{"id":3795,"date":"2011-02-09T07:56:23","date_gmt":"2011-02-09T15:56:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=3795"},"modified":"2011-02-09T07:57:53","modified_gmt":"2011-02-09T15:57:53","slug":"aaron-lewis-country-boy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2011\/02\/09\/aaron-lewis-country-boy\/","title":{"rendered":"Aaron Lewis “Country Boy”"},"content":{"rendered":"

He’s a real Vermonter.<\/p>\n

When I went to college, the Green Mountain State was not blue, but red.\u00c2\u00a0 Fiercely independent people eking out a living on rocky land in bad weather.\u00c2\u00a0 Before the Internet, before cable TV, Vermont might not have been as far off the grid as Montana, but the locals never got in their cars and drove to Boston or New York City, they liked it just fine at home.<\/p>\n

Now I’m not gonna tell you I’m down with Aaron Lewis’s politics.\u00c2\u00a0 The more I watch this video and research this song on the Web the more scared I become.\u00c2\u00a0 I just wish everybody singing these songs and listening to them got a chance to travel the world, and see that as great as the U.S.A. is it’s not so bad in Europe, not so bad in the rest of the world.\u00c2\u00a0 We’ve got it pretty good, but we ain’t got all the answers.<\/p>\n

And guns scare me.<\/p>\n

Because I know if I had one in the house I would have committed suicide by now.\u00c2\u00a0 Or shot some friend who knocked on my door unexpectedly.<\/p>\n

And hearing the song the lyrics did not completely sink in.\u00c2\u00a0 Only snippets.\u00c2\u00a0 Like the bit about the Sunset Marquis.\u00c2\u00a0 But watching the video…I’ve got to ask are these people really not interested in helping their brothers?\u00c2\u00a0 Poverty was rampant in Vermont in the seventies.\u00c2\u00a0 I’d like to believe the government can provide a safety net.\u00c2\u00a0 And if that requires me to pay a bit more in taxes, I’m down with that.\u00c2\u00a0 Because every time I pass a homeless guy near the VA I wonder what happened to him. At least the weather’s good in Santa Monica, but even if so many of the homeless are mentally ill, can’t we give them treatment?<\/p>\n

I don’t want to go all political on you.<\/p>\n

Except to say as freaked-out as I am by this song’s politics, I love it.<\/p>\n

It’s hard to explain what music was like before video.\u00c2\u00a0 When we watched the vinyl spin ’round, when we lay back on our beds and let the music wash over us.\u00c2\u00a0 Music was not like television.\u00c2\u00a0 It spoke to your mind, not your eyes, and when done right it went straight to your heart.<\/p>\n

Once upon a time "Midnight Rider" was brand new.\u00c2\u00a0 All those Skynyrd songs too.\u00c2\u00a0 Like "Saturday Night Special" and "Gimme Back My Bullets".\u00c2\u00a0 I’m not so sure about the politics of the Southern rockers, then again, Phil Walden and the Allman Brothers put Jimmy Carter into office.\u00c2\u00a0 Who’s the best ex-President we’ve ever had.<\/p>\n

Oh here we go again.\u00c2\u00a0 You want to stop the conversation and talk about Ronald Reagan.\u00c2\u00a0 How did we ever get so divided?<\/p>\n

So I’m cruising up 20th Street.\u00c2\u00a0 For the uninitiated, that takes you by the old Sony building, before Rick Rubin decided a shrinking label needed an I.M. Pei edifice in Beverly Hills.\u00c2\u00a0 Music is now virtual.\u00c2\u00a0 We may not even need offices.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe everybody works at home.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, A&R is done on the computer.<\/p>\n

And the sun is setting and Howard Stern is on commercial and I push the button to the Nashville channel.\u00c2\u00a0 And I hear this:<\/p>\n

\n
Aaron Lewis "Country Boy"<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Do you know that live version of "Outside"?\u00c2\u00a0 From the "Family Values" album?\u00c2\u00a0 When Fred Durst says Aaron Lewis is the "real fucking deal"?<\/p>\n

Just listen to him.\u00c2\u00a0 Whew!\u00c2\u00a0 This ain’t no Britney Spears, you hear all the pain, all the emotion that music conveys so uniquely. I love Kraftwerk, but today’s machine music is sans emotion, no wonder it doesn’t connect.<\/p>\n

But "Country Boy" does.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it’s the same guy, Aaron Lewis, singing.<\/p>\n

Staind broke through.\u00c2\u00a0 Sold five million copies of that album with "It’s Been Awhile".\u00c2\u00a0 Listen to that track today.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s still haunting, it’s still riveting.<\/p>\n

And there’s that other great cut on "Break The Cycle", "Epiphany".\u00c2\u00a0 "Country Boy" is cut from the same cloth.<\/p>\n

I hate Staind’s hard rock.\u00c2\u00a0 There, I said it.\u00c2\u00a0 But I LOVE their ballads!\u00c2\u00a0 They’re lullabies for those of us with smudges on our souls.\u00c2\u00a0 A salve for the imperfect.<\/p>\n

Now I grew up down an old dirt road in a town you wouldn’t know<\/span>
My pops picked up the place up for fifteen hundred bucks back in 1964<\/span><\/p>\n

The Wikipedia says Aaron Lewis grew up in Rutland.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is a place you drive through, nobody from down south stops there, they\u00c2\u00a0 motor straight to Killington.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, there’s a main drag, but you’ve got to leave the highway to get to it.\u00c2\u00a0 Rutland is for locals.\u00c2\u00a0 And forty five years ago you could buy land for next to nothing, because that’s what it was worth.

My grandfather was a drinker<\/span>
Back in the day he put ’em down<\/span>
But a war is known to change a man, and the whiskey’s known to change a man<\/span>
That’s not me<\/span>
I rarely drink from the bottle<\/span>
But I’ll smoke a little weed<\/span><\/p>\n

I got high on dope before I ever got drunk.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s how it was back in the day.\u00c2\u00a0 Alcohol was for the older generation.\u00c2\u00a0 We were expanding our minds.<\/p>\n

Now it’s been twelve years since I sold my soul to the devil in L.A.<\/span>
He said sign your name here on the dotted line and your songs they all will play<\/span>
We set up shop on Sunset<\/span>
He put me up at the Marquis<\/span><\/p>\n

That’s the Sunset Marquis.\u00c2\u00a0 Zeppelin might have stayed at the Riot House, the hipsters may still stay at the Chateau Marmont, but since the eighties the rock and roll hotel of choice has been the Sunset Marquis.\u00c2\u00a0 Want to see your hard rock heroes?\u00c2\u00a0 Don’t hang out at the Rainbow, go to the Sunset Marquis.<\/p>\n

He said change your style, whiten your smile, you could lose a couple of pounds<\/span>
If you want to live this life you better lose that wife<\/span>
Do you need your friends around?<\/span>
I said no that’s not me<\/span>
‘Cause biggest things in life are your friends and family<\/span><\/p>\n

Whew!\u00c2\u00a0 If you don’t think the company doesn’t want to change you, you’ve never been signed.\u00c2\u00a0 Artistic autonomy went out with the seventies.\u00c2\u00a0 The man knows better.<\/p>\n

But when you’re done, when you’re over, when you’re looking at the four walls broke and busted, your friends are the only ones who’ll get you through.<\/p>\n

And I like my jeans and my old t-shirts and a couple extra pounds never really hurt <\/span>
‘Cause a country boy is all I’ll ever be.<\/span><\/p>\n

Look at the video.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no stylist involved.<\/p>\n

Doesn’t it look like fun?\u00c2\u00a0 Hanging in the studio?\u00c2\u00a0 Isn’t that where we all wanted to be?<\/p>\n

Now just before "Country Boy" I heard that ridiculous Keith Urban song "Put You In A Song".\u00c2\u00a0 Huh?\u00c2\u00a0 That’s not country, that’s commerce.<\/p>\n

If you don’t think Aaron Lewis is this song watch this clip, the acoustic version:<\/p>\n

\n
Aaron Lewis- Country Boy (Acoustic)<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

No drum machine, no backup singers, nobody behind the curtain helping.\u00c2\u00a0 He’s enough.<\/p>\n

It’s a cheap shot to go country.\u00c2\u00a0 Put on a flannel shirt, mix in a fiddle and you’re all Nashville.<\/p>\n

But country ain’t Nashville, not today.<\/p>\n

The old country was dangerous, like those townies you used to run into if you went down the wrong road in the Green Mountain State.\u00c2\u00a0 They wanted to be left alone.\u00c2\u00a0 They could survive just fine without you.<\/p>\n

All those hard-working truck drivers don’t need Brad Paisley, they don’t need fakers in hats.\u00c2\u00a0 They need someone speaking the truth.<\/p>\n

Now Clive Davis can say it takes too long to get to the change, that Aaron needs a new chorus.\u00c2\u00a0 But if you fix it, you fuck it up.\u00c2\u00a0 Great art is channeled, it’s not an intellectual process, it’s purely organic.\u00c2\u00a0 All those songwriting hacks in "Music City" are creating with their heads, not their hearts.<\/p>\n

Nothing is as powerful as a performer singing his own story.<\/p>\n

If you’re not touched by Aaron Lewis’s "Country Boy" you grew up in the city with no sympathy for anybody different.\u00c2\u00a0 You look down at the crackers, you wonder why they hate you?<\/p>\n

But people are people.<\/p>\n

I’m sure if I sat down with Aaron Lewis I could find commonality.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it’s not about politics, but humanity.\u00c2\u00a0 Life’s a struggle.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s denied on sitcoms, movies are all special effects and so are the records, so when you hear something real you cannot turn it off.<\/p>\n

I cannot turn off Aaron Lewis’s "Country Boy".<\/p>\n

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He’s a real Vermonter. When I went to college, the Green Mountain State was not blue, but red.\u00c2\u00a0 Fiercely independent people eking out a living on rocky land in bad weather.\u00c2\u00a0 Before the Internet, before cable TV, Vermont might not have been as far off the grid as Montana, but the locals never got in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-Zd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3795"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3797,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3795\/revisions\/3797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}