'Try That in a Small Town' songwriters discuss hit's impact one year later

A year has elapsed since Jason Aldean's "Try That in a Small Town" landed on country radio, social media timelines, popular culture debates and the top of Billboard's all-genre Hot 100 chart.

For the past three months, 48-time chart-topper Kurt Allison and Grammy nominee Tully Kennedy, longtime touring band members of Aldean's and two of that song's four songwriters, have hosted a self-funded "Try That in a Small Town Podcast." The show explores the "common sense values" that spurred the song's creation and "addresses challenging topics affecting our communities and country."

On the surface, it would appear that "Try That in a Small Town" succeeded by appealing to stereotypical perspectives of "small-town life."

However, its co-writers believe differently.

"More than small-town values, it actually feels like a common-sense idea that people everywhere should want to believe in neighborly communities where people don't punch the elderly in the face, spit (in the face of police officers) and burn the American flag," Kennedy says.

However, as country music's fanbase has grown, the grip that "small-town values" have on the overall governance of country music's culture has waned.

Country's generation gaps

Aldean is 47 years old, Allison is 50 and Kennedy is 49. In mainstream country music, stars age in 20-year generational gaps. Teenage stars are 21 until they're 40 and middle-aged until they're 60.

These gaps occur in what was, for many decades, a monolithic industry highly resistant to the social change surrounding it.

For two decades, broad pop cultural shifts and the development of country stars like Tim McGraw and Carrie Underwood have evolved the genre. Now 2024 finds Allison, Aldean, and Kennedy wrestling with the aftermath of those evolutions.

Kennedy likens "Try That in a Small Town" to songs by Waylon Jennings and Hank Williams Jr., and specifically to Toby Keith's post-Sept. 11 anthem "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)."

"Just like Toby, we don't try to write politically charged songs," Allison says.

"It's an odd time in the music industry because great artists used just to be able to sing songs they believed in and loved that reflected what was on their minds, Kennedy says. "It would be unfortunate if we ever lost that."

'Stunned' by country's mainstream marketplace

In today's music industry, frenetic schedules create situations where heightened awareness of the genre's changing social norms and the need for nuanced considerations are not in the cards when 30-track albums are being cut. Songwriting sessions fall on off days of 50-date concert tours, and entrepreneurial opportunities encroach upon struggling to achieve a work-life balance.

The song and its accompanying video being lambasted forced a pause.

"We were stunned by how people's sensitivities made them so (antagonistic toward) something very simple that we were trying to convey," Kennedy says.

The songwriters say the song was not so much about how America was processing the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement and the 2020 presidential election. Instead, the largest mass shooting in American history occurring before Aldean played at the Route 91 Harvest Festival near the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino in 2017 influenced "Try That In A Small Town" more than anything else.

"In a way, anger toward the video being spun in a racial and racist direction hurt us," Allison says. "Jason, ourselves and the band aren't like that in any way. Being accused of racial insensitivity stung. Everything associated with that song is more about how we're fed up, in general, with people attacking each other."

Country's divided, but growing fanbases

Each of the mainstream country songs that achieved chart-topping success in 2023 highlight one of a quintet of fanbases.

Yes, a similar number of fans exist for Oliver Anthony Music's "Rich Men North of Richmond," Zach Bryan and Kacey Musgraves' "I Remember Everything," Luke Combs' cover of Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car," Morgan Wallen's "Last Night" and Aldean's "Try That in a Small Town."

Kennedy believes that national support for "Try That in a Small Town" highlights that the song's strength could be in discovering how Americans currently view the power of the nation's fundamental ideals in superseding social concerns.

"It's good for Americans to think differently — artistic and intellectual freedom are okay," Kennedy says. "Artists like Jason, like many, are unapologetic in their opinions. But, because we will never know definitively if anyone is right or wrong in their opinion, it's also important to have honest conversations with people you disagree with where ideas can be accepted as they are presented."

Country fans who were drawn to the genre 20 years ago are still passionately attending concerts.

"We'll continue to write blue-collar, country-rock songs that, because we, as a society, are splintered so far apart, will sometimes not be for everyone," Kennedy says. "But, regardless, they will always reflect what we feel needs to be said."

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: 'Try That in a Small Town' songwriters talk Aldean, song's impact