Remember who’s signing your paychecks.
Jason Aldean has made no secret over where he stands politically throughout the course of his career. Aldean is an outspoken conservative and friend of President Donald Trump, who’s gotten more than his fair share of outrage simply because of his political beliefs.
But at the same time, being a touring artist is a massive operation, and Aldean employs plenty of people who don’t agree with him politically – something he knows and has no problem with.
What he does have a problem with, though, is employees who are disrespectful because they disagree with him politically.
Of course one of the biggest “controversies” of his career (and I put “controversies” in quotes because the whole thing was so stupid) came when he released “Try That In A Small Town” a couple of years ago. I won’t rehash the whole thing, but suffice it to say many on the left were outraged and began twisting the song and the video to accuse the country singer of racist imagery – despite the song not mentioning race at all and simply serving as a commentary on big city lawlessness at a time when the police were being disrespected and riots were rampant.
Well apparently, even some on Aldean’s crew weren’t fans of the song – and with the swirling controversy from the media, felt emboldened to join in the disrespect for the artist who paid their bills.
Aldean and his tour manager Jake Lagrone recently joined the Try That In A Small Town podcast, which is hosted by the co-writers of the song including Kurt Allison, Kelley Lovelace, Neil Thrasher and Tully Kennedy, where they discussed life on the road and managing a massive operation like the country star takes out on the road with him every weekend.
As Lagrone says, it would be “crazy” to think that everybody in their touring crew has the same political opinions:
“I’m old enough to remember this and so are you guys. Democrats and Republicans will argue like crazy and then go have lunch together. Our world is really divided right now. You would be crazy to think that 80 people on the road are all Republicans. They’re not.”
But on the road, when their goal has nothing to do with politics, obviously reasonable adults should be expected to be able to put that aside and work together:
“I pulled them all together and I said, ‘Here’s the deal, guys. Out here we’re one team. I don’t care where you sit. You’re not going to change how I feel about issues. I’m not going to change how you feel probably either out here. You’re going to be respectful because at the end of the day, that’s what matters.'”
When the controversy erupted around “Try That In A Small Town” though, apparently some people on the crew felt like they could join in the chorus of disrespect.
According to Kennedy:
“It also reached a new level after we put out Try That In a Small Town. And we’re very proud of that moment. We know what we know we meant by it and there were some people in our crew that found it okay to disrespect it and disrespect us.”
Well as you can imagine, Jason says those people aren’t members of their crew anymore:
“They no longer work for us.”
Jason continued:
“Here’s my issue: When you’re riding around on a tour bus that I’m paying for, and I’m feeding you three meals a day, every day, and a paycheck to, you know, pay your rent or whatever it is, and you’re out there on those buses, in our catering and you’re bad mouthing me and our crew like, yeah, you got to go.”
Of course I feel like this is just a microcosm of where our society is at the moment: People are unwilling to put politics aside in anything they do, which results in a lot of people who are completely unable to function in society.
Nothing an employer can really do but let those people go before they become an even bigger cancer in the workplace.
