Peter Coleman, who did The Knack, Blondie, and Pat Benatar, and defined what rock and roll was in the 70s.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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